Degree Date

2-6-2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Department

Education

First Advisor

Dr. Ric Dressen

Abstract

Despite extensive scholarship on relational trust, social capital, place-based leadership, and culturally responsive practice, little is known about how a principal’s residency within the school community shapes leadership demands. This qualitative, multi-case study employed semi-structured interviews, reflexive memoing, and cross-case thematic analysis to examine how nine Minnesota high school principals who lived in the urban, suburban, and rural communities they served experienced leadership practice, equity work, and emotional labor. Findings revealed that residency functions as a consequential leadership condition that reorganizes how principals build trust, exercise judgment, engage families, navigate boundaries, and interpret equity-related tensions. Six themes illuminated residency as: (a) a foundation of leadership practice through embedded presence; (b) a catalyst for trust-building via relational proximity; (c) a shaper of leadership identity and emotional investment; (d) a source of heightened visibility and boundary erosion; (e) an enhancer of influence, access, and leadership sustainability; and (f) a lens through which principals experience socio-spatial inequities and enact culturally responsive leadership. Synthesized, these themes comprise the Residency-Embedded Adaptive Leadership (REAL) framework, which conceptualizes residency as a spatial, relational, and identity-shaping condition that strengthens and complicates leadership work. Implications extend across leadership practice, preparation, and policy, emphasizing development grounded in community embeddedness, district supports for boundary navigation, and research attentive to socio-spatial dimensions of equity and school leadership.

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