Hope is often talked about during a crisis. To believe in hope is to understand that there are parts of human emotions that can radically alter and improve the outcomes for ourselves and many.  These parts coalesce and allow us to hope and imagine a better future. During crisis times, such as the last 36 months, leaders need hope to move forward to continue to lead. Although scholars and public rhetoric have pointed to the COVID-19 pandemic as the beginning of a global crisis, several crises have plagued the U.S. and international community such as the persistent war in Ukraine, the debacle of the Afghani war, racism, colonization, drought across the Horn of Africa and many others. Amid all of these crises, school leaders are tasked with recovery, providing a schoolhouse that advances educational outcomes. Studies closely exploring the lived experience of the school principals and their practices amid a virulent crisis, however, are rarely represented in the current body of research. Hope plays an integral role in educational and crisis leadership. Smith and Riley (2012) whose groundbreaking framework for crisis leadership in schools posits that one critical element of educational leaders’ response to a crisis is to engender hope.  Through hope, they argue, leaders can effectively rally toward recovery, collaboration and restoration. Myrtle (2018) found leader effectiveness is determined by how well the leader responds to the leadership challenge. However, in times of crisis, leaders need a different set of behaviors and dispositions to lead through a crisis (Smith & Riley, 2012; Mutch, 2015; 2020; Author Under Review, 2021). Hope can lead to positive outcomes for leaders. Scholars (Bennis, 1999; Rath & Conchie, 2008) define hope as one of four provisions exemplary leaders exhibit that contributes to achieving positive outcomes. Yet, recent studies have not been conducted which apply hope theory to educational and crisis leadership (Urick et al., 2021; Byrne & Yoon; 2019). Thus, it seems necessary to discuss what I see hope as an affective infrastructure permitting leadership to be expressed beyond a technical or adaptive orientation. Therefore, I center this inquiry on the two following research questions: How do principals manifest hope in their leadership during times of crisis? What is the role of hope in leading through a crisis? This study aims to examine how principals lead through various crises with hope to highlight how hope is a central tenet in school leadership. Specifically, I examined how principals’ deployed hope through a systems thinking approach to respond to a crisis. While existing studies have analyzed principals and how they respond to a crisis, I draw on Snyder’s (2002) conceptualization of hope to understand the manifestations and parts that make up hope. I then apply my findings through a systems thinking lens to construct a model of how principals deployed hope. To describe principals’ leadership through hope, I use a constant comparative approach (Boejie, 2002) to present qualitative data generated with 50 school principals from 2019 – 2022. My intent was not to gather generalizable data, but to provide insights into how principals hope and how that hope influences their leadership. Thus, this paper provides a unique contribution to research on school and crisis leadership by shifting the focus from the technical and operational responses of crisis leadership in schools to a holistic picture of the ways principal navigate crisis, demonstrating a systematic approach to their responses. Finally, I describe how crisis leadership is conceptualized in the international and national settings, providing a whole picture of how scholarship has framed crisis leadership in schools, while omitting hope as part of the conceptualized frames.

Data collection consisted of interviewing 50 public school principals from across the United States who were identified via purposeful sampling. I selected principals who experienced a crisis during their tenure as principal—natural disaster, medical trauma, criminal violence, racial harm, the COVID-19 pandemic. Principals interviewed ranged in years of experience, age, and ethnicity. Data were collected from 2019-2022 using semi-structured interviews consisting of 18 questions that addressed how they lead through a crisis. Each interview was 50-65 minutes long. Also included in the interview were questions about hope, which were partly derived from Snyder’s (2002) Hope Scale, such as “How, if at all, did you feel hope during the crisis?” Data analysis for this project was conducted in a six-step process to illuminate themes presented in the data. I used as a Braun and Clarke’s (2006) framework to analyze the data. My interpretive understanding of participants’ experiences was derived exclusively from existing data—not on a priori codes, preexisting frameworks (e.g., Gerzon, 2015), or current theories of hope theory (Thorne, 2016). Data analysis also included dialogic engagement with educational leadership scholars. Dialogic engagement also involved comparisons of my emerging findings from step 2 to our interpretations of step 1 data. This process served as a form of analytic triangulation which allowed consideration as to how my interpretations in step 1 data challenged or supported ideas emerging from step 2 analysis (Ravitch & Carl, 2016). At the conclusion of step 1, I wrote analytic and reflective memos (Thorne, 2016). The second step of data analysis began with multiple cycles of coding. Initial coding represented the first cycle of coding and facilitated a deep, open exploration of data that allowed codes to emerge (Saldaña, 2014). I reduced the data using structural coding (Namey, 2008). This was an important process due to the large number of interviews. Further the structural coding allowed for the reworking of initial codes into more incisive categorical codes derived from the literature (Namey et al., 2008). I used these codes to identify themes within the data. Finally, I compared data, codes, and emerging themes between school leaders (e.g., years of experience, race, gender) and between crises (e.g., COVID-19, student health, school safety). I ensured rigor in conducting this study by using Stahl and King's (2020) criteria for trustworthiness.

I determined how principals manifested hope through a systems-thinking approach. This systems-thinking approach, when manifested, no matter the crisis being experienced, yielded positive outcomes for leaders by building their confidence and potentially reducing burnout, creating a positive climate for teachers, students, and families. I found that leaders exhibited beliefs, identified systemic problems during the crisis that needed to be changed – setting goals around this issue, and enacted behaviors to achieve the goal. I categorized the beliefs and identification as agency thinking because of how participants discussed leading with hope through a crisis. Additionally, I found that the leaders' beliefs were tethered to the systemic action they identified. I found several examples where principals could trace their agency and pathway thinking and achieve their goals. Leaders who exhibited a core set of self-concepts enabled self-efficacy through their descriptions of confidence, perseverance, or resilience. Leaders explained how these dispositions enabled them to strategize efforts that would lead toward recovery during a crisis. Additionally, they had a positive attribution or optimism, which allowed them to preserve and through goals even during cataclysmic events. To operationalize hope, I found that principals identified systemic problems that required immediate attention. No matter the crisis experienced, principals who demonstrated hope in their leadership could assess what issues surfaced and identify high-leverage problems to develop solutions. In some cases, such as principals who discussed the COVID-19 pandemic's disruption to access to academic engagement, they identified how their particular school could increase achievement while acknowledging how the crisis impacted multiple stakeholders. In this study, I describe how the principals in this sample deployed hope through pathways thinking. These behaviors were modeling, collaboration, and mimicking mentors. These principals demonstrate how hope can be a visible and tangible part of a leader's response to a crisis through several targeted means.

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