Abstract
Crises in educational settings, such as violence, catastrophic natural disasters or pandemics, require responsive and adaptive leading practices. Responsive crisis leadership is an emerging field in educational settings. This scoping review synthesises empirical studies of primary school leaders’ practices in crisis contexts. The thematic analysis highlights agile decision-making, responsive communication, strategic resource management and emotional resilience. Leaders who navigate crises most responsively employ adaptive strategies, mobilise stakeholders, refine existing or new systems, while maintaining visibility and connection within the school community. The review contributes an integrative framework that delineates how crisis leadership in schools is enacted through interrelated domains of practice. A practice-oriented typology of crisis leadership in schools and associated ‘signature practices’ are offered as heuristic devices that organise how leadership actions are described in the existing literature. Findings could inform leader preparation, professional learning and policy supports for crisis readiness and recovery.
Introduction
When I first came into leadership, I remember feeling like my skin was always on fire because everything felt so urgent. Now, I have learned to lead with clarity, manage stress in moments of pressure, and stay calm – and that has been a huge upgrade. (Participant in Potter et al., 2020: 105)
School leaders’ accounts of crisis work, like this example from Potter et al. (2020), consistently foreground urgency, uncertainty and the need to remain composed while guiding others through disruption. Such conditions make visible leadership as practice: the sayings, doings and relatings that are accomplished in particular sites and shaped by the cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements of schooling (Kemmis, 2024). This scoping review synthesises empirical literature to map leading practices across crisis contexts and to develop a typology that clarifies core domains of school crisis leadership.
Crises profoundly affect schools and their communities globally. COVID-19 outbreaks, school shootings, sudden bereavements, flood and fire events require school leaders to take immediate, decisive action to support teachers, students and their wider community. In this review, a crisis refers to an unexpected, high-salience event that disrupts schooling to the point that routine educational processes are significantly impeded or rendered temporarily inoperable, often with implications for safety, wellbeing, continuity of learning and public trust (Brion, 2021; Mutch, 2015a; Wu et al., 2021). Such events may be acute (e.g., violence, sudden bereavement, natural hazards) or protracted (e.g., pandemics), and they generate conditions of heightened uncertainty, urgency and risk that demand rapid coordination and sense-making (Williams and Liou, 2024). The opening quotation highlights the need for leaders to manage multiple priorities, understand their own emotions and navigate a way forward when a need to make considered decisions is required even if information is incomplete or conflicting. Leaders need (Brion, 2021). Crisis leadership is essential when guiding a school community through a traumatic event characterised by high uncertainty, risk and urgency. Leaders need to be able to make quick, well-informed decisions under pressure (McLeod and Dulsky, 2021), minimise personal and organisational harm, communicate responsively with stakeholders (Bishop et al., 2015) and mobilise resources required to address the crisis (Mutch, 2015b).
Although there has been a surge of interest in crisis leadership due to the COVID-19 pandemic (Lien et al., 2023), there remains a research gap in identification of crucial knowledge, skills, behaviours and processes required for responsive crisis leadership. Leadership is premised on ‘formal and informal influence, relationships, collective effort, vision and purpose and the attributes (traits, virtues, knowledge, skills, abilities)’, which can be mobilised to adaptively navigate crises (Riggio and Newstead, 2023: 218). Although in the crisis literature the terms crisis leadership and crisis management are sometimes conflated, they point to different analytic emphases. In this article, crisis management denotes the operational and procedural work of preparedness, containment, coordination and recovery (e.g., plans, roles, protocols, resource mobilisation) (Coombs, 2007). It is operational, involving ‘diagnosis, decision making and resource mobilisation’ (Mutch, 2015b: 43). Crisis leadership denotes broader practices of guiding collective sense-making, sustaining moral purpose and mobilising relational and organisational capacity under conditions of uncertainty and urgency. Leadership involves ‘oversight of crisis management’ while simultaneously evoking the broader focus on both ‘vision and direction’ (Mutch, 2015b: 43).
