Curriculum Change Management Amidst Pandemic Crisis: Comparative Study of Academic Leadership in Quantity Surveying Program

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has profoundly led to unprecedented curriculum change in the higher education institutions in Malaysia. For institutions that were not used to applying online teaching and learning by its nature, the pandemic crisis has imposed a forceful demand for all to shift the existing curricula to online mode overnight, which created a huge challenge for the academic leaders. Hence, this study intended to study and contrast the curriculum change management by academic leaders resulting from the pandemic crisis, as well as the successful leadership styles in handling the crisis-driven change. The study adopted a qualitative research method via a one-to-one semi-structured online interview. Two academic leaders who managed the quantity surveying program in the higher education institutions in Sarawak and Selangor were purposely selected by the researcher to participate in this study, aided by some predefined criteria in the respondent selection. The qualitative data were analysed and deduced using thematic coding through ATLAS.ti software. The findings showed that Kotter’s 8-step framework was useful and supported curriculum change management well in the academic context during the pandemic crisis. In addition, the academic leaders were discovered to adopt a transformational leadership style in successfully handling disruptions and managing the curriculum change due to the pandemic crisis.