Resilience in the context of multiple adverse circumstances? Leadership capacity and teachers’ practice during COVID-19 at schools serving disadvantaged communities

Abstract

Building and sustaining capacity for organisational learning appears to be a prerequisite for organisational resilience. For schools, organisational learning in crisis situations, such as COVID-19, requires that they have certain learning capacities. Using quasi-longitudinal data, the paper analyses how schools’ leadership capacity (as perceived by educators) at schools serving disadvantaged communities (SSDC) at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic predicted the educators’ practice about a half year after returning to face-to-face-teaching (objectives and expectations regarding student performance and the staff’s willingness to innovate). We used data from two standardised surveys of the staff from 35 SSDC in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, conducted at the beginning of 2020, and at the end of 2021. The results of multilevel regression analyses showed that a higher leadership capacity at the start of the pandemic predicted a stronger orientation towards performance objectives during distance learning. No associations were found, however, between schools’ leadership capacity and the educators’ expectations regarding student performance as well as between schools’ leadership capacity and the staff’s willingness to innovate. Our findings help strengthen our knowledge about the antecedents of successful school improvement in challenging locations during times of crisis.