Youll never walk alone: exploring how ethical leadership practices facilitates in leveraging teachers work engagement during a crisis

Sharmini Siva Vikaraman

Abstract

This small-scale study uses a descriptive qualitative approach to explore how ethical leadership practices among school leaders is facilitating in leveraging teachers’ work engagement during a global crisis. In recent times, school leaders’ support and practices in tackling global crisis predicaments are highly questioned. School leaders are to bear primary responsibilities to ensure the well-being of their workforce while they work from home. This study has decided to revisit and reestablish ethical leadership among school leaders limiting it to four dimensions – people orientation, ethical guidance, power sharing and fairness. A concern on how the four dimensions have impacted teachers work engagement – vigor and dedication, was investigated. A descriptive questionnaire was employed online. 63 teachers delineated the respondents’ perception on the support received for their optimum work performance. The questionnaire included 18 items with a 4 scale Likert response and 4 open-ended questions pertaining to the practice of ethical leadership, work engagement, leader responsibility and teacher well-being during a global crisis. The respondents had an opportunity to share their perception of the school leaders’ practices which had the potentials to support their work engagement while working from home. The findings indicate that exploring ethical leadership practices is significant in leading teachers to better work engagement while working from home especially during a crisis. The results can serve as a basis for school leaders to find alternative organizational leading measures when situated in a global crisis context that will facilitate teacher well-being before it was neglected at any cause.

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