The mosaic of leading schools during crisis
Author Identifier (ORCID)
Abstract
Crisis situations introduce complexity, uncertainty and urgency that compel school leaders to move beyond established models and to reimagine their usual practice (Striepe and Cunningham, 2022). To navigate crisis effectively, leaders must draw upon a diverse range of approaches, strategies and personal characteristics that vary according to the crisis types and school context (e.g. Mutch, 2015; Striepe and Cunningham, 2022; Striepe and Kafa, 2025). Established leadership models are insufficient for dealing with crises. Instead, new conceptions are required to capture the demands of leading schools during times of crisis. While existing frameworks and research findings provide valuable insights, our research reveals that effective crisis leadership resembles a mosaic, where a range of elements come together to form a whole, with the specific configuration determined by crisis type, the school’s context and other contextual factors (Kafa, 2021; Striepe, 2024; Striepe et al., 2023, 2025; Virella, 2025a; Zhang, Striepe, and Cunningham, 2021). In this chapter, we present an empirically grounded framework that enhances conceptual clarity and distinguishes crisis leadership from other established leadership models and approaches, adding to understandings about what constitutes effective leadership during crises.
Keywords
crisis leadership, school leadership, crisis management, educational leadership, school resilience, crisis response
Document Type
Book Chapter
Date of Publication
2026
Publication Title
The Bloomsbury Handbook of Crisis Leadership and Management in Education
Publisher
Bloomsbury Academic
School
School of Education
RAS ID
95225
ISBN
9781350536685
Copyright
subscription content
Recommended Citation
Striepe, M., Kafa, A., & Virella, P. (2026). The mosaic of leading schools during crisis. In A. Kafa, M. Striepe, & P. M. Virella (Eds.), The Bloomsbury handbook of crisis leadership and management in education (pp. 13-30). Bloomsbury Academic. https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/bloomsbury-handbook-of-crisis-leadership-and-management-in-education-9781350536685/