UC Berkeley

Abstract This chapter draws on four papers developed over an extended period as part of a longitudinal research project that explores key lessons on educational leadership and resilience, focusing on amplifying the voices of California school leaders as they navigated their leadership journeys during challenging times. The chapter shares lessons learned from these narratives across multiple school contexts. The project was initiated by the first author during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the initial aim of understanding the risk factors school leaders were experiencing. What began as an urgent inquiry into the challenges of a global health crisis evolved into a deeper investigation of how resilience among school leaders develops across time and context. The aim of this longitudinal project is to better understand which groups of California’s principals are most vulnerable to burnout and what factors protect them from burnout or exacerbate their risk of burnout. Methodologically, we adopted a mixed-methods approach, collecting experiences of school leaders through surveys and interviews designed to identify the emerging risk and resilience factors. The integration of these data sources offered a more layered and comprehensive understanding, ultimately leading to the development of three lessons presented in this chapter; The Struggle to Navigate Persistent Risk to Wellbeing; Leadership Identity Matters and School Context Matters.