The purpose of this scoping review is to systematically map and synthesise empirical research on the practices school leaders enact when leading through crisis events. Guided by a practice perspective, the review addresses the following research question: What practices do primary school leaders engage in when leading schools through crises? We seek to clarify core domains of practice that support responsive leadership under conditions of disruption, uncertainty and risk. The review does not evaluate the effectiveness of crisis leadership practices, nor does it establish causal relationships between specific practices and organisational outcomes. We commence by situating leading as a suite of practices and introducing literature on leading through crises. The methodology is outlined and key leading practices presented that have been impactful in the schooling sector. The article concludes with a synthesis of how leadership actions are reported and interpreted in the extant primary research literature. It provides a conceptual map of practice domains that can inform further empirical and theoretical work.
Leading as a suite of practices
Practices are socially established collaborative human activities (Kemmis and Grootenboer, 2008). In education, a practice pertains to a systematic approach or method used to facilitate a specific outcome, usually intended to benefit students. As Kemmis and Grootenboer (2008) point out, a practice is what happens at the nexus of the individual and the environment where they act and, in turn, are shaped and conditioned by the arrangements and conditions of their context (Kemmis and Grootenboer, 2008). Practices consist of sayings, doings and relatings that cohere around a shared purpose within a given context (Kemmis, 2024). A leading practice is a ‘form of action’ and ‘social artefact’ (Navari, 2011) that extends beyond actions alone. It encompasses intentions and routines occurring within cultural, material or relational contexts that are enacted by individuals and groups of leaders.
Practices associated with leading through crises are sets of sayings, doings and relatings that leaders deploy to ensure that a school and associated community can navigate traumatic events. Many educational practices are well researched and there is a corpus of literature that provides direction for the suite of practices associated with leadership (Wilkinson et al., 2010, 2024). However, during crisis events there is a need for leaders to use adaptive expertise, drawing from prior knowledge and research to make decisions when encountering new and unknown phenomena (Lien et al., 2023). Plans for crisis events may exist within schools (bushfire, floods, earthquakes, suicides), yet every context and event is different which requires flexible and adaptive approaches. Leaders make decisions that are usually highly contextual at the time and contingent on various factors including the nature of crisis, expertise available, modes of communication open and available spaces to sustain the continuity of teaching in classroom spaces.
Crisis leadership
While sharing some characteristics of effective leading practice in general, crisis leadership places leaders, the organisation, stakeholders and resources in the wider systems (e.g., Departments of Education) under extreme pressure (Mutch, 2015a). ‘[T]he unfamiliar context, the fast-changing nature of the environment, the multiplicity of actions and interactions, the speed at which decisions need to be made and the possibly life-saving implications of these, add[s] new layers of complexity’ (Mutch, 2015a: 193).
While there is a corpus of scholarship on practices employed by educational leaders responding to the COVID-19 pandemic (Chatzipanagiotou and Katsarou, 2023; McLeod and Dulsky, 2021), there is less primary research literature on education leader practices that can be applied across different crises. Smith and Riley (2012) outlined five steps that leaders can take to address crises: (a) seek information to get credible facts; (b) execute the appropriate contingency plan or generate a course of action to work through the crisis situation. This ensures other staff are clear on the action to take; (c) take decisive action to ensure the situation does not escalate; (d) express concern for the wellbeing of others; and (e) ensure communication is clear to mitigate confusion and address any misinformation. Gurr and Drysdale (2020) also conceptualise a model for leadership in ‘challenging times’ (24). Seven elements identified comprise understanding the context; setting direction; developing people; influencing others; improving teaching and learning; leading self; and developing the organisation. This scoping review further elaborates aspects of these frameworks.
Across the crisis leadership literature in schooling, four recurring themes are evident. First, crisis leadership is temporal and phased: leader work shifts from rapid stabilisation and risk management towards recovery, rebuilding routines and institutional learning (see Arar et al., 2022). Second, leadership in crisis is collective and distributed: coordination across formal and informal leaders becomes essential as expertise is mobilised across the organisation and beyond (see MacGregor et al., 2023). Third, crisis leadership is fundamentally communicative and sense-making oriented: leaders must provide timely information while also interpreting ambiguity, aligning stakeholders to a shared purpose and managing misinformation (see Neelakantan et al., 2022). Fourth, crisis leadership is relational and affective: visible presence, empathy and attention to staff and student wellbeing are repeatedly reported as central to sustaining organisational functioning during disruption (see Spyropoulou and Koutroukis, 2024). These themes inform the analytic structure and typology presented in the findings.
