Developing a Conceptual Framework for Assessing and Promoting Servant Leadership in a Catholic School System

There is an increasing realization in educational communities that service and servanthood is of utmost importance. This chapter describes the early processes used to develop an assessment tool to measure behavioral actualization and promotion of servant leadership in a Catholic school district in Canada. Following an invitation to meet with a chief superintendent (CEO) of an urban, Catholic school district with over 40 K-12 schools, the research team learned that the chief educational officer was new to the position but had inherited a policy that indicated that the central office and senior educational leaders were to be exemplar servant leaders in the performance of their work. Researchers were asked to design a study that could examine the ways in which central office senior educational leaders were the servant leaders that they have been mandated to be. This chapter describes the first stage of inquiry that sought to develop a way of seeing servant leadership that was consistent with Catholic understandings, selected servant leadership literature, and the understandings and expectations of constituents. The central office leadership roles in relation to general understandings of servant leadership, the models of servant leadership, and the factors and dimensions of servant leadership were included in the background work presented in this chapter. Finally, it concludes with the conceptual framework for servant leadership and some items that subsequently guided the research study for this school district.