From leadership research to district action: “In any crisis there is an opportunity for us to learn something new”: Australian teacher experiences during COVID-19

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.

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Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: research-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

Abstract The aim of this study was to investigate the factors that supported Australian teachers to meet the needs of all learners during COVID-19 lockdowns. A qualitative design was used, and interviews were conducted with teachers who were purposely identified. The participants (n = 5) worked across different educational contexts ranging from primary to secondary school settings. The interview data were analysed using thematic analysis. Five themes were identified related to teachers’ intrinsic strengths: passion and commitment, a proactive and organised approach, enhanced flexibility, building relationships and access to online technology. A further three extrinsic supporting factors were identified: supportive school teams, supportive school leadership (empowerment, autonomy and time) and supportive school systems and structures. The implications of these findings are discussed and the need for sharing and applying learnings across the profession are emphasised as an opportunity to further improve the access of every learner to a high quality and inclusive education. Keywords: Inclusive education, Teacher resilience, Appreciative inquiry, Education and COVID-19

Study methods

Participants included five teachers from four different schools representing a range of Australian educational settings and sectors. Four teachers worked in secondary schools and one teacher in a primary school, with four teachers working in government school settings and one working in an independent school. Participants from secondary schools included teachers from a range of subject areas, including Mathematics, English, Science and Performing Arts. In addition to teaching responsibilities, all four secondary school teachers held leadership roles within their schools, with additional responsibilities for subject and year level coordination. All teachers were based in metropolitan areas, with schools servicing communities from a range of socio-economic and demographic backgrounds. Two schools were located in communities with a large number of learners from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Participating teachers included four females and one male, all with a minimum of 10 years’ experience in their role and specific experience in supporting students with additional learning needs in mainstream school settings. Participants described a range of skills and confidence in using technology to support teaching and learning prior to COVID-19, with no participants having experience with remote learning before the pandemic.

Limitations

Although this study makes an important contribution to our understanding of the factors that supported Australian teachers to provide engaging and inclusive education during COVID-19, our findings must be considered within the context of the study’s limitations. Although some participants were nominated by parents or their school’s leadership team, two participants were self-nominated, which means the experiences reported in the current study may represent the views of teachers who had more positive experiences during COVID-19, due to the nature of their individual contexts or the type of support they received in their schools. The small sample also limits the study’s capacity to generalise findings. The results, therefore, need to be considered with the caveat that they may not represent the range of views and experiences held by the broader population of Australian teachers. Similarly, the study’s focus on identifying strengths may have precluded a more detailed investigation of barriers to teachers providing inclusive and engaging education to learners during COVID-19. However, the goals of this study were to provide a more in-depth exploration of strengths and supporting factors to enable this knowledge to be shared across the profession and to further strengthen opportunities for inclusive education for all learners.

A 90-day district inquiry

Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one school improvement question with teachers. Protect a short shared planning cycle, agree an instructional change and use a common rubric for examining student work. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
Days 61–90 · Decide. Review implementation fidelity, teacher time and independently scored student work against a recorded baseline. Examine access differences and competing explanations before attributing changes to leadership. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Umesh Sharma; Stella Laletas; Fiona May; Christine Grove. “In any crisis there is an opportunity for us to learn something new”: Australian teacher experiences during COVID-19. Australian Educational Researcher (2022-08-20). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-022-00556-x

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.