Distributed leading practices
When crises events occur, people in different positions throughout an organisation can engage in leadership in a range of ways (Riggio and Newstead, 2023). For instance, they can initiate a response, support collective efforts, and motivating colleagues and community to participate in recovery efforts. Therefore, it is not only senior leaders in legitimate positions of power who engage in leadership practices. There is a ‘need [for] collective/shared leadership, where individuals and groups … creatively problem solve and inspire collective effort and shared purpose’ (Riggio and Newstead, 2023: 219). Crisis conditions intensify the limits of heroic or individualised leadership models and across studies, the distributed leadership is reported as both a practical necessity and an enabling condition for timely problem-solving, continuity of learning and coordinated care (Bellibaş and Karaferye, 2025; MacGregor et al., 2023; Reyes et al., 2022). Distributed leadership in crisis is expressed through the activation of leading practices (Charteris et al., 2024) and expertise-aligned leadership (e.g., wellbeing, logistics, digital learning, community liaison), rapid delegation with clear lines of accountability and lateral coordination across teams (Leithwood et al., 2007). Importantly, distribution is not simply task allocation; it involves building shared understanding and maintaining coherence around mission and values while authority is exercised across multiple sites of practice (Charteris et al., 2024). The crisis event provides a context for leaders to exercise expertise that may not be called on in day-to-day contexts with both informal and formal leaders stepping up during periods of crisis (Berson et al., 2006). While the principal is the designated school leader, leadership is co-produced across a school (Charteris et al., 2024).
The scoping review
Scoping reviews enable researchers to navigate a corpus of literature on a specific topic to detail the quantum of literature available, classify and map evidence to offer a general overview of themes (Munn et al., 2018). This review explores the practices adopted by school leaders during crisis events. There have been a range of literature reviews on crisis leadership (Boin and Hart, 2003; Bundy et al., 2017; James et al. 2011). These have not focused specifically on schools and therefore have not specifically addressed the practices of school leaders and their leadership processes. Literature reviews enable researchers to make claims about knowledge circulating around a particular topic, what is not known about this phenomenon and propose directions for further research to address unanswered questions (Newman and Gough, 2020). It has been argued that scoping reviews have inherent limitations, as they aim to provide a broad overview of a topic rather than depth of information (Tricco et al., 2016). We elect to use this approach as the literature is very nuanced and the aim is to be as descriptive of the field as possible, rather than reporting on the quantum of different studies and the elaborated crisis leadership approaches. Table 1 provides an outline of the scooping review's specific objectives.
Specific objectives for the domains in the scoping review.
The scoping review approach is particularly suited for fields that have not been comprehensively reviewed or possess a complex and heterogeneous set of studies, such as crisis leadership in educational settings. The guiding research question focuses on leading practices mobilised during school crises.
Search strategy and study selection
The literature was sorted using a three-step process. The first step related to sourcing relevant literature articles. The following electronic databases were searched to identify relevant articles using available library search tools: A+ Education, EBSCO, Eric, Scopus and Web of Science. Two categories of search terms relating to school leadership and crisis were combined. Search terms in the school leadership category included ‘school’, ‘lead*’, ‘admin*’, ‘manage*’). Search terms in the crisis category included ‘trauma’, ‘catastrophe’, ‘fire’ ‘storm’ ‘damage’, ‘flood’, ‘climate change’, ‘tornado’, ‘typhoon’ and ‘hurricane’. We used these terms to search for articles that were published between January 2000 and November 2024 to capture crisis types most commonly represented in schooling and crisis-leadership literatures (e.g., violence/trauma, natural hazards, infrastructure disruption and public-health emergencies). The list was refined through initial pilot searches to ensure sensitivity across diverse labels used internationally for similar events. Both qualitative and quantitative research was reviewed. Books, reports and interviews were excluded. No limitations were applied because of country. All the papers were written in English.
