Overlooked and Underappreciated

A few years ago, I spoke with a principal who had recently taken over a low-income, low-performance, high-needs school and who, after a few short years, helped his school realize massive gains in academic and non-academic outcomes. He believed his efforts to build relationships with his students provided the critical foundation for the school’s growth. His students and teachers enthusiastically agreed. But when the district came to evaluate his performance, no mention was made of those efforts. Despite a glowing evaluation, he simply said that no one seemed to care, appreciate, or even attempt to understand what it took to build that relational capacity within the school and how integral his connections to students were.
The Relational Nature of Education
Educators have long understood the importance of positive interpersonal relationships in schools. Ask most teachers about relationships, and you’ll likely hear enthusiastic accounts of how relationships are the key to ensuring positive student outcomes. Teachers will tell you how their relationships with students build trust and respect. They will say that relationships allow them to know their students more deeply, creating opportunities for more authentic personalization and cultural responsiveness in the classroom. They will say that relationships are the key to learning.
Most of all, though, teachers simply cherish the relational aspects of the job, describing their relationships with students as the most fun, the most meaningful, or the most rewarding part of the job. Unsurprisingly, research consistently reinforces the importance of the teacher-student relationship. It is simply one of the most critical components to improving a host of student outcomes.
Like teachers, most principals consider building and maintaining healthy relationships to be vital and non-negotiable. Unfortunately, while scholars and practitioners have long recognized the value of school leaders’ relationships, leadership literature—and often evaluations of leadership effectiveness—largely minimizes or compartmentalizes that value.
Our fixation on standards and accountability when talking about principal effectiveness has relegated relationships and care to brief mentions, passing comments, and implicit suggestions. Caring in leadership is often a taken-for-granted background condition or simply a means to an end. It sounds nice to talk about, but we still focus mainly on academic elements, such as raising standards, evaluating teaching, and student testing, when discussing principal effectiveness. Until recently, meaningful understandings of relationships and care received very little attention in school leadership research and practice.

New theoretical conceptions of school leadership, like Positive School Leadership, recognize the importance of relationships and their need to be deeply and meaningfully embedded in our leadership practice. The Professional Standards for Educational Leaders “recognize the central importance of human relationships” in leadership work. After all, we are asking school leaders to promote student well-being in addition to academic success. We are asking school leaders to understand and respect each student’s culture, strengths, and context to create a more equitable, just, and inclusive learning environment. However, something seems to be missing when discussing what principals can and should do to better understand their students and meet their needs.
Principals’ Direct Relationships With Students
Interestingly, when we speak about school leaders’ relationships, we’re almost always talking about their relationships with teachers. Sometimes, we talk about their relationships with parents or the broader community. While these are undeniably important relationships, we rarely focus on principals’ direct relationships with students. Why?
As a former middle school principal turned academic, I have found practically no literature discussing the interpersonal relationships between principals and students, and frankly, I was surprised. When I was a principal, my connections with students were the cornerstone of my practice. Not only was it the fun, re-energizing part of the job that constantly reminded me of my “why,” I believed that it helped me make better decisions. It kept me more connected to my community. And, as I’ve begun to discover as I’ve turned my attention to exploring this relationship, I was not alone.
Historically, most principal-student encounters were disciplinary in nature, as maintaining order was a significant part of the principalship in the role’s first 150 or so years. It is likely that the long history of a manager sitting squarely in the middle of a bureaucracy and tasked with maintaining order and efficiency has amplified the exclusionary aspects of the role and made a redefinition and reperception of the principalship difficult.
But those managers, largely confined to their offices and focused mostly on order and efficiency, now seem to be in the minority, thankfully. Most principals I have spoken with or observed have prioritized relationships in their schools. Moreover, these principals specifically identify efforts to connect directly with their students as crucial to maximizing school and student success. Sure, it’s not easy, and navigating the multitude of complex problems and competing demands tries to thwart those efforts at every turn. But this is still a non-negotiable for these principals. Carving out time to engage with students—even if it’s two minutes here or 30 seconds there—is just as important as analyzing data or conducting teacher observations. After all, meaningful, open dialogue with students can also provide principals with valuable and unique insight into what’s happening in classrooms.
What Emerging Research Says
These efforts to build relationships with students are only beginning to be realized in scholarship. While the occasional study has explored the impacts or effects of principal-student interactions, this relationship remains a rather overlooked area of research. What the small amount of research does say may not come as a huge surprise to most principals, but still, must not be ignored.
The small body of emerging literature reveals the power and potential of meaningful direct interactions between principals and students, similar to the teacher-student relationship. Direct engagement and dialogue between principals and students regarding academic issues can lead to increased motivation and perceptions of achievement in students. Principals who make themselves available to students or are directly involved in student activities are better able to feel the pulse of the school and improve the overall school culture, climate, and identity.
Furthermore, constructive, supportive, and sometimes personally profound and impactful relationships can form from direct principal-student interactions. While we like to talk about the importance of principals being visible, it’s important to note that being visible isn’t enough. Students can distinguish between principals who are merely visible and those who are “approachable” and engaged with students.
