Leading schools through the COVID-19 crisis in a South-East Asian country

Introduction

Today's school principals are faced with more challenging circumstances than in any other time in our known history (Adams and Muthiah, 2020; Thien and Adams, 2021). The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is a health crisis (Viner et al., 2020). Many countries including Malaysia have decided to close schools and institutions of learning (Huber and Helm, 2020; Ministry of Education Malaysia [MoE], 2020). There are 1.5 billion students from over 165 countries who are out of school due to the COVID-19 pandemic (UNESCO, 2020).

Leading during this pandemic requires a different form of leadership practice (Bush, 2020; Harris, 2020). School leadership during COVID-19 has been remodelled into leading schools virtually (Sahlberg, 2020). Most school principals are now leading their schools from their computers, engaging with parents and support groups, and helping teachers online (Harris, 2020). School principals must now act swiftly and with foresight, make decisions with careful consideration of options and consequences, communicate with empathy and humanity, and step forward as a credible and trustworthy voice for their school community (Netolicky, 2020). This requires new ways and strategies to sustain relationships with the school community and maintain the teaching and learning processes of the school.

However, many countries are yet to experience a pandemic that caused a school lockdown (Huber and Helm, 2020). Leadership preparation and development programmes frequently do not prepare school principals to deal with crises. These programmes typically encompass reflection; cognitive development; experiential learning; social learning processes (Hamilton et al., 2018), self-management; interpersonal relationships; resource and operation; vision development; change management and innovation (Adams et al., 2020). Thus, these school principals are in uncharted territory. The impact of coronavirus means that school principals are being required to make decisions with very little guidance to help them (Sahlberg, 2020) and manage the anxiety, frustration and anger of others during this crisis (Harris and Jones, 2020). Furthermore, there is limited knowledge about how school principals are dealing with the current situation and the challenges that arise from it.

Thus, this research seeks to explore principals’ management practices in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, their leadership styles, the challenges they encounter, and their immediate goals by drawing upon qualitative empirical evidence in the Malaysian secondary school context. This study contributes to the scarce evidence based on school leadership practices during a pandemic by providing empirical data leading to unique insights into school leadership in Malaysia. It also has contextual originality being the first study that is empirically conducted in Malaysia.

School leadership in times of crisis

Strong and effective leadership is a critical ingredient in driving change and innovation in schools (Adams, 2018; Thien and Adams, 2021). In times of crisis, however, school leadership is about providing certainty, hope, guidance, efficiency of resources and ensuring open and trusted communication among the school community (Smith and Riley, 2012). School principals ‘will be required to provide leadership that is both sensitive and directed’ (Whitla, 2003: 21).

Smith and Riley (2010: 60) contended that:

A crisis is a major test of [school] leadership … Leaders need to take responsibility and do what needs to be done. Forget the rules. Rules are for normal times. In a crisis, do whatever needs to be done as quickly as you can possibly do it even if it means breaking ‘the rules’!

Crises are not the normal recurring challenges that confront schools on a day-to-day basis (Netolicky, 2020). Crises are generally unexpected and unpredicted events. Crises can be ‘confronting, intrusive, and painful experiences’ (Smith and Riley, 2010: 53) to some if not all members of the school community. Crises occur unexpectedly, suddenly, and with no warning whatsoever, and the contributing events are outside of the school's control. The resolution of some crises can be quite protracted. Elliott et al. (2005) noted that a crisis can create a significant threat to an organisation's strategic goals and outcomes. Processes and procedures may be lost in ways that may make it impossible to ever recover exactly what was lost It is at this time that the focus of the school principal is firmly on minimising harm to individuals and ensuring the survival and recovery of the school.