In the second step of our screening process, records were deduplicated with each researcher reviewed the title and abstract, introduction and conclusion of identified articles. Following this, a collaborative consultation occurred in which full texts of articles were reviewed with justification about whether they were included or excluded. Disagreements were resolved by negotiated consensus. Articles about theoretical attributes required for leading or managing a crisis in schools, preparing for crisis or catastrophe or literature reviews were discarded. Articles that were omitted included those recommending what leaders should or should not do in a crisis based on conceptual leadership literature articles and those examining school preparedness, rather than what leaders do in a crisis. Finally, we did not want to include papers that presented some sort of assessment or evaluative framework of leadership attributes, again because this was not about school leader's perceptions. Peer reviewed articles focused on primary research about school leaders’ lived experiences of leading a school through a crisis as an external event that impacted the school. Based on the inclusion/exclusion criteria listed above, 137 articles were screened for final inclusion (after duplicates were removed). A total of 102 were not deemed appropriate for the scope of the review, leaving 35 papers for analysis. Figure 1 outlines the selection, inclusion and exclusion process of the review.
Protocol for screening papers for the scoping review.
Thematic coding of the literature
The third step in the process involved thematically analysing the content of the selected articles. NVivo was used to construct qualitative, thematic insights from literature identified as relevant using the aforementioned process. The following coding criteria used by the research team drew from Saldana (2021). Firstly a method of emergent coding, informed by the research questions, was adopted. This enabled for familiarity to be developed with article content while identifying relevant information within each study's data and outcomes. A small number of articles were initially coded and then we met to discuss the emerging themes and the scope of relevance. Areas omitted were identified through collaborative reflection. Codes relating to more than one specific area relating to leadership were duplicated and populated within relevant codes. After this calibration, our coding continued with the remaining articles scrutinised using an agreed protocol. Once coding was completed the summary documents were distributed to each of the researchers. Table 2 outlines the papers included in the study, the authors’ countries of origin, research approaches and types of crisis. Of the reviewed articles (77%) published 2020–2024. There were 21 countries represented with the USA (15/35) and New Zealand (4/35) appearing most frequently. Of the studies (54%) were COVID-19, 5/35 (14%) reported natural hazards (earthquake/tornado/storm), 5/35 (14%) profiled violence/bereavement (school shooting, student death, assault), 4/35 (11%) listed various or unspecified crises and 2/35 (6%) stated a financial crisis (see Table 2). A significant proportion of COVID-19 pandemic literature reflects the global educational upheaval and the heightened research attention given to this particular crisis.
Article contexts.
A series of emergent sub-codes were developed which aligned with each of the seed themes. Subcodes that did not reach a level of saturation were either discarded or combined with their closest semantic neighbour through a collaborative review process among the researchers. At the conclusion of this process the following four areas were identified as a typology of leading practices:
agile, flexible and adaptive leading; mobilising leading; systematic leading; and visible and connected leading.
Trustworthiness of the analysis was addressed through attention to credibility, dependability, confirmability and transferability (Lincoln and Guba, 1985 as cited in Stahl and King, 2020). Credibility was strengthened through iterative team-based coding, early calibration of codes and negotiated consensus on theme development. Dependability was supported through the use of an agreed analytic protocol and documentation of coding decisions across the review process. Confirmability was ensured through our reflexive discussions in which we surfaced assumptions. Transferability is supported through our transparent reporting of the study contexts, crisis types and our analytic decisions, to enable judgements about relevance to other educational settings.
Typology of school leader practices associated with crisis leadership
After reviewing the 35 selected studies, we determined key practices associated with crisis leadership. Many papers alluded to the temporality of crises and the actions of leaders as they worked through the crisis events (for instance see Mutch's, 2015b). We integrated practices across various time frames to create a typology of practices that can be drawn on during crises events. The deployment of these practices corresponds with a range of factors that include the scale of the crisis, how it impacted the school and region, and how students, teachers and the broader community respond to the crisis event. Tables 3 to 6 detail the typology of leading practices with an exposition after each one.
