“Faithful Presence”—The Christian School Head, Tenure, and Academic, Spiritual, and Cultural Outcomes: A Mixed-Method Exploratory Study

• In Event: Private Religious Catholic and Protestant Schooling in North America: Motivations and Outcomes

Abstract

This exploratory study enters the world of the Christian school head and portrays the complexities of ‘faithful presence’ (Hunter, 2010) in tenure, sense of personhood and essential relationships, and perceived outcomes in the Christian school. Rather than focus upon the academic, spiritual, and cultural outcomes of students within North American Christian schools, this study seeks alternatively to reframe its research around those who fulfill, maintain, and oversee the outcomes of the Christian school, its leadership. Hunter (2010) expresses a provisional theological construct adapted to describe the under-researched world of the Christian school head. This construct, ‘faithful presence’, portrays the essential theme for the study and offers a theoretical and organizational structure for the quantitative and qualitative research elements.
In this mixed methodology study (Creswell, 2003), the tenure of heads of Christian P-12 schools were explored through a quantitative series of measures. This led to an analysis of data which produced four factors of significance which impact tenure: equanimity, role strain, leadership maturity, and group goal-directedness. The second methodological element was designed as qualitative and involved the development of a semi-structured interview (Wengraf, 2001; Arksey & Knight, 1999; Foddy, 1993) with a purposive sample of heads of schools taken from a subset of the quantitative study. An interview guide embedded the four factors from the quantitative aspect into a series of questions which explored the factors in more detail and allowed for direct contact with respondents. An open, but directed, dialog around the factors was created and a space for expanding the focus of the quantitative portion provided as respondents interacted with the interviewer and the interview questions. The qualitative element disclosed the Christian school head from the perspectives of personhood, as expressed through presentation of self, sense of personal calling, and understanding of professional identity as well as relationship, as typified by multiple contexts, layered authority, and complex roles. From this a synthesis was developed that was used to ‘bridge the gap’ toward an exploration of school outcomes as both potential and problematic for the school head as they unfolded their complex school roles and vision. A model, which will offer an unique contribution to research in this area, depicting the inter-relationships of the major themes was then developed.
As an exploratory study of an under-researched subject, that of the Christian school head, the construct of ‘faithful presence’ displays creative tension between the necessary managerial aspects of the position and the moral dimensions of servant leadership (Sergiovanni, 2001). Mission, vision, and school outcomes present themselves as problematic, contextual, and contested in substance and purpose. There is unified a set of academic, spiritual or cultural outcomes out of which the Christian school head operates, and thus, the field for further explication is fertile indeed.

Authors

• Jack Beckman, Covenant College

• James Drexler, Covenant College

• Kevin Eames, Covenant College