There is, however, a dearth of research that explores the important role of school principals when confronted by a crisis. A study by Stasel (2020) in three South, Southeast and East Asia countries found the responsibility of school leaders in this new normal is palpable. School leaders spoke of rigorous, time-sensitive directives from higher up and the need to keep staff calm throughout. Another study by Gyang (2020) in Nigeria found school leaders lack relevant skills in the use of learning technologies and the necessary leadership skills to promote effective teaching and learning during the pandemic crisis. In Sweden, school leaders had to constantly deal with pupils, staff members and parents’ anxiety as schools stayed open as compared to their neighbouring countries Norway and Denmark where schools were shut down (Ahlström et al., 2020). However, a study in Singapore by Hung et al. (2020) found school leaders played a crucial role in planning and developing system-led innovations and resources that enabled digital transformation in education.

In a crisis such as the COVID-19, perfection is the barrier to progress (Netolicky, 2020). Devitt and Borodzicz (2008) explained this imbalance as each crisis is unique and has changing contexts and causes. This makes it difficult to elicit a consistent theory of effective crisis leadership. Effective school leadership in times of crisis is, therefore, more about the attributes school leaders enact to bear on the situation rather than theoretical models to guide leadership responses. Smith and Riley (2010) identified school principals’ ‘intuition’, hunches, or simply ‘gut feeling’ as their capacity to respond to these situations.

O’Brien and Robertson (2009) shared a set of leadership competencies that school principals must have when they are dealing with unfamiliar situations, one they never have encountered before such as a time of crisis. They asserted attributes such as intuition, resilience, creativity, agility, authenticity, self-mastery and foresight. Similarly, Smith and Riley (2010) added a few other critical attributes of effective leadership such as the ability to change direction rapidly if required, prepared to respond flexibly and quickly, the ability to work and thrive on ambiguity, continuous willingness to see events in new and insightful ways, a tenacity to persevere when all seems bleak, willing to take risk, and the ability to work with and through staff to achieve critical outcomes.

In a time of crisis, school leaders must not just act swiftly and with foresight but also with careful consideration of options, consequences, and side effects of actions taken (Netolicky, 2020). They must not just communicate with clarity and purpose but also with empathy and humanity. Gainey (2009) emphasised the critical need for open two-way communication in times of crisis to ensure information is available for decision making, false information is minimised, confusion and uncertainty among the stakeholders is limited, and support is maximised for the community.

Methodology

The research employed a qualitative approach using open-ended questions. The limitations of open-ended questions in providing any causal explanations are fully acknowledged (Krosnick and Pressner, 2010). Therefore, the findings of this study are indicative rather than definitive. There are 151 government-funded secondary schools in Terengganu, Malaysia. Most of these schools are in rural areas. Out of 151 principals, 32 principals were purposively selected as samples in the study. The inclusive criterion was these principals have a good track record in sustaining their school performance over several years. These 32 principals have been accredited the ‘high performing’ school leaders award. Thus, we deemed these principals’ practices, leadership styles, and their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic should be explored to render a contextualisation of school management practices.

In ensuring that this research follows ethical standards, the researchers sent letters to the prospective principals to inform them of the objectives and procedures of the research. Once informed consent was sought, the principals were administered an online form consisting of open-ended questions. It was stated on the cover of the online form that the principals are given the choice either to take part in the research or otherwise. Participation was strictly voluntary and anonymous. Thus, by completing the online form, the principals are deemed to have given their consent.

There is an almost equal number of male (18) and female (14) principals. The majority (23) of the principals are above 50 years old and possess bachelor's degrees (19). Furthermore, most of these principles (17) had held the principal position for less than 5 years. At the time of this study, an overwhelming number of them (87%) have been appointed as a principal in their present school within 5 years. Table 1 summarises the demographic data.

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Table 1.

Descriptive statistics of principals’ demographics (n = 32).

