Sustained Turnaround Ethical Leadership in Public Elementary Schools: Analysis of Principal Perceptions
Abstract
This qualitative phenomenological study uncovered the essence or invariant lived experiences of school leaders who currently or formerly directed sustained school turnaround, a relatively unexplored phenomenon. A purposive sample of four school leaders included principals in suburban, urban, and rural settings from three distinct geographic regions across the United States. Two 60–minute standardized, open-ended interviews were conducted with each school leader to obtain descriptions of, explore their experiences with, and examine their understandings of sustained turnaround. This study applied in-depth, phenomenological interviewing to uncover the meaning participants ascribed to their experiences. This study uncovered empirical evidence of successful sustained turnaround. This research distinguished leadership practices employed during the turnaround and sustained improvement phases. The thick, rich descriptions recorded in this study describe fine-grained (i.e., micro) leadership actions. This study’s findings revealed 16 themes that characterize the fundamental features of the shared experiences of the four principals, which described ethical leadership competencies and core leadership practices. These 16 themes fell into seven domains of sustained turnaround ethical leadership, capturing the essence of sustained school turnaround. The seven domains were situated within three overarching domains: ethical leadership competency domains, the effecting domain (the deep understanding of organizational conditions), and core leadership practice domains. Sustained turnaround ethical leadership describes the school leader who embraces ethical leadership competency domains as a lens when initiating the effecting domain. The effecting domain supports and facilitates the engagement of core leadership practice domains that are continuously guided by the ethical leadership competency domains.
Subject Area
Educational leadership|Educational administration|Education Policy|Elementary education
Recommended Citation
Levine, Neal David, "Sustained Turnaround Ethical Leadership in Public Elementary Schools: Analysis of Principal Perceptions" (2024). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI31242877.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI31242877
