District Leaders' Conceptualization and Enactment of Caring Organizations

• In Event: Conceptualizing Efforts to Bring About More Humanizing Educational Institutions: Perspectives From Research + Practice

Abstract

Purpose of Study
The well-being, mental health, and social and emotional growth of students is a pressing concern for both practitioners and researchers. Although literature abounds with dyadic, relational accounts of how this sort of support is enacted in schools, we know very little about how superintendents and other central office leaders think about or envision the organization of care at the school district level. In this paper, we draw on a qualitative data set to consider two related research questions: How do district leaders conceptualize care and social-emotional supports? What conditions influence district level supports?
Theoretical Perspective
The role of the district central office has evolved in recent decades, shifting from compliance-oriented bureaucracies to reimagined sites of instructional reform and change (Burch & Spillane, 2004; Peurach et al., 2019). Moreover, scholars find that superintendents and central office workers play important roles in district policymaking, and that leadership actions and beliefs may lead to uneven and inequitable uptake, implementation, and educator buy-in (Coburn, 2016; Rigby & Woulfin, 2016).
How the district manages, organizes, and considers issues of care and social-emotional needs, however, is underexamined; to date, most education policy and leadership research focuses on instructional reforms. Noddings (2015) suggests that care at the organizational level is done through caring about. This is inherently different from the type of care performed by those who are in direct caring relationships with students (e.g. teachers). At the organizational level, caring about is performed through the creation of conditions for care.
Approach to Inquiry
We interviewed 46 superintendents, assistant superintendents, and director-level care leaders. To analyze the data, we first used a constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) to surface initial themes and tensions in the data. Then, a series of analytical questions based on initial themes were used to further refine and analyze our data (Neumann & Pallas, 2015). Researchers wrote detailed memos and engaged in regular analysis conversations to synthesize and crystallize findings (Miles et al., 2020).
Results/Conclusions
Overall, we found that (a) district leaders described caring work as complex and evolving, (b) district leaders practice care by collaborating with other educators across various departments and role types, and (c) partnerships with community organizations and outside agencies allowed district leaders to provide a constellation of care.
Scholarly Significance
In this grounded theory study of district care, we found that caring leadership is complex and evolving. Another salient theme of our work is that relational or collaborative care is essential to engendering caring district practices. Yet the extent to which districts empowered such collaborative caring processes, or individual agents took up the mantle of collaborative care, was unclear and warrants future research. That is, are districts intentionally creating space for collaborative care networks to form? A final and persistent theme throughout our leadership interviews was the outsized role that outside agencies, partnerships, and community leadership play. Much more so than with instructional reforms, how and to what extent political capital is needed to navigate and nurture this constellation of care is unknown.

Authors

• Jeff Walls, Washington State University
  Presenting Author

• Kate Kennedy, RAND Corporation
  Presenting Author