School leadership

In the last two years, the United States has been greatly impacted by the global health pandemic of COVID-19 and a renewed national recognition of racial injustice catalyzed by the murder of George Floyd. These crises have created extensive pressures for school leaders to revamp their policies and procedures to ensure physiological safety and address systemic racism in schools, respectively. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore how school principals dealt with and reacted to COVID-19 and the murder of George Floyd and the pressures of this crisis context. Guided by multiple contextual lenses and theoretical frameworks, this study used an abductive analysis approach to uncover surprising and anomalous data to build renewed understandings in educational leadership. In doing so, I discovered elements of healthcare and sensemaking around life and death that led to the integration of a healthcare humanization framework. Together, this study found that principals adopted new or shifted roles and identities that focused on humanizing practices. Principals became first responders; mediators of health, political, and humanizing communications; needs-based leaders; civil rights leaders; and leaders who sought agency by supporting others in uncontrollable situations. These changes were embedded in systems that remained acontexual and dehumanistic that created tensions for leaders to navigate. These findings supported the early developments of a humanizing leadership peri-crisis framework to elucidate leaders’ responses in crisis contexts particularly when loss is imminent. This research is significant because the literature on theoretical frameworks for crisis school leadership is small and even fewer studies have operationalized humanizing school leadership practices. Recommendations based on the findings are also proposed for researchers,
practitioners, and policy-makers.

Our nation’s culturally diverse public school students require transformative social justice school leadership that values, affirms, and includes all cultures. Studies focused on educational leadership for diverse student populations increasingly center around cultural responsiveness just as empirical studies on cultural intelligence (CQ) outside the field of education are also proliferating. This study was built upon a conceptual framework that highlights the overlaps between culturally responsive school leadership (CRSL) and the multi-dimensional framework of CQ. Based upon evidence of CQ as an antecedent to a number of positive outcomes in culturally diverse settings, the purpose was to uncover the extent to which principal CQ predicts Black and Latinx students’ high school graduation rates. Data collection involved the 20-item Cultural Intelligence Scale (CQS) (Ang et al., 2007) and federal data on high school graduation rates for Black, Latinx, and White students. The sample was drawn from 18 of the state’s 67 districts, and included 28 principals with a tenure at their current schools of three years or more. A bivariate correlation analysis, a multiple regression analysis, estimators of cross-validated R2, a test of differences of R2, and moderation tests were conducted using a new program developed by Morris and Lieberman (2021). Four significant correlations were detected. Black student graduation rates positively correlated to metacognitive CQ and the combination of cognitive CQ, motivational CQ, and behavioral CQ. Cognitive CQ and motivational CQ correlated to one another, as were cognitive CQ and metacognitive CQ. Results indicated that CRSL plays a positive role in education, with particular promise for Black students. However, results could not be cross-validated from the sample to the population. Furthermore, race/ethnicity did not moderate the relationship between graduation rates and CQ and its subscales. Limitations included a lack of power related to the small sample, the use of a course metric (graduation rates) with limited variance as an outcome variable, and the challenges inherent in investigating an indirect relationship such as that between principal and students. This study has begun the task of filling the CQ gap in the educational leadership literature, and recommendations for greatly needed additional research are made.

Very little research exists around the implementation of innovative practices in traditional public schools. However, research indicates that innovation and creation of an organizational culture and climate that fosters innovation are both practices associated with improvement in overall organizational performance. This study aims to examine leadership practices, both at the school and district levels, which support the implementation of a radical innovation in traditional public schools. Specifically, this study asks three key questions: How did the plan to implement personalized learning develop, how did district and school leaders gain acceptance for the implementation, and how did Very little research exists around the implementation of innovative practices in traditional public schools. However, research indicates that innovation and creation of an organizational culture and climate that fosters innovation are both practices associated with improvement in overall organizational performance. This study aims to examine leadership practices, both at the school and district levels, which support the implementation of a radical innovation in traditional public schools. Specifically, this study asks three key questions: How did the plan to implement personalized learning develop, how did district and school leaders gain acceptance for the implementation, and how did school leaders manage school climate change during the implementation? In this context, radical innovation is defined as an innovation that significantly changes the ways in which the school organization operates and delivers education to students (Zaltman, Duncan, & Holbek, 1973).