Crisis Leadership during COVID-19 Pandemic of Public School Heads in Malasiqui District, Pangasinan

Crisis Management, School Leadership in Disruptive Times and the Recovery of Schools in the Post COVID-19 Era: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Some of the key challenges associated with online COVID-19 instigated teaching practices forcefully adopted by schools to ensure the uninterrupted provision of their educational services are best summarized by [77] as follows: (a) inaccessibility to internet facility [93], (b) lack of information and communication technology (ICT) competency, (c) lack of self-discipline for the students to learn at home and (d) monitoring students' state of learning and progress. Issues related to the organization and implementation of the online learning process were also reported as significant impediments in the transition to distance education, as elaborated by [85] linked to (i) the effective monitoring of students' progress while studying in virtual platforms in relation to the predetermined annual teaching objectives, (ii) the proper evaluation of online course efficiency attributed to the short duration of courses, the large number of students, insufficient student participation, problems connecting to the Internet, the students' young ages and insufficient parental support and (iii) continuously rearranging the online curriculum to ensure students' continuity with their lessons.…”

“…Establishing and maintaining safety measures inside school to protect the physical safety of all stakeholders proved to be an exceptionally demanding task for school leaders who encountered great difficulties in organizing their school units according to the predetermined health protocols [82] and in compliance with the contingency measures [93], regularly resorting to a series of changes in the timetable and the familiar routine of the school. As evidenced in [83], the management of school classes with the provision for different breaks, continuous teaching hours, an increase in teachers' on-call time while social distancing, the use of masks by students as well as over-sized classes created an extra impediment for efficient protocol application, a procedure which often took place at the expense of the educational process.…”

“…A distributed leadership style enabled scholar leaders to recognize imminent crisis warning signs and organize their responsive strategy by exhibiting resourcefulness in quick decision-making, identifying opportunities, behaving, adapting to situations, handling information, using resources to assess situations, displaying confidence in their ability to navigate a system fluidly and the ability of sensemaking during the COVID-19 pandemic [93]. The delegation of duties to others within the school was perceived as imperative by school leaders as they strongly believed that ensuring the organization, implementation and monitoring of assigned tasks could guarantee that all school-wide processes and protocols were managed and conducted with a high level of quality within the pandemic era [87].…”