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Teachers Called to Stewardship

The Servant Leader Identity in K-12 Schools

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The Palgrave Handbook of Servant Leadership

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Abstract

Teachers in the K-12 school systems work in the service of the public’s children and youth. Therefore, servant approaches to leadership fit well with the nature of teacher’s role. Teachers’ personal and professional identities have been found to be inextricably conjoined creating space for the personal to join the professional in one’s practice. This chapter explores how teachers gravitate to the principles of servant leadership. We do not adopt or propose instrumentation for measurement but rather offer conceptualizing of servant leadership after having reviewed a subset of study data from international schools that involved teachers and school leaders describing their roles through the lens of servant leadership. Some went so far as to say teaching is a calling. Our examples suggest that this calling may be felt and embedded within some teachers’ identities. Examples of how this service translates into practice and how servant leadership can be cultivated in the context of K-12 schools are discussed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

    Benjamin Kutsyuruba & Rebecca Stroud Stasel

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  1. Benjamin Kutsyuruba
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  2. Rebecca Stroud Stasel
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Correspondence to Benjamin Kutsyuruba .

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  1. Robertson School of Government, Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA, USA

    Gary E. Roberts

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Kutsyuruba, B., Stroud Stasel, R. (2023). Teachers Called to Stewardship. In: Roberts, G.E. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Servant Leadership. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-01323-2_71

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