From leadership research to district action: Not every classroom lifts you up: school academic emphasis, teacher encouragement and motivation, and student constraints in reading achievement—a multilevel latent profile analysis

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.

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Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: research-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

Introduction This study aims to identify latent profiles that emphasize academic success and examine how these profiles affect the interaction between classroom reading instruction, classroom climate, and student reading achievement. Methods Employing multilevel latent profile analysis combined with a cross-level moderation approach, the study used PIRLS 2021 data from 6,032 students across 192 schools in Türkiye. Results The findings revealed two school profiles as perceived by teachers, one with a low emphasis on academic achievement and the other with a high emphasis. More specifically, in schools where teachers perceived a stronger focus on academic success, their encouragement and motivation efforts were more linked to higher student reading achievement. In contrast, in schools with a low emphasis on academic success, classroom instruction limited by student attributes negatively affected reading achievement; however, this association remained consistent across both profiles, indicating that school emphasis did not moderate this relationship. Discussion This study contributes theoretically by extending the School Effectiveness framework to show that school academic culture shapes the impact of classroom practices. The findings refine this framework by illustrating that instructional effects differ across schools with varying levels of academic emphasis. These results underscore the need for policies and leadership practices that cultivate strong academic cultures to enhance the effectiveness of classroom instruction.

Study methods

This study utilized PIRLS 2021 data to analyze the reading achievements of fourth-grade students in Türkiye during the COVID-19 pandemic, incorporating perspectives from school principals, teachers, parents, and students. Employing a multi-stage cluster sampling method, the sample included 6,032 fourth-grade students from 192 schools, strategically selected to represent a broad cross-section of geographic regions and demographic characteristics as defined by the Statistical Institute of Türkiye. Initially, schools were clustered by geographic region and selected randomly. Subsequent random selection of fourth-grade classes from these schools ensured that all students in these classes were included in the sample. The diversity of the sample aimed to represent the national variance in reading skills, SES, school types, and geographical locations. The sample comprised 49.6% male students and 50.4% female students. The mean age of the participants was 9.97 (SD = 0.45).

Limitations

Finally, reapplying the model used in this study to PIRLS data from different countries is, as well as to subsequent PIRLS cycles, is important to test the extent to which the findings hold true in cross-border contexts. Using the same analytical approach across education systems with different governance models centralized, semi-centralized, or more decentralized structures will shed light on how the relationships between school profiles and student achievement vary by context.

A 90-day district inquiry

Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one school improvement question with teachers. Protect a short shared planning cycle, agree an instructional change and use a common rubric for examining student work. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
Days 61–90 · Decide. Review implementation fidelity, teacher time and independently scored student work against a recorded baseline. Examine access differences and competing explanations before attributing changes to leadership. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Selçuk Turan. Not every classroom lifts you up: school academic emphasis, teacher encouragement and motivation, and student constraints in reading achievement—a multilevel latent profile analysis. Frontiers in Psychology (2026-01-27). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1680413

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.