Compassionate Leadership for School Improvement and Renewal

"Compassionate Leadership for School Improvement and Renewal aims to equip educational leaders with the knowledge, skills, and learning experiences necessary to approach their work from an intentional stance of compassion. Schools serve as both sites and sources of suffering; yet compassionate leadership can facilitate healing for students, educators, and community members. The moment is right to move the field toward a compassion-centered approach to leadership. In recent years, people around the world have experienced unfathomable loss and suffering due to the COVID-19 pandemic, persistent inequities and subsequent social justice protests, war and violence, and catastrophic natural disasters. These events created perpetual anxiety, stress, fear, uncertainty, loss, and grief for millions of people-including educators. Now perhaps more than ever, people need to give and receive compassion. The purpose of the volume is to build educational leaders' capacity to demonstrate compassion, foster collective compassion within their schools and districts, establish organizational environments in which compassion is routinely given and received, and, subsequently, transform schools into sites of healing. The volume serves as a tool for current and pre-service PK-12 leaders and faculty in leadership preparation programs. Chapters are divided into three main sections. Section I describes how leaders, and other educators, can engage in reflective, contemplative learning experiences to develop compassion-based competencies (e.g., mindfulness). Section II uses diverse theoretical lenses (e.g., emotional intelligence, post-traumatic growth, appreciative inquiry) to consider how compassion can support the work of leaders and assist in school improvement. Section III focuses on the actions leaders can take to model compassion and cultivate organizational compassion within their schools. Finally, the concluding chapter explores the relationship between incivility and compassion and offers recommendations to help buffer leaders from the damages of incivility. Collectively, the chapters in this volume prompt the field to develop a more comprehensive view of school improvement (i.e., beyond performance measures) and reorient the field toward a more intentional focus on students, teachers, leaders, and community members' holistic well-being. Lasater and LaVenia, together with the contributing authors, also encourage educational researchers and faculty in leadership preparation programs to approach their teaching, research, and service from a compassionate stance. Finally, the chapters describe how leaders can prevent burnout and, instead, foster a sense of personal and collective fulfillment, joy, hope, and zeal within their work as educators. Ultimately, through the unique contributions of each chapter, the volume offers a path toward school improvement that is both renewing and sustaining"--