School Leadership Challenges in Faroese Compulsory Schools During the COVID-19 Crisis

This qualitative study was conducted to explore the impact of COVID-19 on Faroese school leadership with a view to identifying challenges faced by leaders and assessing the efficacy of their crisis leadership in enabling a positive learning-teaching environment. The findings indicated that the challenges comprised teacher self-efficacy issues in teacher ability to adopt Information Communication Technology (ICT) to fulfil student learning outcomes, ensuring student participation and safe learning environments, teacher and leader emotional/psychological burdens and hygiene logistics. Faroese crisis leadership exhibited proactive support for teachers, helped with online teaching, offered channels of open, meaningful communication, supported teachers through active listening, accepted teacher feedback, and showed an inclusive approach to managing teaching. School leaders appeared to have stepped up to the challenge despite the crisis testing the resilience of staff, students and themselves. They reflected on what COVID-19 has taught them and have grasped the significance of the human element in crisis management. The Faroese school system may require an established framework from the National Board of Education to cope with future crisis to ensure a responsive instead of a reactive approach to maintaining core competences of schools in a challenging environment.