Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Bogotch, Ira

Abstract

In the last two years, the United States has been greatly impacted by the global health pandemic of COVID-19 and a renewed national recognition of racial injustice catalyzed by the murder of George Floyd. These crises have created extensive pressures for school leaders to revamp their policies and procedures to ensure physiological safety and address systemic racism in schools, respectively. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore how school principals dealt with and reacted to COVID-19 and the murder of George Floyd and the pressures of this crisis context. Guided by multiple contextual lenses and theoretical frameworks, this study used an abductive analysis approach to uncover surprising and anomalous data to build renewed understandings in educational leadership. In doing so, I discovered elements of healthcare and sensemaking around life and death that led to the integration of a healthcare humanization framework. Together, this study found that principals adopted new or shifted roles and identities that focused on humanizing practices. Principals became first responders; mediators of health, political, and humanizing communications; needs-based leaders; civil rights leaders; and leaders who sought agency by supporting others in uncontrollable situations. These changes were embedded in systems that remained acontexual and dehumanistic that created tensions for leaders to navigate. These findings supported the early developments of a humanizing leadership peri-crisis framework to elucidate leaders’ responses in crisis contexts particularly when loss is imminent. This research is significant because the literature on theoretical frameworks for crisis school leadership is small and even fewer studies have operationalized humanizing school leadership practices. Recommendations based on the findings are also proposed for researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers.

Extent

155 p.

Comments

Includes bibliography.|Dissertation (PhD)--Florida Atlantic University, 2022.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Includes bibliography.

Identifier

FA00014074

Format

pdf

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