Dissertation Abstract: Albert H. Fein

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My role as an educational leader, in part, led me to select the impact of school shootings on school leaders as my dissertation topic. I happened to be in a meeting with other principals when I first heard the news of a school shooting that occurred in a school district about 90 miles from my own. Feelings of shock and disbelief and a “there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I” were typical responses to the terrible news. I remember commenting to a few other principals sitting nearby that the job of being a building leader is sufficiently demanding without having to cope with an event of the magnitude of a school shooting. I could not imagine how much more difficult leading might be under such stressful conditions. As my graduate work continued, so, unfortunately did school shootings. I kept saying, “Someone ought to study this” until one day I decided to do so.

I chose phenomenology as a methodology because I wanted to understand the lived experience of school leaders. I conducted face-to-face interviews with 21 people in North America where school shootings occurred. Interviews typically ran an hour per person, with several lasting up to three hours. The intensity and magnitude of the experience these leaders described resulted in powerful and intimate sharing. Trauma theory formed the conceptual framework for the study. Many of the experiences reported by participants were consistent with the physical and psychological symptoms commonly associated with posttraumatic stress disorder. I outlined some of the implications for leaders in my dissertation and in an article published in the Fall 2001 issue of Management Information entitled “Administrators bleed too: Training and policy considerations for school administrators."

I changed my definition of leader to include what Heifetz (1994) calls leadership without authority. I had originally intended to interview only leaders in authority positions, such as superintendents and principals. These formal leaders told me about individuals who played key leadership roles in the aftermath of the shootings, some of whom were leaders without authority. “There and Back Again: A Phenomenological Inquiry of School Shootings as Experienced by School Leaders” describes the experience of both kinds of leaders. Although there were unique differences among participants, there were also some similarities in their experiences. These form the results of the study.

Because of the volume of the study, I decided to report the results in three chapters. Although the guidelines call for “submitting one substantive dissertation chapter,” I am submitting my chapters four, five, and six for your consideration because collectively they represent the results of the study. Arranging the results in three separate chapters was merely a structural decision.

I use a tale-within-a-tale metaphorically to connect the reader to what leaders had to say about their experiences. The larger tale is J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit: or, There and Back Again. I chose The Hobbit very deliberately because in many ways, the title character’s story parallels the story of school leaders who experienced a shooting episode. A story within The Hobbit told by the chief dwarf, Thorin Oakenshield, served as a metaphor for the circumstances school leaders faced. The dwarf chief told how his quiet and prosperous world was shattered by the arrival of a marauding dragon. I intended the dragon as a symbol of the shooting, not as a characterization of the shooters. Thorin’s tale of a quiet world shattered by a completely unforeseeable and traumatic event parallels that of schools—and school leaders—where shootings erupted without warning. The tale is intended to organize the findings and to facilitate an understanding of leaders’ experiences.

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