Exploring School Principals’ Experiences During the First Four Months of the Pandemic as a Way to Reimagine Inclusive Education

Oct 15, 2026

Interviews with 37 Canadian school principals examined how leaders responded to students with special education needs during the COVID-19 pandemic’s first four months. The study applied critical incidents and meaning maintenance frameworks to assess how principals’ pandemic experiences can transform leadership and reimagine inclusive education. Findings grouped critical incidents into four areas: virtual family partnership and complications, innovative student-support practices, disparities created by virtual schooling, and responses to logistical and technical barriers.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages12

Reading Time30 min

AccessFree to download

Literature Review

Critical incidents and meaning maintenance framework

Emergency remote learning transition and implications for students with SEN

Stakeholder pressures and principal leadership challenges

Exploring School Principals’ Experiences During the First Four Months of the Pandemic as a Way to Reimagine Inclusive Education Daniel John Anderson, Jeffrey MacCormack1, & Steve Sider2 1 University of Lethbridge, 2Wilfrid Laurier University Abstract This study involved interviewing Canadian principals (N = 37) to determine how they responded to students with special education needs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yamamoto et al.’s (2014) concept of critical incidents and Heine et al.’s (2006) meaning maintenance model were used to evaluate the transformational power of principals’ pandemic experiences in order to reimagine inclusive education. Findings revealed that these critical incidents broadly fell into four categories: 1) family support and the complications associated with partnering with parents virtually, 2) meeting students’ needs in new and often innovative ways, 3) disparities in student experiences as a result of virtual schooling and 4) responses required in light of logistical and technical challenges. Keywords: school leadership, critical incidents, pandemic, special education needs The transition to emergency schooling, catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic, radically altered K-12 education over the span ofjust a few days. The tools and places where schooling usually happened were no longer available. Connecting with others became difficult as technology, with all its benefits and challenges, became the primary source of communication and instruction. The boundaries and responsibilities of teachers and support staff were abruptly renegotiated. Parents became frontline workers, as many of them took on instructional roles and direct supervision of their children. Under such extenuating circumstances, one might expect K-12 education to unravel, or school leaders to falter. And yet, when we interviewed 37 Canadian principals who led their schools during the first four months of the pandemic, we found they were more optimistic and hopeful than one might have expected. Although the first few months of the pandemic felt chaotic at times, when asked to reflect on the experience, principals felt it was an opportunity to reimagine and improve schooling. The unanticipated benefits of that difficult time raise an important theoretical tension for all those invested in improving public education: The role of disequilibrium in promoting educational development and improvement. The concept of “critical incidents” presented by Yamamoto and colleagues (2014) presents a lens for understanding such significant experiences, as does the work of critical education theorists and existential psychologists. In this paper, we fuse Yamamoto et al.’s (2014) concept of critical incidents with Heine et al.’s (2006) meaning maintenance model to dialectically frame how both macro and micro destabilizing experiences, particularly regarding students with special education needs (SEN), can create opportunities for improving education more broadly. We analyze the connection between the incidents experienced by our sample of Canadian principals and the learning takeaways that they reported, to consider the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic caused principals to revise their views of education, reinterpret their experiences, or pushed them to reaffirm an alternative model of education moving forward. Two guiding research questions assisted us in approaching this topic. First, what critical incidents did principals identify as influencing their leadership for students with SEN during the COVID-19 pandemic? Second, what are the implications for future practice that came from the critical incidents that principals identified? In light of our study’s findings, we posit that the disruption to education resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic has served as an opportunity to rethink schooling, particularly for students with special educational needs. Literature Review In March of 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, school staff

FAQs

How was the study conducted and who participated?

The study interviewed 37 Canadian principals to understand their responses to students with special education needs during the COVID-19 pandemic’s first four months.

What theoretical frameworks guided the analysis?

The study used Yamamoto et al.’s critical incidents concept and Heine et al.’s meaning maintenance model to evaluate how leaders’ experiences could transform inclusive education.

What four categories of critical incidents were identified?

The incidents broadly fell into: virtual family support complications, meeting students’ needs through new and innovative approaches, disparities tied to virtual schooling, and required responses to logistical and technical challenges.

Oct 15, 2026

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