Leading Schools Through the COVID-19 Crisis in Malaysia

• In Event: Leading in a Time of Crisis

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is a health crisis and 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). 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 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). 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). This research reveals Malaysian school principals’ management practices, their leadership styles, and the challenges they encounter in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. A research instrument of open-ended questions was administered to 32 school principals from government-funded secondary schools, to establish how school principals are dealing with the current situation and the challenges that arise from it. Findings rendered a contextualisation of school management practices. School leaders specified instructional and distributed leadership that were vital in this time of crisis and disclosed the challenges and uncertainties of their school communities. Hence, this research contributes to the scarce evidence based on school leadership practices during a pandemic.

Author

• Donnie Adams, University of Malaysia