Abstract
COVID-19 struck the education system when education leaders were not expecting a crisis of this nature. Its occurrence caught many education leaders off-guard leaving them with many problems which came with limited solutions on how to handle the impact of this pandemic in the education system. The impact that this pandemic has had has been felt by both public and private schools. The difference may be that these schools did not experience the impacts of the pandemic in the same way.
School leaders are used to the leadership practices which they have practised in their workplaces for many years. The outbreak of COVID-19 has caused school leaders to adopt new leadership practices and/or to make adjustments to the existing ones. This research study aims at examining leadership practices that emerged in response to the environment created by COVID-19 in a public high school in Tzaneen. The motivation for conducting this research was the knowledge that school environments and methods of instruction have considerably changed due to the pandemic which implies that school leadership has also experienced change.
The study followed a generic qualitative method within an interpretive paradigm. The study worked with 10 participants. A group interview was conducted with seven educators who were not in leadership positions. Three interviews were conducted with the school principal and two departmental heads (DH) individually. The interviews provided information on an experience which the participants had during the pandemic and the leadership practices which emerged. Mitroff’s five-phase model for crisis management was used as a conceptual framework.
Keywords: COVID-19, crisis, leadership, crisis leadership, leadership practices.