Examining the Multifaceted Roles of School Librarian Leadership: a Phenomenological Study of School Librarians’ Lived Experiences in Inclusive Leadership

Document Type

Dissertation

Publication Date

2025

Department

Teaching & Educational Leadership

Abstract

School librarians occupy complex positions as teachers, instructional partners, information and technology specialists, program administrators, and leaders, yet their leadership capacity remains largely untapped in many educational settings. While existing research has documented structural challenges and institutional barriers facing school librarians, a critical gap exists in understanding their lived experiences as they navigate leadership roles. This hermeneutic phenomenological study explored how school librarians experience and make meaning of their leadership in creating inclusive, technology-enhanced educational environments.

Using van Manen's (1997, 2023) lifeworld existentials as an analytical framework and Everhart and Johnston's (2016) Proposed Theory of School Librarian Leadership as a sensitizing lens, I conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 school librarians from diverse educational contexts across the United States. Data analysis followed van Manen's iterative hermeneutic cycles, revealing how leadership manifests through lived space, lived body, lived time, and lived relationships.

Findings revealed that participants experienced spatial work as ongoing student-centered negotiation rather than one-time design, embodied leadership through constant role fragmentation while serving as sanctuaries for marginalized students, navigated multiple temporal dimensions from biographical to moment-by-moment, and approached relationships through service orientation rather than positional authority. The study provided strong empirical support for Everhart and Johnston's core components of confidence, communication, and relationships, while challenging the theory's conceptualization of their development as sequential rather than cyclical. Most significantly, participants contradicted Proposition 5 by demonstrating risk-taking leadership when grounded in student-centered service. These findings suggest that Everhart and Johnston's framework requires expansion to include material and temporal conditions as constitutive rather than contextual factors and explicit recognition of sociopolitical resistance operating beyond individual institutions.

Key departures from existing literature included technology appearing embedded rather than distinct, leadership practice preceding identity claiming, and role intersection experienced as embodied tension rather than seamless integration.

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