Additional information
by Fern Aefsky (Editor)
Educational leaders must be prepared to lead during crisis. Leadership has been challenged with multiple crisis in recent years, including issues of school safety, school shootings, medical crises such as SARs, HINI, and the ongoing pandemic. While each of these situations has resulted in multiple plans of actions, none has impacted our society as the current pandemic (COVID19) has, in terms of immediacy of needs and actions.
School and district leaders are in charge of managing many stakeholders, circumstances and have the authority and responsibility to lead with ethical behavior (Al Habusi, Ismail & Omar, 2018). Integrity, resilience, fairness help guide the components of ethical leadership that leaders need to model, communicate, and use as a framework for implementing and sustaining change in organizations (Hegarty & Moccia, 2018).
This book is targeted for leaders of educational systems, school buildings and those leaders of organizations that are connected in some way to educational systems and schools at all levels. The educational issues raised by the COVID pandemic, began in March 2020. The leadership needs identified throughout this crisis exemplifies many of the issues of crisis management, that is applicable to other issues, such as school violence, school safety, accidents and deaths that occur in every district.
Author Biography
Fern Aefsky has over 35 combined years of experience in PK-12 schools as a teacher and administrator and at the university level, working in leader preparation programs. She is a fulltime professor and director of graduate studies in education at Saint Leo University. Her areas of research and specialization are focused on collaborative leadership supportive of partnerships with all stakeholders to improve student outcomes through the lens of practitioners' realities.
