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.
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 involves school leader caring in interpersonal relationships with students. The second arena, cultivating schools as caring communities for students, involves developing the capacity and context for caring within the school. This arena encompasses work to develop caring learning environments in classrooms and in student-teacher and student-peer relationships. It also involves work to develop organizational conditions that support the development and enactment of caring throughout the school. The third arena of caring school leadership practice focuses on fostering caring for students beyond the school in families and in the community at large. Bridging the gaps between schools and families and communities is a crucial part of school leaders’ work for which many leaders feel ill-prepared. It is work to which most principals devote little time. Nevertheless, we know that school leaders can play an important role in developing the broader systems of caring that students experience and that contribute to their growth, success, and well-being.
In the lived work of school leaders, these arenas of practice are often intertwined, but our model does not presume that they are. A school leader may be particularly attentive to interpersonal caring with students but not to developing the school as a caring community—or vice versa. A leader may be strong in working outside the school with civic leaders and community organizations on behalf of students and their families but weak in interpersonal caring of students and developing caring within the school. Our model allows for the possibility of one arena of caring school leadership practice compensating for another.
We would expect principals to act in caring ways and provide caring support to students with whom they are able to form trusting interpersonal relationships. At the same time, to ensure that every student receives caring support, principals can promote teacher and staff caring so that each student experiences caring relationships with a number of adults in the school. By doing this and in fostering caring in families and communities, principals need not take on all the work themselves. Principals will be much more effective if they develop the capacity of others, work in partnership with others, and guide and support others to step up and be better at caring.
The right side of the model shows the student outcomes that we expect from caring school leadership. The model identifies several types of outcomes important to students that we discussed earlier, including positive psychological states, social integration and responsibility, capacity for achieving goals, engagement, academic success, and capacity for caring. The model indicates that the stronger the practices of caring school leadership, the more likely caring’s benefits to students will accrue. We recall that students benefit most when the totality of caring they experience is strong and positive.
The major parts of the model are laid out in linear order, indicating with one-way arrows that the foundational elements of caring shape caring leadership practice and, in turn, promote student outcomes. The model indicates with feedback arrows that student outcomes can shape the nature of caring leadership practice and the three foundational elements of caring. For example, students’ responses to positive experiences of caring may motivate leaders to continue those practices. When students ignore or resist particular actions or interactions intended as caring, attentive
