​Cultivating Virtue in Kenyan School Leaders​

The central tenet of servant leadership is service to others through humility and virtuous action. This Global Innovations for Character Development project aims to adapt, enhance and pilot test a servant leadership professional development program. Called Cultivating Virtue in Leaders (CViL), it will be available to Kenyan school heads/principals and their leadership teams.

Both the Kenyan Ministry of Education and independent researchers have identified a need for developing collaborative leadership practices among school principals. By leveraging the power of servant leadership, CViL aims to fill that gap.

The Centre for Character and Leadership (CCL) will work with the program developers at University of Missouri-St. Louis to deliver CViL to thirty public secondary leadership teams. The program will be delivered through:

1. an academy that promotes the understanding and development of the servant leadership virtues for self, staff and students'; 
2. monthly school-based coaching; and
3. a regional stakeholder’s network, supporting both live and social media-based events.

The research team will assess the implementation and outcomes to determine participants’ satisfaction with the program. Changes in teams’ virtue-related attitudes and practices will be assessed via established self-report measures. In the short term, the program expects 150 Kenyan school leaders to engage in personal and professional virtue practices, as identified in their customized character education implementation plans. Over the long term, these virtue-oriented school leaders have the potential to ascend to policy and leadership positions within the education system more broadly, thus paving the way for more systematic change.