Kazakhstani school leaders’ experiences of leading schools during the COVID-19 pandemic: A qualitative study

• In Event: 3. Improving and maintaining the quality of teaching and learning in Eurasia: approaches and challenges before and during COVID-19 pandemic

Proposal

The unprecedented speed with which the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe disrupted school systems globally. With around 80% of children and 60% of teachers being home due to school closures at one point, many school systems transitioned to remote/ online schools (UNESCO, 2020), which remained the primary mode of schooling in some countries even in the second year of the pandemic (UNESCO, 2022). It is crucial to understand how schools responded to ensuring equitable education during school closures to inform future provision in a crisis context. This paper contributes to knowledge about the under-researched but emerging field of leading schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, we draw on interviews with school leaders in Kazakhstan, where schools operated off-site for a protracted time, to investigate how school leaders led and managed schools during school closures. Globally, empirical studies on school leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic are just emerging (Beauchamp et al., 2021; Longmuir, 2021), and little is known about how school leaders in Kazakhstan led schools under lockdown measures. Emerging literature in Kazakhstan has reviewed policy responses and gaps in Kazakhstan’s transition to distance/online learning (Bokayev et al., 2021a), the impact of COVID-19 on parents (Bokayev et al., 2021b; Durrani et al., 2021), teachers (Durrani et al., 2021) and students (Durrani et al., 2021, Hajar & Manan, 2022). However, the experiences and perspectives of school leaders are glaringly absent.

The study has been carved out of a larger project that uses a case-study methodology to explore the impact of COVID-19 on equitable access to quality education in Kazakhstan and how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the broader well-being of students, families, teachers and school leaders. The current paper uses a qualitative methodology consisting of semi-structured interviews with public school leaders. These schools are financed and governed by the Government of Kazakhstan and cater to 96% of students in the country. A purposeful sampling strategy was applied, resulting in the selection of 3 schools in 8 regions of Kazakhstan—Almaty, Kokshetau, Kostanay, Nur-Sultan, Taraz, Turkestan, Shymkent & 0ral. The 24 schools participating in the study included schools located in rural and urban areas. All 24 schools participating in the study provided remote/online education, similar to the majority of schools in the country. The 24 public school leaders were interviewed online between January - August 2022. Interviews were conducted in Kazakh and Russian according to the participants’ preferences. All interviews were audio-taped, transcribed verbatim and translated into English. The English transcripts were analysed and coded in NVivo. Given the intersectional nature of experiences and perspectives, the analysis focused on how leadership perspectives, experiences and challenges differ across different markers of disadvantage such as rural and urban location, medium of instruction, gender, family circumstance and ethnic belonging.


Emerging findings suggest that public schools in Kazakhstan were ill-prepared to transition towards remote/ online teaching, with digital devices, unstable Internet, and teachers’ digital skills, or rather its lack, being the main factors preventing a smoother shift to online teaching/learning. Although leaders were initially lost, shocked and frustrated because they did not know how to act, teach, and organise schoolwork online, they learned how to deal with the challenges over time. Our data suggest that while the support offered by education authorities was crucial in mitigating the digital divide, particular leadership styles emerged which were pivotal to tackling the challenges of leading schools during school closures and online and hybrid schooling. In particular, the enactment of empathetic, collaborative and distributed leadership styles enabled the school leaders to negotiate the unfamiliar terrain and rise to leadership challenges in a context of protracted crisis. While the school leaders noted several benefits emerging from school closures, such as expanded digital infrastructure, students’ digital skills development, and professional development of teachers in remote/online pedagogy, they also acknowledged the unequal negative impact of school closures on groups of students, families and teachers. Significantly, leading schools virtually in a fluid situation led to school leaders experiencing profound shifts in the form and intensity of communication with different stakeholders. The pressures of ensuring the well-being of students and teachers, proactively mitigating inequities in accessing quality education, offering pedagogical leadership in the digital space and maintaining regular communication with all stakeholders put enormous pressure on the well-being of school leaders. These stresses were intersected by a range of markers, with gender being vitally linked to school leaders’ experiences. The paper offers important policy and practice implications for leading schools in crisis contexts.

Author

• Naureen Durrani, Nazarbayev Univeity