Читать книгу Stories of Caring School Leadership - Mark A. Smylie - Страница 7

The purpose of this book of stories is to illuminate, instruct, and inspire. Through these stories, we portray key elements of caring school leadership practice. We expose aspiring and practicing school leaders to possibilities of practice that might make their leadership more caring. We encourage school leaders to be reflective about their own practice and to challenge themselves to make caring a central quality of their leadership.

The stories in this book are true. They describe events, actions, and interactions that occurred among real people in real places. Many stories are recounted by practicing and retired school leaders. Teachers, parents, and others also tell about their experiences with school leaders. Some stories are autobiographical. Some describe caring leadership observed or experienced. We do not intend for the stories in this book to stand for generalizable evidence of the efficacy of caring school leadership or any particular leadership practice. Instead, we see these stories as existence proofs of the possible.

We assembled this book of stories for several audiences. One audience is aspiring and practicing school leaders. Another audience is those in higher education, professional associations, and other organizations that support the preparation and professional development of school leaders. We also believe that this book of stories can be useful to teachers and school staff, parents, and others for developing caring leadership in schools and for defining expectations for their own school leaders.

We developed this book of stories as a resource for individual principals and other school leaders to read and reflect upon. We consider it a basis for stimulating discussion about caring within school leader preparation and professional development programs. We also see it as a starting point for administrative leaders and teachers to consider together to develop strong and effective school leadership and improve schools for students. We will discuss more specifically how to use this book at the end of this introduction and at the end of the introductions to this book’s three collections of stories.

We offer no analyses and no interpretations of the stories herein. We want these stories to speak for themselves. We want you to hear the storytellers’ voices, not ours. Importantly, we want you to reflect upon these stories and discuss them with others. We want you to analyze them yourselves, give them your own meaning, and apply them to your own situations and practices.