Stories of Caring School Leadership. Mark A. Smylie

that emphasize the individual, such as independence, self-sufficiency, competition, and individual success, are less supportive of caring than those that emphasize community, such as interdependence, cooperation, and collective responsibility and accountability. In communities, resources for caring include social-emotional support from peers and from nonparent adults, such as relatives, family friends, and neighbors. Opportunities for caring and support can also come through community organizations and the resources and services they can provide. These include civic organizations, recreational and youth development programs, health care and social support services, religious congregations, businesses, and local government. Economic and political forces, crime and violence, racism and other forms of oppression, and population instability can mitigate these community resources and caring generally.

      Problems and Pitfalls

      Caring does not always function in a straightforward or positive manner, even when it is enacted with the best intentions. Boundaries must be negotiated. Relationships need to be monitored and managed. Caring can cause embarrassment and make persons feel vulnerable. If not careful, caring can evoke a sense of obligation that is inappropriate or impossible to fulfill. Caring can also lead to objectification—people can be seen as inanimate problems to solve and relationships can become contrived.

      Moreover, acting on particular virtues can create dilemmas as one virtue may bump up against another. According to education ethics scholars Joan Shapiro and Jacqueline Stefkovich, such dilemmas present ethical choices to be managed.¹⁷ For example, caring can create tension between acting in the best interests of an individual student and abiding by the rules and policies of the school or district. Acting in the best interests of individuals and groups can create tensions with the interests of the whole and with values of fairness and equal treatment of all.

      ¹⁷Shapiro and Stefkovich (2010).

      Some virtues that drive caring can bring both benefits and unexpected problems at the same time. For example, psychologist Paul Bloom observes that empathy can be a positive force on how we act and interact with others by making it possible to resonate with their positive and negative feelings.¹⁸ At the same time, empathy can be superficial and biased. It can set a cognitive trap by which presumptions can be reinforced to the detriment of another person. Neuroscientists Tania Singer and Olga Klimecki contend that through empathy we feel happy when we vicariously share the joys of others and we feel pain when we share the suffering of others.¹⁹ Shared feelings of pain and suffering can be difficult, sometimes leading to stress and distress, which then can lead to negative feelings, withdrawal, antisocial behavior, blame, and burnout. To guard against this prospect, empathy must be linked with compassion—that is, to feelings of warmth, concern and care for another, and motivation to improve the other’s well-being. Compassion directs empathic thinking toward positive action and helps avoid empathy’s pitfalls and problems.

      ¹⁸Bloom (2018).

      ¹⁹Singer and Klimecki (2014).

      Caring can lead to unintended and potentially harmful consequences. For the ones caring, it can be extremely demanding and psychologically, emotionally, and physical stressful. Caring can result in what communications scholars Katherine Kinnick, Dean Krugman, and Glen Cameron call compassion fatigue, the emotional overload that occurs when one gets overinvolved, overextended, and overwhelmed by the emotional demands imposed by others.²⁰ Finally, caring can spawn unintended harmful consequences for the ones cared for. Caring relationships can develop inappropriate dependencies, codependencies, and transference. They can result in unwarranted control, subjugation, and infringement of privacy, autonomy, and rights. In the worst instance, the interpersonal closeness of caring can create opportunities for abuse and victimization. Without careful attention, without mindfulness and self-regulation, and without the monitoring and watchful support of others, the risk of negative consequences can emerge.

      ²⁰Kinnick, Krugman, and Cameron (1996).

      A Model of Caring School Leadership

      Applying this discussion of caring, we define caring school leadership as leadership that is itself caring, which proceeds from the aims of caring, positive virtues and mindsets related to caring, and competencies for the expression of caring in action and interaction. We believe that caring is not a specific domain of leadership, nor is it a discrete set of leadership strategies. While its practice may vary depending on the people involved, interpersonal and organizational contexts, and the environments surrounding the school, it is a quality or property of leadership generally.

      School leaders certainly care deeply and passionately about many things—children’s learning, development, and success in school being paramount. Caring about children and their success is good but insufficient. We can care strongly about important things but act in ways that do not measure up. School leaders must go farther and be caring in their actions and interactions regarding that which they care about.

      As a quality of relationship, as a quality of action and interaction, caring can permeate almost everything that a school leader says and does. It can cross the span of school leadership work. Any aspect of leadership can be caring, noncaring, or even uncaring. What matters is that a school leader brings the aims, virtues, and mindsets of caring to life through competent action and interaction. As organization and management scholars Peter Frost, Jane Dutton, Monica Worline, and Annette Wilson remind us, care and compassion are not antithetical to or outside of normal work: “They are a natural and living representation of people’s humanity in the workplace.”²¹

      ²¹Frost, Dutton, Worline, and Wilson (2000, p. 25).

      The relational aspects of leadership—the trusting interpersonal relationships that leaders form with students, teachers, and parents—lie at the heart of caring school leadership. Yet caring leadership is not confined there. Caring can be infused in developing and promoting a school’s mission, vision, and core values. It can be integrated into expectations for teaching and student learning. Caring can be a driving force of academic program development and implementation, of instructional leadership, of providing services for groups of students, and of allocating resources to support teaching and learning. Caring can shape the nature of academic demand and support, testing and accountability, student discipline, and administrative decision-making. Caring can guide programs of outreach to families and the school’s community.

      Our Model

      Following the main points of our discussion, we present a model of caring school leadership in Figure 0.4. This model contains three major components: (1) foundational elements for caring leadership; (2) arenas of caring school leadership practice; and (3) student outcomes. Reflecting how caring works, our model traces with arrows relationships among these components and how each relates to others. Our model does not focus on every aspect of school leadership or how the totality of school leadership work might be performed in a caring manner. Rather, it focuses on three key arenas of practice particularly associated with caring for students: (1) caring in interpersonal relationships with students; (2) cultivating schools as caring communities; and (3) fostering caring in families and communities beyond the school. While caring for teachers, staff members, parents, and families is critically important, our model focuses on students because their learning and development, their academic success, and their overall well-being are the primary responsibility of school leadership.

      Description

      Figure 0.4 Surrounded by Care. Nicholas Fogg, Grade 12

      Our model shows caring school leadership proceeding from the aims, positive virtues and mindsets, and competencies of caring. It suggests that the presence and strength of these elements enable and shape the character and impact of caring leadership practice. At the center of the model lie three arenas of practice particularly associated with caring for students. The first arena