Distributed Leadership and Teachers’ Social and Emotional Learning Practices in Chinese Schools: A Relational Coordination Perspective Using TALIS 2024 Data

Although social and emotional learning (SEL) has become increasingly prominent in global education policy, how school leadership shapes teachers’ SEL teaching practices remains insufficiently understood, particularly in non-Western contexts. Grounded in Relational Coordination Theory, this study examined the mechanisms through which distributed leadership influences teachers’ SEL teaching practices, with teacher collaboration and teacher empathy specified as sequential mediators. Using data from 1299 teachers in the China sample of the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2024, the study tested a sequential mediation model through bootstrap-based mediation analysis (PROCESS Model 6). Confirmatory factor analysis supported the measurement model, and discriminant validity was established through nested model comparisons. The results showed that distributed leadership was both directly and indirectly associated with SEL teaching practices, with the indirect associations accounting for 62.77% of the total association. Teacher empathy emerged as the most influential mediator (45.74%), followed by the sequential mediation pathway through teacher collaboration and teacher empathy (12.16%), whereas the specific indirect effect of teacher collaboration was comparatively small (4.87%). These findings extend Relational Coordination Theory to the educational context by illustrating how organizational leadership practices may be linked to classroom-level SEL teaching behaviors through relational processes and teachers’ emotional capacities. The study underscores that advancing SEL implementation may require not only structural reform in the distribution of leadership but also the systematic cultivation of two interrelated mechanisms: professional collaboration and teacher empathy.