Middle leaders (MLs) play a pivotal role in school hierarchies, serving as intermediaries between senior leadership, which sets the school’s vision and strategic directions, and teaching staff, who implement these guidelines. These leaders, who are also teachers, take on formal responsibilities in subject area, age group, or school project, and often manage a team of teachers (Abrahamsen, 2018).

In the Israeli education system, these roles include subject coordinators, grade-level coordinators, counselors, and pedagogical coordinators, which in large high schools comprise up to 20 percent of the teaching population. Previous studies, in Israel and abroad, found that MLs are expected to support teachers’ professional development , facilitate meaningful learning, and lead pedagogical changes to promote school success, while simultaneously performing managerial and administrative tasks to maintain school order and stability (Farchi & Tubin, 2019; Lipscombe et al., 2021).

However, research found that MLs do not fully realize their leadership potential. Instead, they dedicate most of their time to organizing and managing day-to-day operations, such as planning schedules, allocating resources, and ensuring clear communication between senior leadership and teachers (Lipscombe et al., 2023; Pinheiro & Alves, 2024). This discrepancy between the expectations placed on MLs to lead meaningful pedagogical change, and their current focus on operational stability, is often presented as a detriment to school success (Chaaban et al., 2023; Stone & Stone, 2024; Zhang et al., 2022). In this study, we propose a shift in perspective. Rather than evaluating MLs solely on their contributions to achieving predefined educational goals, we assess their role in strengthening the school’s organizational coherence. We examine how MLs contribute to organizational coherence, namely creating meaningful, manageable, and comprehensible work environments in the school.

We based our definition of school coherence on the salutogenic theory (Antonovsky, 1979), traditionally used in studies of individual health and resilience. The theory focuses on the Sense of Coherence (SOC), which influences how individuals cope with daily challenges and promote their overall well-being. SOC comprises three components: comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness. These components equip individuals with the mindset to perceive life events as valuable, provide them with the resources to address these challenges, and foster a sense of stability and order through the coping process. When integrated, these components not only reduce anxiety and stress in addressing challenges, but also enable individuals to grow and thrive, transforming challenges into opportunities for resilience, well-being, and positive change.

In this study, we extend the concept of Coherence from the individual to the organizational level, focusing on Organizational Coherence,which is defined as a clear structure of well-defined roles, a hierarchy, and division of labor (comprehensibility); sufficient resources to support organizational operations (manageability); and an inspired vision reflecting the organization’s importance (meaningfulness). The integration of these three aspects indicates high coherence in the school’s structure, enabling the school to be stable, adaptable, and to thrive. Thus, this study’s goal is to find out how MLs contribute to organizational comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness.

This is a multiple-case study aimed at gaining a better understanding of a complex ‎phenomenon (Yin, 2018), in this case, the contributions of MLs to school organizational ‎coherence. Four large, high-achieving Israeli high schools, each attended by more than 1,000 ‎students, were chosen for the study, assuming that their success would enable us to study the ‎phenomenon of organizational coherence and the contributions of MLs in its entirety. These ‎schools, led by principals with at least three years of leadership experience, varied in aspects ‎of sector (state-secular and state-religious), district (south and center), and student ‎demographics (medium and high SES).‎ Data collection included semi-structured interviews with the four school principals, and 61 ‎MLs, specifically subject and grade-level coordinators. These MLs hold broad responsibility ‎for all the students, and lead a team of teachers who teach mandatory subjects such as ‎language, English, and mathematics, or specific age groups. In addition to interviews, we ‎conducted 33 observations of meetings, and collected relevant documents such as school ‎schedules and work plans. All collected data, including audio recordings of interviews and ‎meetings, were transcribed, and securely stored in a protected digital folder accessible only to ‎the research team.‎ The data were analyzed both inductively and deductively using Dedoose software. The ‎inductive analysis involved examining all the data to develop categories and subcategories, ‎and grouping recurring themes in the interviews. For example, categorizing MLs’ actions ‎such as clarifying organizational expectations or emotional support for the teacher. A ‎deductive analysis was performed in accordance with the conceptual framework of ‎salutogenic theory. For example, MLs’ actions such as task delegation were categorized as ‎contribution to comprehensibility, allocating resources as manageability, and explaining the ‎senior leadership’s decisions as meaningfulness (Antonovsky, 1979).‎ Ethical standards were maintained by presenting the research objectives to the interviewees, ‎protecting their privacy and anonymity, and obtaining their informed consent‏.‏

The findings reveal that MLs contribute to maintaining comprehensibility and manageability, ‎which are essential for the school’s ongoing functioning, but their contribution to ‎meaningfulness – a key component for long-term growth – is more limited. They foster ‎comprehensibility by clarifying the senior leadership’s guidelines, communicating and ‎providing information about decisions, procedures, and expectations. They develop and ‎monitor annual work plans for specific subjects, ensuring curriculum consistency, and ‎reducing teaching gaps across classes. Additionally, they support beginning teachers by ‎helping them understand their roles, and the school’s organizational structure and procedures, ‎thereby fostering shared understandings and smooth integration.‎ MLs also influence manageability by efficiently managing resources to meet the school’s ‎needs. When faced with teacher absences or behavioral issues, MLs provide immediate ‎solutions, such as stepping into classrooms themselves or addressing student concerns ‎directly, maintaining routine, and minimizing disruptions. They also ensure teaching staff are ‎equipped with the necessary resources and support to implement the curriculum and ‎overcome challenges.‎ However, MLs’ contribution to meaningfulness is more limited. They rarely challenge the ‎purpose, relevance, or expected outcomes of projects or procedures, nor do they ‎evaluate how these initiatives influence student achievement or teachers’ professional ‎development.‎ We argue that MLs' limited contribution to meaningfulness does not reflect their ‎abilities but is a consequence of ambiguity in the schools’ goals. This ambiguity forces ‎schools, and those charged with managing their daily functions, MLs, to balance conflicting ‎goals, prioritizing short-term problem-solving over long-term vision, which hinders their ‎ability to provide meaningful explanations. ‎ Theoretically, this study applies the salutogenic theory to the organizational level, offering a ‎new framework for understanding the contributions of MLs and their position within the ‎school as balancers and problem solvers. Practically, it indicates directions for developing the ‎ML role for the benefit of the school and the MLs themselves. ‎

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