Leadership in times of crisis: Dispositional, relational and contextual factors influencing school principals’ actions

In disaster situations, children and young people look for guidance from supportive adults. If a major crisis happens at school, they look to their principals and teachers. The expectation is that these adults will keep them safe, reassure them, reunite them with their families and help them adjust to their future circumstances. This article reports on themes drawn from interviews with four school communities as their principals led them through the events and aftermath of the 2010/2011 earthquakes in Canterbury, New Zealand. Five major earthquakes over 6 on the Richter scale, accompanied by over 12,000 aftershocks, caused major damage and on-going disruption to the city of Christchurch and surrounding districts. School principals found themselves taking on emergency management and crisis leadership roles for which they felt ill-prepared. From a constant comparative analysis of the data, this paper describes the role of school principals from immediate response, through short and mid-term recovery, to time for reflection. It uses concepts from the field of crisis leadership to frame the stories. The article concludes with a conceptual analysis which highlights three sets of factors – dispositional, relational and contextual – which help to explain the the changing role of principals in a disaster context.