In a preliminary study of the principal-student relationship, Kathleen Brown and I found these outcomes reinforced. To describe more nuanced implications and gain a deeper understanding of the influence and impact of the principal-student relationship, we found relationally oriented principals who actively pursued every opportunity to engage directly with students in positive, supportive, and caring ways.
Students can distinguish between principals who are merely visible and those who are ‘approachable’ and engaged with students.
Despite the complex demands on principals’ time and the job responsibilities that pull them away from students, principals in our study recognized the importance of connecting directly with students as much as possible, even if only for a moment. To these principals, the well-being of their students and the culture and climate of their schools largely depended on those interactions. It was vital to these principals that students felt seen and understood.
And it was important that teachers shouldn’t be the only ones striving for students to feel a sense of belonging. Principals also recognized their critical role in being directly involved in this endeavor. Creating this inclusive, relational culture in their schools largely stemmed from principals modeling positive, meaningful relationships between students and adults. Principals showed teachers that healthy, positive interactions with students were a priority, and they modeled what those relationships should look like.
Furthermore, the moments of connection between principals and students—moments that occasionally developed into strong, lasting relationships with some students—provided principals with insights into students as individuals and as a collective. They were also enjoyable and energizing for principals. The relationships positioned principals to make more informed, effective decisions with a deeper understanding of how those decisions might ultimately affect students. Even beyond that, as evidenced by the student perspectives from the study, the principals’ efforts also appeared to have meaningful and profound effects on the students themselves.
These findings may not be groundbreaking to many principals. On one hand, that could be a good thing. It could mean that many principals are already meaningfully engaged with their students. But it could also be one reason we don’t pay it much attention and often take it for granted—it’s just something that comes naturally to most principals. They just do it.
So, while we might assume that many, if not most, principals are already focused on making connections with their students, with many likely doing it well, we can’t keep taking it for granted. It can’t continue as a background condition or a means to an end. We can’t relegate it to the margins and footnotes of our formal policies and practices. If we truly understand the value of principals’ relationships with students, it’s time to acknowledge its importance by re-centering the concept in leadership preparation programs and professional development curricula.
We also need to ensure our policies and actions reflect our understanding that this is critical to principal effectiveness. In other words, district leaders and policymakers should recognize and support principals’ efforts to build this relational capacity in their schools. When we talk about effective principals, we need to look at their relationships with students, too. We like to toss around the edicts like, “Get out of your office and get into the school,” or “Make sure you get to know your students.” Of course, you should. Who would argue with that? It sounds noble. It sounds personal. It sounds caring. But that’s about all we say. We don’t follow up on it. We don’t try to really understand it and find ways to make it happen. We don’t recognize it and celebrate it when it does happen. So then, do we really, truly value it?
Relationships in general, and relationships with students in particular, are arguably the foundation for everything we want to see and do in schools. If we say that we need to prioritize relationships, we must put our money where our mouths are. We need to give principals the space and support to cultivate these relationships. And we need to recognize and celebrate those principals who build caring, inclusive, relational school communities. All that other stuff, like academic growth and test scores, will surely follow.
Jamie Kudlats, PhD, is an assistant professor of educational leadership at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. A former teacher and middle school principal, he is the co-host of the education law podcast “Chalk and Gavel.”
References
Cranston, J. (2012). Honouring roles: The story of a principal and a student. Brock Education: A Journal of Educational Research and Practice, 22(1), 41–55.
Gentilucci, J. L., & Muto, C. C. (2007). Principals’ influence on academic achievement: The student perspective. NASSP Bulletin, 91(3), 219–236.
Janson, C., Parikh, S., Young, J., & Fudge, L. V. (2011). Constructing collective understanding in school: Principal and student use of iterative digital reflection. Journal of Research on Leadership Education, 6(5), 162–180.
Kudlats, J., & Brown, K. M. (2021). Knowing kids makes a huge difference, Part II: Advancing a conceptual framework for positive principal-student relationships. Journal of School Leadership, 31(5), 451−477.
doi.org/10.1177/1052684620935384.
Lavery, S. D., & Hine, G. S. C. (2013). Catholic school principals: Promoting student leadership. Catholic Education: A Journal of Inquiry and Practice, 17(1), 41–66.
Lee, M., Ryoo, J. H., & Walker, A. (2021). School principals’ time use for interaction with individual students: Macro contexts, organizational conditions, and student outcomes. American Journal of Education, 127(2), 303−344.
Murphy, J., & Louis, K. S. (2018). Positive school leadership: Building capacity and relationships. Teachers College Press.
National Policy Board for Educational Administration. (2015). Professional standards for educational leaders. npbea.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Professional-Standards-for-Educational-Leaders_2015.pdf.
Silva, J. P., White, G. P., & Yoshida, R. K. (2011). The direct effects of principal-student discussions on eighth grade students’ gains in reading achievement: An experimental study. Educational Administration Quarterly, 47(5), 772–793.