Leadership as Care: Exploring Connective Labor Practices

• In Event: AERA Graduate Student Research in Progress Roundtable Session Three
  In Roundtable Session: Centering the Perspectives of School Counselors and Instructional Leaders (Table 2)

Abstract

Educators' commitment to doing care for others often stands in tension with ideologies of professionalism that center progress in time-bound ways. When American schools closed in response to the Covid-19 public health crisis, principals were tasked with doing care without the building or proximity to their students and staff. During this time, leaders accepted roles as community caregivers while working with students, teachers, and families. They bridged leadership roles to embody school for others, performing connective labor. This study examines the acts and expressions of care labor as leadership by interrogating the gendered dimensions of care work. It asks: what does it mean to carry this burden, to become more than an architect of school culture? What does it mean for school leaders to do care? How elementary leaders embodied school illuminates the unique value of connective labor, which should redefine leadership towards professionalizing care and challenge feminized dimensions of care work.

Author

• Kate Hasler Steilen, University at Buffalo - SUNY
  Presenting Author