The pandemic crisis triggered periods of uncertainty in all educational contexts, including school organizations, and changed the overall educational landscape. Specifically, more than one billion learners in more than 200 countries (Pokhler & Chhetri, 2021; UNESCO, 2020) were affected by this particular crisis, since the concepts of teaching and learning were re-designed and dramatically altered (Harris, 2020). Recent empirical studies indicated that the pandemic crisis placed pressure on teachers and school principals (e.g., Walls & Seashore, 2021), and based on this unprecedented change, school principals’ roles were altered and redefined (Harris, 2020; Netolicky, 2020, Harris & Jones, 2020). In fact, school principals were responsible for addressing the challenges presented by the crisis in their schools and constantly had to review their leadership status (Drysdale & Gurr, 2017).  Moreover, school principals had an important role to play concerning the outbreak of the pandemic crisis and emerged as a significant source of influence (Harris, 2020; Netolicky, 2020; Kafa, 2021) in order to maintain their leadership dynamic and guidance to navigate through this particular crisis. In general, during any crisis, constituents look up to their leaders to protect them and deal with the crisis in order to address any possible consequences (Ansell & Boin, 2019). Even if the world is still dealing with this particular invisible enemy, future steps in school principals’ skills and capacity building in the post pandemic era must be taken into consideration. Based on the aforementioned statement, this particular paper explores the developmental framework of school principals’ skills capacity, based on both the conceptual and empirical status of the educational leadership field in the last two years (2020-2021).  

A thorough review of the literature (2020–2021) was conducted in order to elicit information, leading to the developmental framework of school principals’ skills capacity in the post-pandemic era. In particular, we obtained data both from a theoretical and conceptual perspective, as well as from an empirical perspective. The collected literature data from topics related to school leadership and issues arising from the pandemic crisis were analyzed into themes in both cases.It is important to acknowledge that limited empirical research has been done since the first wave of this pandemic crisis (Huber & Helm, 2020). In fact, at the very beginning of the crisis, the literature included a conceptual perspective on the topic rather than an empirical one. As researchers mentioned (e.g., Harris, 2020; Huber & Helm, 2020), at the beginning of 2020, the research field in this context was in its early stages, as the pandemic went through a second wave and the challenges continued to exist. Following that, at the end of 2020 and the year 2021, empirical research came to the surface, and empirical data presented a holistic approach on school principals’ role and challenges during this particular crisis. Based on the aforementioned, the combination of both conceptual and empirical data presents the future directions of school principalship in a post -pandemic era.

Based on both the conceptual and empirical review of the literature, the following developmental framework of school principals’ skills in the post-pandemic era will be presented: • Crisis management skills • Holistic leadership skills (leadership skills, entrepreneurial skills, structuring skills, health and safety skills) • Digital/ Technological skills • Pedagogical reinforcement skills • Phycological reinforcement skills In general, we will argue about the importance of the aforementioned school principals’ skills in the post-pandemic era and support the implementation of trainings/ seminars etc. with the participation of governmental and other private bodies (e.g. private companies, government agencies, universities) specializing in various aspects of supporting the development of school principals’ skills in the post-pandemic era.

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