heartbeat of a caring leader

This doctoral dissertation explores the life of an African-American female elementary school principal using a unifying qualitative method incorporating biography, portraiture and anthropology called A renaissance method for studying leadership: A caring perspective. A portrait of the principal was derived using this method where verbatim statements were taken from friends, family, teachers, colleagues and supervisors as well as the principal herself at the school site and the town where she was raised to identify emerging themes. The findings indicate that her humanistic approach to leading in high poverty and minority schools was grounded on her ethic of caring, one that she experienced as a child and that became embedded within her character as a human being. The dual significance of this study is that (a) the method provides researchers a new approach to studying the life of a leader from a humanistic approach and (b) the story provides the reader an opportunity to step inside the life of a good leader through an authentic story being told using the words and observations of those who knew her well.