Agile, flexible and adaptive leading practices.
Mobilising leading practices.
Systematic leading practices.
Visible and connected leading practices.
Agile, flexible and adaptive leading practices
Table 3 details the agile, flexible and adaptive leading practices identified in 13 of the 35 studies.
Across studies, agile leading was most salient when information was incomplete and conditions shifted rapidly. Leaders moved between rapid appraisal and provisional decision-making, adjusting priorities and routines while maintaining clarity about immediate safety and learning continuity. Notably, agility was strongest when paired with systematic supports (plans, roles, protocols) that reduced cognitive load and enabled quick delegation.
Through agile decision-making leaders can be strategic in the way that they process information and address emergent issues and make decisions as emergent issues arise Williams and Liou, 2024). This enables ‘bridging, brokering and buffering’ to rapidly recalibrate as a crisis event occurs (Asada et al., 2020). Flexibility is demonstrated when school leaders adopt new modalities and skills such as technologies to disseminate information and take up new leadership models such as ‘digital instructional leadership, shared, and community engaged leadership’ (Arar et al., 2022: 16). This flexibility involves a willingness to anticipate change, remain open to new information and consider alternative solutions. This flexibility seems crucial to ensure that key actors within the school can respond promptly and responsively to traumatic events (Mutch, 2020).
Adaptability in leading involves being flexible and responsive to unexpected changes and challenges (McLeod and Dulsky, 2021). It is instrumental as leaders need to navigate information to provide appropriate guidance, make swift decisions and remain vigilant and responsive in a constantly changing context (Netolicky, 2020). There is a need to identify, adapt to or even predict crises in order to minimise their impact on the school (Alanezi, 2021; Lien et al., 2023). Leading practices are reflexively shaped as situations change (Yukl and Mahsud, 2010). An understanding of agile, flexible and adaptive leading practices in crisis can be beneficial for leaders who need to formulate an adaptive response (Arar et al., 2022) as there is a need to be both decisive (McLeod and Dulsky, 2021) and collaborative (Harris and Jones, 2020). Adaptability is essential for managing both the crisis itself, its impact on the school community and the perceptions of those beyond the school who have access to various media (Potter et al., 2020).
Mobilising leading practices
Table 4 details the mobilising leading practices present in 19 of the 35 studies.
Mobilising practices were reported where crisis demands exceeded individual capacity and required coordinated, expertise-aligned action. Leaders activated distributed leadership by matching roles to emergent needs (e.g., wellbeing, learning continuity, logistics, community liaison), convening teams to maintain coherence around mission and brokering external supports. Mobilisation was most contextually attuned when underpinned by relational trust and clear communication that legitimised shared authority.
There is a need for clarity (Okilwa and Barnett, 2021), coordination (Mutch, 2015b) and mutual support (Hulme et al., 2023), enabling a leadership approach that is attuned to the cadences of the disruptive event. During a crisis, the sense of urgency and unpredictability can fragment efforts if all stakeholders do not share a clear purpose. Mobilising leading practices bring individuals together around a school's core values and mission (Bishop et al., 2015). Rather than centralising all decision-making at the top, mobilising practices involve drawing from leadership potential already existing within the school community. Distributed leadership results in joint activity and joint practice (Harris, 2020). By identifying who can lead in specific domains, be it information technology for online learning continuity, emotional support for grief counselling (Mutch, 2015b) or logistics management for providing shelter, food and assessing post-event needs (Potter et al., 2010), leaders can activate these nodes of expertise. This not only expands leadership capacity but also fosters a collective sense of responsibility and agency.
Systematic leading practices
Table 5 outlines the systematic leading practices found in 23 of the 35 studies.
