“We Are The Heartbeat of The School”

A Framework for Educator-to-Educator Relationships

Bibliographic Data

ID22006778
AuthorsTa‐yang Hsieh (0000-0002-9001-0477, Search Institute, corresponding author), Lex Nappa (Search Institute, Minneapolis, MN, USA), Alyssa Scott (0000-0003-3962-0242, Search Institute), Anne E Pezalla (0000-0002-9735-3237, Macalester College)
Year2026
Volume16
Issue1
Publication date2026-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSAGE Open (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2158-2440 • E-ISSN: 2158-2440
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/21582440251408933
OpenAlexW7118335108
LanguageEN
References cited58

Educator-to-educator relationships are critical for a range of educator, student, and school-wide outcomes. To foster and sustain healthy educator-to-educator relationships, a comprehensive framework is needed to understand what informs those relationships and how they function. Through thematic analysis of focus group and interview data from 72 educators in the United States, this qualitative study generated a multi-layered framework that highlights the key actions (communicate, collaborate, support), beliefs (values, respect, trust), and connections (connect professionally, connect personally, inclusion and bias) that constitute educator-to-educator relationships. Additionally, guided by the process-person-context-time (PPCT) model, the framework points out the important influences that school culture and climate, structural supports, and system-wide issues have on educator-to-educator relationships. Implications for research are discussed in terms of conceptualizing educator-to-educator relationships from behavioral, social-cultural, relational, and ecological perspectives. This more holistic approach to understanding relationships between educators can help bring discrete bodies of literature (e.g., on trust, collaboration, school culture and climate) into dialogue with one another. Implications for practice included a list of actionable strategies, grouped by themes from this study, that educators and school leaders can take to strengthen educator-to-educator relationships

Conceptual framework · Focus group · Qualitative research · Thematic analysis · Early Childhood Education and Development · Parental Involvement in Education · Teacher Education and Leadership Studies

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access