Abstract
Rural school leaders are met with serious challenges and opportunities to lead rural schools in times of normalcy, but these challenges are amplified during a crisis. Rural school principals in the United States faced an unprecedented crisis when school buildings closed in spring 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The measure of rural school principals and their response to this crisis is exemplified through their leadership practices. Through qualitative methods, we examined the leadership practices of rural principals through the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine, and we found that rural principals exhibit the practices of caretaker leadership. From the findings, we used a meta-leadership frame to discuss the caretaker leadership practices of rural school principals.
Highlights
Rural school leaders are met with serious challenges and opportunities to lead rural schools
The purpose of this study was to explore how the COVID19 pandemic informed the leadership practices of rural school principals across the U.S Through qualitative analysis, we identified an overarching theme: rural school principals exhibit the practices of caretaker leadership
Rural school principals in the COVID-19 study established themselves as caretakers of their school communities by (a) focusing on the social-emotional well-being of teachers; (b) providing social emotional support for students and families; (c) remaining a constant and calming presence within the community; (d) and showing remarkable self-reliance and resiliency
Summary
Rural school leaders are met with serious challenges and opportunities to lead rural schools. Rural school leaders face challenges that include being professionally and geographically isolated (Ashton and Duncan, 2012; Versland, 2013; Casto, 2016; Parson et al, 2016; Hansen, 2018); recruiting and retaining quality school teachers (Du Plessis, 2014; Ulferts, 2016; Hohner and Riveros, 2017; Hansen, 2018; Hildreth et al, 2018); deepening and persistent poverty among students and their families (Schaefer et al, 2016; Farrigan, 2017; Showalter et al, 2017); and facing a lack of resources (Forner et al, 2012; Barrett et al, 2015; Ramon et al, 2019) The opportunities they face include leading smaller schools in more cohesive communities with less crime (Southworth, 2004). Frequent interaction and communication among students, teachers, community members, and administration continues to rank in the top 3% of lists for characteristics of effective principals (Surface and Theobald, 2014)
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