Teachers’ perception of leadership styles and involvement during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, educators had to move their teaching and learning to online platforms. Such a change was unforeseen and therefore became an educational crisis. In order to execute the change in teaching strategies, teachers expect a set of behaviour and actions from their leaders to facilitate and support these changes. This survey study used the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) to investigate 124 teachers' views about their preferred and perceived effective leadership behaviour and actions that would support them and the challenges they faced with their teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Findings indicated that there was a significant difference between teachers’ preferred leadership and teachers’ perceived experience of leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. The preferred leadership style was transformational leadership.