Adaptive Leadership and Organizational Resilience in Early Childhood Education: Lessons from Kindergarten Responses to Systemic School Closure

Abstract

This study examines how kindergarten administrators enacted adaptive leadership during the nationwide school closure in Taiwan and how these responses contributed to emerging organizational resilience in early childhood education (ECE) settings. While pandemic-era research has documented widespread shifts to remote instruction, less is known about how leaders in routine-dependent and relationship-intensive early childhood organizations navigated systemic disruption.

Using a qualitative multiple-case design, this study draws on in-depth interviews with six administrators from four private kindergartens that implemented online learning during the 2021 closure. Cross-case analysis reveals that leaders’ work extended beyond technical implementation to include collective sensemaking, redistribution of professional roles, and sustained relational coordination with teachers and families. Although schools demonstrated considerable flexibility in adopting hybrid instructional formats, participants consistently emphasized the developmental and pedagogical constraints of online learning for young children. Organizational resilience therefore emerged less through technological substitution than through ongoing efforts to stabilize routines, support teacher adaptation, and strengthen family partnerships.

Viewed after the pandemic, the findings highlight the distinctive conditions under which adaptive leadership operates in early childhood settings. The study contributes to educational administration literature by showing that in ECE contexts, resilience is fundamentally relational and developmentally bounded. Implications are discussed for leadership preparation, crisis resilience, and future research on adaptive capacity in early childhood settings.