​A Study of the Lived Experience of Principals as Instructional Leaders during COVID-19​A Study of the Lived Experience of Principals as Instructional Leaders During COVID-19​

One key role of principals is that of instructional leader within their building. It is a role that holds them accountable to and responsible for helping all students grow by helping all staff grow. During the fall of the 2019-2020 school year, the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world including the United States and educational leaders had to consider their practices and behaviors typically utilized to promote growth in student learning. Myors (2013) has pointed out, the research related to the complexities, difficulties and needs of principals when leading during and after crisis situations needs to be better understood. This qualitative, phenomenological, case study explored the instructional leadership practices of three principals during the COVID-19 pandemic and examined the lived experience of the principals and their efforts to fulfil the role of instructional leaders within their buildings. 

The themes that emerged during this study include: (1) the presence of instructional leadership practices and behaviors, as defined by Grissom and colleagues’ (2021a) instructional leadership framework of high leverage practices and behaviors, by the participants fell into three categories denoted as (a) teacher observation and evaluation, (b) feedback and coaching and other professional behaviors, and (c) establishment of a data-driven instructional program and organization, (2) barriers to instructional leadership fell into three themed categories identified as emotional barriers, pedagogical/Instructional barriers and other barriers, (3) principals’ responded to emotional, instructional/pedagogical and other barriers, and lastly, (4) principals identified enduring practice and behavior changes based upon the situation that manifested during their COVID-19 experience. Lastly, based upon these findings, the following five assertions were concluded: (1) Each school principal seemed to see enduring changes to practices and behaviors based upon the more challenging problems they faced during their COVID-19 experience., (2) There is a hierarchy in which emotional barriers supersede other types of barriers and may act on other barriers in a negatively synergistic manner., (3) When considering those barriers under the umbrella of “other,” a commonality that emerged was that they all served as a barrier to instructional leadership by consuming time., (4) In general, the data suggested that principals were able to mitigate, and in some instances, eradicate emotional and instructional/pedagogical barriers enough that instructional leadership practices and behaviors could continue even if on a diminished level. and (5) Barriers and responses to barriers to instructional leadership presented both positive and negative long-term impacts. These findings add to our understanding of instructional leadership practices and behaviors during one particular crisis event and though the information is not generalizable to all broad systemic changes, yet the conclusions may prove transferrable to similar types of disruptive events and offer a springboard from which to conduct further research to verify whether the results do emerge more broadly to disruptive events in general. This type of research and the results it yields is more important than ever as the potential for further pandemics and large-scale crises will present in the future and the need for school administrators to provide the best support to their staff as instructional leaders and as leaders in general will only continue to grow.