Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic is a striking example of a global crisis. The main impact, of course, is on health services but the effects on education have also been profound. School leaders have to deal with school closures, often at very short notice, while also planning to move teaching online, and coping with the impact of the virus on staff and student welfare. This is a ‘perfect storm’ of pressure for principals and other senior staff, which provides a severe test of leaders’ crisis management capabilities. Equally serious, but less often considered, is the impact of the pandemic on the strategic leadership and management of the organisation. The inevitable short-term reactions to the frequent changes in policy mean that longer-term considerations may be neglected. Renewing school vision, and recreating the sense of community characteristic of successful organisations, will be essential when education returns to ‘normal’.
This issue of EMAL features two papers addressing the leadership aspects of the pandemic. First, Gary Beauchamp, Moira Hulme, Linda Clarke, Lorna Hamilton and Janet Harvey present findings from their comparative study of the four nations of the United Kingdom. Their enquiry examined how heads negotiate relationships, and internal and external networks, linked to their values. They interviewed heads of 12 primary, secondary and special schools, four in England, three each in Northern Ireland and Scotland, and two in Wales. The authors comment that, despite the uncertainty and ambiguity, heads presented resilient responses and adapted leadership models to share new ways of working together and sharing responsibilities within leadership teams. They conclude that the values and moral imperatives of the heads invoked a strong sense of emotional leadership for all members of the school community.
The New Zealand government has been widely praised for its handling of the pandemic, and the second paper, by Kate Thornton, explores the responses of 18 New Zealand secondary principals to the situation, which included a national lockdown of schools from March 2020. She examines the issue through the lens of crisis management, defined as an urgent situation that requires immediate and decisive action. The author’s findings are presented through eight themes, including preparing, wellbeing, communication, collaboration, and taking opportunities. She concludes that the lockdown encouraged principals to consider more collaborative forms of leadership.
Izhak Berkovich and Ronit Bogler examine the links between school leadership and teachers’ organisational commitment, through mediating paths. Drawing on social identification theory and social exchange theory, they conducted a systematic review to find 34 articles directly relevant to the relationship between these two variables. Their findings suggest that transformational and distributed leadership are interrelated, for example in respect of shared vision. They add that trust is a key dimension of effective leadership for organisational commitment.
Yan Liu, Mehmet Bellibas and Sedat Gumus focus on the extent to which distributed and instructional leadership affect teacher self-efficacy and job satisfaction. Their analysis is based on the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) data from 34 countries. Their data show that both leadership models are significantly associated with both teacher job satisfaction and self-efficacy. They conclude that distributed leadership has a more substantial influence on teacher job satisfaction while instructional leadership is more significant in promoting teacher self-efficacy.
A similar study in Taiwan, by Hui-Ling Wendy Pan and Wen-Yan Chen, examines how principal leadership facilitates teacher leadership. The authors note that the adoption of school-based management in the country, since the 1990s, provides the administrative foundation for teacher leadership. They carried out survey research, with a large sample (1870 teachers). They show that the impact of principal leadership on teacher learning was partly mediated by teacher leadership, adding that teacher leadership was a more significant driver for teacher learning than principal leadership.
Elson Szeto discusses how Hong Kong principals’ practices reflect democratic leadership for inclusion in diverse settings. He comments on ‘mounting grievances’ in this Special Autonomous Region (SAR) of China, including concerns about the extradition law. The author reports on case study research with four principals in different parts of the SAR (Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and the New Territories). The schools faced tensions from the developing mix of local and migrant students and the principals responded by establishing a mutual understanding with community stakeholders, linked to personal morality and professional ethics.
Rida Blaik Hourani, David Litz and Scott Parkman explore the emotional intelligence attributes of public school leaders in Abu Dhabi. The authors interviewed 27 principals to establish which dimensions of emotional intelligence they exhibit. Their findings indicate that these leaders ‘undoubtedly’ exhibited emotional intelligence within the parameters of their roles and responsibilities. They conclude that leadership preparation programmes and mentoring are required to develop leaders’ emotional intelligence.
The balance between structure and agency is an important consideration for school leadership. Jan Varpanen examines this issue in respect of early childhood education (ECE) in Finland. The author argues that the debate between individuals and institutions has become polarised. Drawing on three focus groups of five, four and two participants, respectively, the author shows that ECE leaders understand their leadership primarily in terms of structure and concludes that more flexible working practices are required to create the space for leadership agency.
The final article in this issue, by Margaret Merga, Saiyidi Mat Roni and Anabela Malpique, relates to the role of school leadership in supporting literacy for learners in Australian secondary schools. The authors surveyed 315 teachers of struggling literacy learners in mainstream classrooms. They report that barely half (54.92%) of respondents perceive a whole-school approach to supporting struggling literacy learners. Most respondents also stated that schools were not doing enough to prepare learners for high-stakes literacy testing. The authors conclude that there is considerable room for improvement in the adoption of a whole-school approach to supporting literacy.
This issue further illustrates the global interest in educational leadership, with papers from eight countries.