Demographics	Frequency	Percent
Gender
Male	18	56
Female	14	44
Age
Over 50 years	23	72
40–49 years	9	28
Qualifications
Master's degree	6	19
Undergraduate	19	60
Diploma	5	15
High school certificate	2	6
Years working as a principal
> 20 years	3	10
16–20 years	2	6
11–15 years	2	6
6–10 years	8	25
< 5 years	17	53
Tenure as a principal in present school
> 10 years	1	3
6–10 years	3	10
1–5 years	18	56
< 1 year	10	31

The data analysis is based on four main open-ended questions distributed to the 32 principals. The data from the open-ended questions were analysed using a six-step thematic analysis approach (Nowell et al., 2017). First, all transcripts were read to ensure familiarity with the data sets. Second, a list of the different codes identified across the data set was developed. Provisional codes were generated using ATLAS.ti 8, a qualitative data analysis software. Third, we sorted and collated all relevant coded data into themes. The data were reviewed once again to detect any new emerging codes. Fourth, we reviewed the coded data extracts for every theme to identify a coherent pattern. Next, we defined the scope and content of each theme. Finally, we performed a final analysis and reported the findings. Table 2 shows a visualisation of the coding and key themes that emerged from the open-ended questions.

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Table 2.

List of open-ended questions, codes and themes.

Open-ended questions	Codes	Themes
1. In your opinion, what is your role as a school leader during a difficult or challenging time such as the current COVID-19 pandemic?	• Roles	School management practices
	• Responsibilities
	• Approaches
2. As a leader, what do you see as the most important thing to achieve when your school is facing the current COVID-19 pandemic?	• Tasks
	• Strategies
	• Mindset
3. How would you describe your leadership style at the start of the COVID-19 in Malaysia?	• Instructional	Leadership styles
	• Distributed
	• Visionary
4. Do you experience any struggles, pitfalls, or challenges as a school leader during COVID-19 pandemic? If yes, what are they?	• Health	Challenges during COVID-19
	• Safety
	• Security
	• Emotions
	• Teaching and learning
	• School condition	Challenges during COVID-19
	• Inaccessibility
	• ICT competence
	• Internet
	• Technological tools
	• Monitoring students’ learning
	• Communication

COVID-19: coronavirus disease 2019; ICT: information and communication technology.

Findings and discussion

Results from the qualitative data analyses have coded several themes that keep emerging throughout the questions regardless of the probing sequence. This section of the article presents the qualitative findings according to the following themes: school management practices, leadership styles, and challenges during COVID-19.

Conclusion

Whitla (2003) contended that it is in the times of crisis that school principals need to provide leadership that is sensitive to the situation as the focus is now on minimising harm to the school community as well as ensuring survival and recovery of the school. This study found the principals demonstrated strong leadership and perseverance through this crisis. They built positive relationships, trust, and open communication among teachers, students and the school community during the crisis. As they worked from home, they dedicated their time reviewing their school strategic plans, school curriculum planning and restructured the school's teaching plan to ensure to ensure the process of teaching and learning is not interrupted, especially for students in the examination years.

In terms of leadership styles, the school principals were instructional leaders. They played an important role in planning and developing the curriculum and provided a clear curriculum direction, devised an immediate school mission and vision and developed remedial plans to ensure students’ learning albeit remotely. Few principals practiced distributed leadership in areas of teaching and learning by appointing subject specialists to lead the other teachers on the transition towards remote learning.

As for overcoming the challenges these principals faced during COVID-19, they provided guidance, assurance and hope to their staff members, teachers, parents and students. They ensured the teaching and learning process continued remotely, rallied their teachers to find new ways to teach, and motivated their teachers to improve their instructional content. These principals maintained their focus on the school's academic goals, coordinated their teachers to work together while maintaining active communication with teachers, students and parents.

The findings of this study contribute to the scarce evidence based on school management and leadership practices during a pandemic that both describes and analyses how school principals are dealing with the current situation and the challenges that arise from it. It is important to build upon this study in other regions of the world to determine the context-specificity of empirical findings (Huber and Helm, 2020) as many countries are yet to experience a pandemic. It is time for this knowledge base to receive greater attention and focus from practitioners and local policymakers, especially in leadership preparation and development programmes for school principals ship.

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