Exploring the outside-the-box leadership of an Indonesian school principal: A qualitative case study

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought various uncomfortable feelings and experiences for all school members. Instead of lamenting and regretting these unpleasant feelings and experiences, the school principal should see them as an opportunity to act intelligently and wisely in making the school more effective. This study aimed to describe teachers’ perceptions of the outside-the-box leadership of their school principal, taking the state junior high school of Buti, Merauke, Indonesia as the population and samples. A qualitative case study using interviews was used to gather data from a total of 8 teachers teaching at the state junior high school of Buti, Merauke, Indonesia. The obtained data were analyzed thematically. The results of the research revealed three major attributes of the outside-the-box leadership that characterized the principal of SMP Negeri Buti as the following: (a) openness, (b) humanitarianism, and (c) willingness to take risks. These findings suggest that the way the principal led may have had a notable impact on addressing the difficulties caused by the COVID-19 outbreak and in improving the school’s effectiveness.