Conference Agenda

Purpose – In an ever-changing and complex external environment, the importance for principals to be able to adapt and change while addressing challenges becomes critical. When these challenges arise as adaptive problems or challenges, leaders and their followers must use alternative approaches to problem-solving instead of known solutions to technical problems. The protracted nature of the COVID-19 pandemic over 2020–21 created a situation where principals in Victoria, Australia, had to rapidly engage in strengthening the internal integration of their schools while sustaining continuous strategic transformation facilitated by enhanced organisational agility. During the COVID-19 crisis in Victoria, Australia, the complexity of school leadership increased greatly for school principals. Emotionally intelligent leaders recognise, understand and respect their staff's needs, values and aspirations and build stronger, healthier, self-managed teams within their institutions. Principals with high levels of emotional intelligence create strong cooperative relationships and are effective in developing transformational change within their respective schools. Emotionally intelligent leaders understand their own emotions and that of others, enhancing their thinking processes and the effectiveness of their leadership practices. This study focused on the lived experiences of mid-career principals in the independent school sector from March to November 2020. It investigates these leaders’ transformative work in leading their schools over a protracted crisis.

Design/methodology/approach – The study builds on crisis leadership, adaptive leadership, agile leadership and emotional intelligence constructs, exploring the leadership approaches undertaken by twenty mid-career principals in Victoria, Australia. The main research question of this study is, “What kinds of emotionally intelligent leadership approaches were identified in mid-career school principals during the Covid-19 global pandemic?” Using a narrative inquiry approach, across three temporal points in 2020, storied productions drawn from the findings present four emergent types of emotionally intelligent leadership approaches undertaken by these principals. These leadership approaches are presented as the commander-leader, the conductor-leader, the gardener-leader and the engineer-leader, with each approach demonstrating both organisational leadership approaches as well as individual leadership styles used by these principals as they led their schools.

Evidence – The findings have direct implications for professional development programs focusing on continuing principals with emphasis on the importance of developing and sustaining emotionally intelligent skillsets in principals for use during periods of rapid change or high crisis in schools.

Educational Importance – These findings provide insights into the kinds of emotionally intelligent leadership approaches used by mid-career school principals with implications for making use of these findings in developing elements of emotion training in teacher and principal preparation and professional development programs. The findings present insight into the support useful for mid-career principals who have completed more than five years of principalship.

Perspectives – The invisible labour of school leadership must be recognised, and existing policies and systems strengthened to help mid-career leaders during a crisis and post-crisis as they lead their schools during adaptive and agile times because the leadership styles required across each of these periods of change are different.

Connections to conference theme – This study uses a unique emotional intelligence approach to understand school leadership during and after a crisis.

Purpose – Over the three-year period of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a severe impact on global efforts to ensure all children receive a quality education. Pakistan is no exception. School closures to limit the spread of COVID-19 have directly impacted an estimated 40 million school-going learners from pre-primary to higher-secondary levels in Pakistan, where school enrolment, completion and quality of learning are already low, especially for girls. As stated in the ASER 2021 (ASER, 2021) report, “School closures to limit the spread of COVID-19 have directly impacted an estimated 40 million school-going learners from pre-primary to higher secondary levels, in a context where school enrolment, completion and quality of learning are already low, especially for girls” (p.6). Girls experienced greater learning losses than boys during the school closures. This served to halt or even reverse an increasing trend in learning outcomes for girls who had, in some cases, outdid boys. On average, about 60 per cent of children enrolled in schools spent less than an hour a day on their studies during school closures.

Research question – What has been the impact of COVID-19 Learning Loss across the Pakistani Catholic School Sector?

Context - This study aims to collect baseline data on seven Catholic diocesean schools in Pakistan as it interrogates the extent to which the pandemic has influenced this sector in both urban and rural settings. This study will select Catholic schools in Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pukthunwa in its sampling. There are currently 244 schools in Pakistan across the seven dioceses with 95304 students enrolled, of which 56,557 are male students, and 38747 are female students.

Approach to inquiry – It is envisaged that using an online survey tool will assist the researchers in gauging the extent to which learning deficits and challenges are currently being faced within these schools in 2023, after having been three years through the pandemic. The survey tool will also identify viable school strategies that were used to address these challenges. This survey tool will be administered over August and September 2023 to a stratified sample of school leaders, teachers and administrative staff in this school sector.

Evidence – The baseline data collected through this study will contribute towards laying the groundwork towards establishing communities of practice across the seven dioceses. Initially, in 2023 focus will be on developing leadership capacity across the diocesan schools. From 2024 onwards, targeting the development of teacher pedagogy in Mathematics and English and/or Urdu will be made. These communities of practice will develop teaching and learning resources together within each diocese to assist with addressing the learning deficits of their students identified through the baseline data collected through this study.

Educational importance – Through the findings of this study, more targeted work for school improvement will be developed at the diocesan level, school level, subject level and individual student level.

Connection to the conference theme – The study will contribute to the ongoing system and school implications arising from the COVID-19 crisis in education within the Pakistani Catholic school sector.

Purpose: This proposed paper describes a prevention model for reducing school employee sexual misconduct and the evaluation data on the effectiveness of the model. The model was built from the results of study 1 and tested using the results of study 2. Sexual misconduct may be physical, verbal and/or visual behaviors (including technology assisted) directed toward a student. In the United States, two 2023 studies found between 11.7 and 17.4% of current students have experienced at least one incident of sexual misconduct by a school employee; that’s 6.4 to 9.4 Million students.

Research Questions. (1) Under what school conditions does school employee sexual misconduct occur? (2) Do these conditions offer suggestions for prevention? (3) Is the prevention model effective?

Methods: This paper is a report of two studies conducted by the author.

Study 1. The model of prevention described in this paper is based upon a set of data that allows an internal examination of cases of sexual abuse of students by employees Having served as an expert witness in nearly 200 cases of school employee sexual abuse over a twenty year period, I have had access to school policies, police reports, depositions of school administrators, parents, targets/victims, teachers, and abusers. For each case, I analyzed policies in place and how they were followed; documented hiring practices as well as firing practices; viewed and critiqued training; documented response to red flags of boundary crossing and sexual misconduct by school employees; and coded levels of supervision on a scale from none to appropriate. I was able to hear, in the voices of the offender, the victim/target, other school employees, other students, and administrators what happened and how it happened. I have permission from plaintiff attorneys and IRB approval for this completed study.

Study 2: Funded by the CDC, a study of 10 school districts including 50 schools and 2,500 employees that collected data pre-post the intervention of training, policy review, internal communications, hiring practices, and supervision. Pre-post surveys included a scale on appropriate and inappropriate behaviors as well as scales on self-efficacy, normative beliefs, and intentions to report.

Evidence/data sources. Results from study 1 informed the model of prevention which includes: school policies directing appropriate behavior between adults and students and consequences for not conforming to expected behavior; training on boundary crossing, red flags, and reporting; supervision and monitoring; preventative hiring and preventative firing; and internal communication, both vertical and horizontal.

Results from study 2 indicate that the more components of the prevention model that are in place, the fewer the reported instances of boundary crossing with students occur. In schools and districts where all staff received training, employee respondents decreased reported boundary crossing, strengthened attitudes toward prevention, indicated stronger self-efficacy to report as well as intentions to report and actual reporting.

Connection to Conference Theme: School effectiveness and improvement cannot occur in an unsafe environment. This presentation targets the obligation of schools to provide safe learning environments.