Educational leadership in times of crisis: lessons learned and the future of higher education in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The right to education is fundamental, serving as the cornerstone for personal and societal changes. In this context, educational leadership plays a primary and significant role. Higher education (HE) leadership focuses at all times and especially in crises largely on decision-making affecting the pedagogical approaches and the quality of education. The responsibility, therefore, placed on higher educational institutions even under normal circumstances is quite considerable, let alone during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. In the beginning, and with each intermittent resurgence, the pandemic challenged and moved the boundaries of educational leadership globally in an unprecedented way highlighting the need for Higher Educational Institutes (HEIs) to assess and reorient leadership attitudes and behaviours in the delivery of quality education. In this milieu, Sri Lanka provides a unique example of a country that has weathered a health crisis since 2020 with a ripple effect in educational, social, and economic spheres and endured a state higher education sector that was already beleaguered for decades by pedagogical, administrative, unemployment, militant faction and violence-related crises and challenges. The primary objective of the chapter is to examine the higher educational leadership of state and affiliated universities in Sri Lanka during the COVID-19 pandemic in the backdrop of the ongoing three-fold and related crises from 2020 to 2023 to highlight leadership initiatives (or lack thereof) in facing crises from HEI administrative, academic, and student (including students with disabilities) angles in the delivery of education in tandem with pre-existing ‘crises’. It includes the educational, social, and economic repercussions in its aftermath through accommodations and adaptations of university administrators, teachers, and students using primary and secondary data. Accordingly, the Chapter recommends as viable the crisis leadership framework proposed by Ralph Gigliotti in 2017 to surmount current and future crises and challenges while mitigating pre-existing ones.

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DOI

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-54509-2_26

Repository URI

https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/327976/