The leaders' role in creating a positive culture in Islamic schools through the lens of invitational leadership: a case study

Abstract

Although private Islamic schools in United States have shared values that bring stakeholders together, a positive, inviting school culture does not always result from such common values and practices. Thus, examining a leader's style may aid in creating a unified, positive school culture using invitational leadership (Purkey et al., 2020) as the framework for this case study. A leader has a key role to play when it comes to establishing effective personnel, places, policies, programs, and processes that promote an inviting culture. Finally, Purkey and Novak's (2016) I-CORT: intentionality, care, optimism, respect, and trust are the foundational lens of understanding what values the leaders have adopted to create an inviting schools' culture. Using three sites, the researcher conducted twenty-five interviews and analyzed documents to answer the research questions. This study found the three schools to be unintentionally inviting overall, meaning that while the leaders' behaviors were often inviting others to engage in a positive school climate, the leaders were not intentionally creating this inviting stance. However, the findings show that the schools were unintentionally disinviting with respect to the domains of people and policies.