Systematic leading practices entail establishing and maintaining coherent frameworks, procedures and strategic planning mechanisms to guide crisis response and recovery. These practices foregrounded how schools translated urgency into organised action across phases. In the acute stage, protocols and role clarity supported rapid containment; during recovery, data use and routine rebuilding supported stabilisation; and during renewal, documentation and review enabled institutional learning. Across studies, systematic work functioned less as bureaucratic compliance and more as an enabling infrastructure for adaptive action.
Systematic leading practices ensure leaders, and their teams, can respond appropriately through a crises distinct phases: planning, event, response, recovery and renewal (Mutch, 2020). These leading practices start well before crises occur, through planning, capability development and risk assessment, and extend afterward into reflection, refinement and institutional learning (Mutch, 2015b; Ramos-Pla et al., 2021). Leaders work with colleagues to develop well-defined, flexible crisis management plans (Arar et al., 2022). Where in the early stages of the event the focus might be on safety, addressing urgent physical or emotional needs, as time passes, attention turns to restoring normal operations (Alanezi, 2021) and engaging in institutional renewal (Thornton, 2021).
Systematic leading practices also align the school's crisis response with broader educational department policies and external emergency services (MacGregor et al., 2023). Leaders gather information about the crisis's scope, potential risks and available resources (Mutch, 2015b; Potter et al., 2010). They consult guidelines, seek out district or ministry-level advice and maintain open communication with organisations such as government agencies, community partners and mental health providers (Kaul et al., 2022). Systematic leadership involves striking a balance between formal structures and the caring, responsive dimension of crisis leadership. This is the focus of the next dimension ‘visible and connected leading practices’.
Visible and connected leading practices
Table 6 details the visible and connected leading practices found in 22 of the 35 studies.
Visible and connected practices highlight the importance of different dimensions of leadership (relational, participatory and communicative), ensuring leaders remain accessible, empathetic and integrally engaged with the school community and broader networks. While adaptive, mobilising and systematic leading practices often focus on procedural, cognitive or organisational elements of crisis response, visible and connected practices centre on human connections that hold a community together during upheaval and uncertainty. Serving as a stabilising force, leaders have a visible and symbolic presence. Across studies, visible and connected practices were consistently linked to sustaining trust and organisational functioning under heightened emotion. Leaders’ presence, empathy and accessible communication helped maintain a sense of safety, counter misinformation and identify vulnerable individuals.
Visible and connected leaders understand and acknowledge these emotional landscapes openly and compassionately (Spyropoulou and Koutroukis, 2024; Thornton, 2021). Leaders reassure the community of their presence, engagement and commitment by making themselves accessible, for example, by setting up virtual ‘office hours’ or talking with staff, students and parents (Brion, 2021; MacGregor et al., 2023). By demonstrating empathy, leaders can build trust, foster solidarity and help people feel seen and valued (Iacuzzi et al., 2021; Williams and Liou, 2024). These relational practices also enabled mobilisation by strengthening willingness to collaborate and accept distributed responsibility across the school and community.
Schools are embedded in broader ecosystems that include emergency services, mental health providers, social workers, volunteer groups, parents and local businesses. Visible and connected leaders cultivate relationships with external partners to reach out proactively, exchanging timely and accurate information, seeking specialised support and coordinating resources (Mutch, 2015b; Potter et al., 2010). During traumatic events, communities look to leaders for signals that recovery is possible. Visible and connected leaders offer hope, emphasising the community's strengths and the progress made so far (Mutch, 2015b). They recognise losses, honour memories and validate pain, while also affirming the collective capacity to rebuild and learn (Okilwa and Barnett, 2021; Thornton, 2021).
Shifting practices across crisis phases
Across studies, practices shift with crisis phases. In the response phase, agile and mobilising practices dominate (rapid sense-making, role activation, safety and continuity decisions). During recovery, systematic practices become more prominent (stabilising routines, monitoring wellbeing and attendance, rebuilding capacity, refining workflows) while visible and connected practices sustain trust and relational repair. In renewal, leaders formalise learning (after-action review, documentation, updated plans and drills) and rearticulate mission and values, converting disruption into organisational memory and improved preparedness.
