Abstract
For school managers, the COVID-19 pandemic presents a definitive and transformational challenge, for which new situations and demands arise on a daily basis and no pre-written instructions or clear guidance is available to guide their responses. This presents a dilemma to school managers who need to plan responses speedily in the face of both uncertainty and ever-changing situations. One of the greatest issues faced by managers during the COVID-19 pandemic is identifying methods for prioritisation of needs and activities they need to address and find solutions. This is vital for the smooth running of a school and made more pertinent during a crisis such as COVID-19. School managers also face the challenge of ‘contradictory’ needs pulling their actions towards opposite directions. They also had to adapt quickly as new challenges prevail on an ongoing basis. This study examined the prioritising experiences of school managers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the theoretical lens of Eisenhower’s Urgent/Important Matrix, the MCDA collective prioritising model as well as the three phases of risk preparedness, it undertook to understand the difficulties and successes which the managers achieved in dealing with increased demands during the pandemic and their (lack of) experiences regarding prioritising. Using qualitative research approach, descriptive phenomenological research design and purposive sampling, this study included school managers from six schools situated in different social-economic contexts. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with these school managers to discern the needs they perceived, how they responded to these needs, as well as any evidence regarding prioritisation when they responded to these needs. The finding suggests that the increase and multitude of the needs, exacerbated by the unpredictability of the situation and constant change of policy and regulation, had pushed almost all educational needs into the Eisenhower’s quadrant A (both urgent and important), which effectively nullifies the applicability and usefulness of Eisenhower’s Matrix. In addition, despite the expected advantage from collective prioritising from MCDA, decision-making practice during COVID-19 largely became more autocratic in the face of needing quicker decision-making. The three phases of risk preparedness also largely fall short of its applicability because the pandemic is iii new and renders anticipation and preparedness impossible. Overall, the study found that reactive, autocratic and lack of conscious prioritising marked the decisionmaking process of those school managers during COVID-19.
M.Ed. (Educational Leadership and Management)