Policy Analysis for School Leaders’ Development during the Covid-19 Pandemic – An Adaptive Leadership Practice Framework

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has confirmed how co-dependent and adaptable to change nations are. Similarly, school leaders’ behaviour and their interactions with educators require resilience and the application of innovative approaches to address change. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to support school leaders with adaptive leadership skills to think outside the shadow of the pandemic while tackling such hard-hitting encounters with flexibility and fervour. Having applied adaptive leadership theory, this paper engages in an analysis of the Policy on the South African Standard for Principalship (2015). The policy urges for a humanistic, needs-driven execution of leadership, significant to the attainment of its transformative objectives for education. So, the paper proposes an Alternative Adaptive Leadership Practice Framework (AALPF) which specifies that adaptive change interventions reshape past leadership practices, rather than jettison it. To search for alternative ways to re-imagine school leadership at a time of a health threatening crisis, this paper seeks to answer the question: ‘how may an adaptive leadership practice framework contribute to reshaping leadership for transformative change during an international Policy Analysis for School Leaders’ Development 169 crisis and beyond?’ The development of the AALPF supports the notion that adaptive leadership has the potential to significantly displace, reregulate and rearrange deep-rooted structures of leadership and recognises that it, if intentionally and carefully introduced, could help spark transformative change.