Signature practices for leading through crises
Leading practices during crises are human activities that emerge amidst the materiality of school sites. The intersubjective spaces of schools create enabling and constraining conditions which produce practices of leading (Wilkinson, 2021). Therefore, it is important to be agile and responsive to conditions during crises and understand how signature practices can be signposted in advance and strengthened over time. Signature leading practices were derived through an analytic process that prioritised practices that were evident in a substantial proportion of the literature and operate as enabling practices that connect with other practices across the typology, shaping decision-making, coordination and relational work across different phases of crisis response and recovery.
The literature scoped in this article suggests that leaders in crisis situations need to possess appropriate dispositions and understanding of the socio-political context to work collaboratively with other leaders and school communities to navigate events. Socio-political contexts can include governance and accountability arrangements (e.g., district/Ministry directives and compliance pressures), community trust and reputational dynamics amplified by media/social media and inequities shaping who can access support (e.g., disadvantage, marginalisation and differential exposure to risk). These conditions shape what leaders can say/do with legitimacy, which resources can be mobilised and how stakeholder expectations are negotiated during response and recovery.
To further clarify and refine the core leading practices, signature practices were identified from the data. Figures 2 and 3 elaborate signature practices of leading through crises and are linked to the initial typology. While practices overlap into different sections of the typology, they are placed in areas perceived as most prominent. This is with the exception of ‘Communication with Stakeholders’ which, due to its importance, is located in two sections of the typology. We offer the signature practices as a conceptual compass for the typology and as a tool to prompt professional learning and crisis event preparation in schools.
Model of signature practices for crisis leadership.
Explanation of signature practices of crisis leadership.
The practice architectures of leading through crises
These signature practices are configurations of sayings, doings and relatings enacted under crisis conditions. For example, agile, flexible and adaptive leading foregrounds sayings that clarify uncertainty (e.g. what we know/need next), doings that re-sequence priorities and relatings that authorise rapid delegated judgement. Mobilising leading practices, by contrast, are enacted through sayings that can align diverse actors around a shared purpose and translate values into collective action, particularly under conditions of urgency and uncertainty. The associated doings involve activating and coordinating distributed expertise, mobilising internal and external resources, and assembling teams and partnerships to address emergent needs. These practices are sustained through relatings that legitimise shared authority, strengthen lateral coordination and foster collective responsibility across professional and community boundaries, enabling the school to act as a coherent social and organisational system during crisis. Systematic leading stabilises doings (plans, routines, drills) and sayings (shared protocols) that reduce ambiguity. Visible and connected leading prioritise relatings that convey care, solidarity and moral purpose, while also shaping the cultural-discursive space in which sense-making becomes possible. Figure 3 details the characteristics of signature practices for crisis leadership.
Further research
Several studies allude to tensions that warrant closer examination. Leaders describe navigating competing demands between system-level compliance and local discretion (Kaul et al., 2022), tensions between system directives and local enactment (Hulme et al. 2023; MacGregor et al., 2023); prioritising safety while attempting to sustain the continuity of teaching (Huber and Helm, 2020); and managing their own emotional responses while maintaining composure for the benefit of others (Bishop et al., 2015; Mutch, 2015a). For instance, in Hulme et al.'s (2023) study principals reported ‘clipped wings’, with some feeling ‘vulnerable’ or ‘alone’ (161). These tensions suggest that crisis leadership involves not only the deployment of practices but also the negotiation of trade-offs with material and moral implications. The relative absence of explicit analysis of missteps, exclusionary effects or inequitable impacts represents a gap in the current evidence base. Future research would benefit from examining how particular practices can produce differential outcomes for staff and students, especially in minoritised or resource-constrained contexts.
Limitations
This review is shaped by the contours of the available literature. Of the studies, over half focus on the COVID-19 pandemic, and a substantial proportion are situated in Anglophone contexts. The dominance of pandemic-related research reflects recent global disruption, but also narrows the empirical base from which broader claims might be drawn. In addition, the reliance on studies centred on leader perceptions means that other stakeholder perspectives (students, families, community partners) are less visible. The typology should therefore be read as a synthesis of how crisis leadership is currently studied and narrated, rather than as a comprehensive representation of practice across all stakeholders, crisis types and cultural contexts.
