Introduction
In this study, we seek to add to the descriptive literature on caring leadership through an examination of the work principals did to guide school communities through the COVID-19 ...pandemic. In this time, one essential role they played was as caretaker for all; not simply deciding, advising, or providing resources but responding with advocacy and compassion. Even so, they simultaneously had to consider traditional instructional leadership expectations including teacher observation and supervision as well as student evaluation.
Methods
This study examines the acts and expressions of caring leadership. Our research responds to one overarching question: What does caring leadership look like in action? Through close examination of 17 elementary principals’ recollections of work during the school closures of 2020, this study highlights the elements of their decisions and choices that embodied caring leadership as well as demonstrates how these moves both incorporated and exceeded traditional leadership work.
Results
Our findings highlight the centrality of caring leadership not merely as part of leaders’ work, but as the actual work itself. We extend a presumed tautology of caring leadership to explicate the discrete tasks undertaken by caring leaders to sustain the work of schools.
Discussion
Research on leadership practices frequently emphasizes professional work as relational and interactive to achieve instructional goals without acknowledging that much of the contemporary leadership work both centers on and draws strength from mutual, authentic caring for others to accomplish work. Thus, this investigation enhances research on leadership in education to recognize the caring work that principals perform and the value they ascribe to caring.
Utilizing a sample of 54 interviews from a larger study of traditional public school principals' responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, we examined the degree to which principals in 19 states and ...representing both urban (e.g., intensive, emergent or characteristic;
n
= 37) and suburban settings (
n
= 17) and across all student levels (i.e., elementary, middle, and high), experienced and engaged in behaviors to create psychological safety during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also sought to understand how various environmental and organizational features may have influenced these conditions and thus the likelihood of learning taking place. We find principals reported varied levels of psychological safety in their schools with associated differing levels of organizational learning and responsiveness to the crisis. However, rather being grounded in environmental conditions (e.g., urbanicity, demographics, etc.), organizational factors and specifically, differences in accountability, principal autonomy, professional culture and teacher decision-making were all key in the degree of psychological safety exhibited. Together, these findings serve to expand understanding of leadership as creating conditions for learning and give insight into the degree our pre-COVID-19 system may have facilitated or stymied the ability or capacity of school leaders in different settings to support transformational learning. In this way, this research may have real and important implications for the types of support leaders and teachers require as we collectively transition into the next phase of uncertainty as many schools continue to try and re-open safely and all that lays ahead.
PurposeIn response to the proliferation of neoliberal reforms and a “new professionalism” (Evetts, 2009, 2011), researchers argue that school leaders, like teachers, have experienced a form of ...“de-professionalization” (Keddie, 2017) and that the principalship may even be an “emergent profession” (Stone-Johnson and Weiner, 2020). Such framing assumes school leaders are indeed part of a profession. And yet, while research abounds regarding teaching as a profession (Ingersoll and Collins, 2018; Sachs, 2016; Torres and Weiner, 2018), no parallel literature exists about school leaders. Such information is critical to ensure educators receive the appropriate professional development and support (Sachs, 2016) and move the field forward and thus motivated the authors to ask how principals view their work and whether it can be seen as part of a discrete profession.Design/methodology/approachThe authors utilized an interpretative phenomenological approach (IPA) drawing on qualitative interviews with sixteen elementary school principals in two US states.FindingsThe authors find administration, and specifically the principalship, exists adjacent to, but distinct from, teaching. Additionally, the authors find school leadership is an “emergent” profession, with aspects of the work that indicate leadership is a profession but others that do not.Originality/valueThis study extends early work (Stone-Johnson and Weiner, 2020) on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on principals' professionalism to shed light on the larger and more long-standing features of principals' work that support and hinder its development as a profession and the implications of such designation on attracting and retaining school leaders, as well as underscoring that because school leadership and teaching can be considered discrete professions, teachers need not leave their classroom to be true professionals.
School leadership was transformed by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. In this crisis, principals organised schooling amidst extreme confusion and uncertainty. Using ...sensemaking theory to capture how leaders identified, interpreted, and acted on this novel situation, this longitudinal qualitative study describes how school leaders, in interaction with stakeholders, generated understanding during the pandemic. We draw particular attention to a set of actors - parents - who elevated their participation in education broadly and sensemaking specifically in ways that have yet to be explored in other educational research. We examine the active role parents played in shaping educational decisions, their interaction with school leadership, and the growing polarisation exacerbated by the deepening political crisis that frames the field of education more generally. Our findings highlight how school leaders and parents held competing beliefs about how schools should be organised, leading to a process of what we call sensesplitting, the growth of two narratives emerging out of the same phenomena. This study offers important insight into how organisational sensemaking in education is increasingly shaped by parents, politics, and school leadership and the impact of this shift on leaders' decision-making.
Purpose: At a time when school leadership takes on great import, we must ask how leadership can move beyond a focus on individual- and school-level changes to collective leadership that relies on the ...strength of relationships between schools and the communities in which they reside to foster and sustain change. Such leadership is termed responsible leadership. Using a conceptual framework for responsible business leadership and data from a large-scale multinational study on Performing Beyond Expectations, this article formulates a theory for responsible educational leadership. Research Design: Data come from the Performing Beyond Expectations project, a large-scale international study undertaken from 2007 to 2010. This study used qualitative interviews and analysis of documentary data to explore how organizations in business, education, and sport achieve exceptionally high performance, given their size, client base, and previous performance. The project included more than 220 interviews and 18 sites. Analysis in this article focuses on the responsible leadership found in three schools in one local authority and the ways in which each leader uses relationships to improve the school and student achievement. Findings: All three leaders see the purpose of leadership as developing relationships and attribute their performance beyond expectations to the strength of these relationships. As responsible leaders, they view their role as not only raising and sustaining pupil achievement but also weaving leadership throughout the web of stakeholders including students, parents, and community agencies. This collectivization of leadership is a hallmark of responsible leadership.
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