Читать книгу Stories of Caring School Leadership - Mark A. Smylie - Страница 26

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.