In many of the studies included in the review, characterisations of leadership were derived from participant perceptions rather than independent outcome measures. The field is therefore shaped by retrospective and often self-reported accounts, which may privilege coherence and positive sense-making over ambiguity or failure. In this review, we treat claims of effectiveness as reported constructions within the primary studies, rather than as empirically verified outcomes. The typology developed in this article organises these reported practices. It does not adjudicate their impact. Accordingly, the typology reflects leaders’ reported practices in the literature, rather than independently validated evidence of their effectiveness. This distinction is important in a field where leadership actions are enacted under conditions of uncertainty, incomplete information and competing accountabilities.
Conclusion
The article underscores leaders’ pivotal roles during crises in educational settings. Principals may not choose to lead beyond their organisation during a crisis, yet they may be expected to take charge to address needs both within their schools and the wider community, even when they may be experiencing adversity themselves (Patterson et al., 2009). This synthesis of literature builds on previous studies (Gurr and Drysdale, 2020; Harris, 2020; Mutch, 2015a) by mapping a range of practices that leaders deploy to navigate challenging circumstances. It underscores a necessity for leading that draws on key practices (agile, flexible, mobilising, systematic, visible, connected and adaptive leading practices) when schools face disruptions from catastrophic events such as pandemics, natural disasters or school-related emergencies.
In addressing the question of which practices school leaders employ during crises, the review details swift and adaptive decision-making, clear and compassionate communication, and strategic resource management and mobilisation. Practices involve promptly identifying the crisis, understanding the situation amidst uncertainty, making key decisions, ensuring vertical and horizontal coordination within the school and with Departments of Education and key stakeholders beyond the school organisations, communicating, assisting others to make sense of the event and ultimately, evaluating and learning from the crisis to determine what was successful and what could be improved. Furthermore, leaders can manage their emotional responses and maintain calm, sustain a positive school culture that supports ongoing learning and teaching, and ensure there is care and consideration for the well-being of all stakeholders (students, staff, the community connected with the school).
The review offers theoretical insight by delineating crisis leadership as interrelated practice domains and by clarifying how these are enacted through discursive, material and relational work (Kemmis, 2024). It offers practical insight by providing a usable typology and signature practices that can guide professional learning, role allocation and after-action review. It offers policy insight by highlighting the system conditions that enable timely crisis responses, for instance, prompt guidance, coherent communication lines, resourcing for wellbeing and continuity and support for distributed leadership (especially in high-disadvantage contexts). There are also several limitations, including the predominance of studies focused on the COVID-19 pandemic and the restriction to English-language publications which together may shape the transferability of the findings across crisis types, cultural contexts and schooling systems.
Crisis leadership involves the collaborative endeavours of various stakeholders within a school community. A distributed approach to leading which focuses on practices and not just roles (Charteris et al., 2024) can leverage diverse expertise but also enhance the adaptability of the school to respond to immediate needs (Harris, 2020). While this review illuminates key aspects of crisis leadership, it also exposes gaps in the literature to understanding how leading practices are enacted across different crises and cultural contexts. Future research could explore how these crisis leadership practices might be adapted to various cultural contexts and crisis types, as well as their long-term impact on school recovery. The model of ‘Signature practices of crisis leadership (Figure 3) could inform ongoing research in conjunction with the theory of practice architectures (Kemmis, 2024) to further research crisis leadership practices in education settings. Future research could examine: (1) how leaders sequence practices across response-recovery-renewal and what supports well managed transitions; (2) how distributed leadership operates under crisis conditions with different accountability requirements and levels of uncertainty; (3) how crisis leadership practices vary across cultural and socio-economic contexts, including disadvantaged communities; and (4) how organisational learning can be institutionalised over time through documentation and revised routines. As the educational landscape continues to be shaped by predictable and unforeseen challenges, research in the field of crisis leadership for the schooling sector continues to have salience.
Footnotes
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.