School leadership and information literacy: leading in crisis and beyond COVID-19

This chapter explores the significance of information literacy within leadership practice in schools and its implications for school leadership during a crisis such as COVID-19. Education, and more specifically schooling, has faced many calls for change and accountability. Discourses of school improvement, twenty-first century learning, and technology have driven multiple agendas seeking to transform schooling, even as the purpose and impact have remained points of debate. Each of these agendas contributes to an increasingly dense volume and complexity of information to be processed and enacted by school leaders. While not the first crisis for school leaders, COVID-19 challenged many day-to-day aspects of school life. The speed, impact, and levels of uncertainty addressed by school leaders, during such times of crisis, highlighted the significance of information literacy as critical to leadership practice. This chapter draws on data from two different case studies of school leaders, one pre-COVID and one during COVID-19, both providing illustrations of leadership during crisis. The illustrative examples provide insight into how school leaders currently enact information literate practice as a means of developing sustainable leadership.