As Tierney (2019) has pointed out, natural hazards are becoming increasingly frequent, devastating occurrences across the globe. Educational researchers have engaged with the risk and effects of hazards including floods, earthquakes and fires by focusing on the physical vulnerability of educational institutions and their hazard protection infrastructure (e.g. Ochola, Eitel and Olago 2010, Schulze et al. 2020), emergency preparedness in terms of risk perception and awareness, contingency plans and checklists (e.g. Momani and Salmi 2012, Marincioni and Fraboni 2011, Soffer et al. 2009), the effects of disasters on academic achievement (e.g. Doyle, Lockwood, Comiskey 2017), students’ psychological and physical health (e.g. Tapsell and Tunstall 2008), and curriculum provision in terms of delivering planned educational content (e.g. Convery, Carroll and Balogh 2014). This presentation will contribute to a missing link in the reviewed disasters and education research landscape: how disasters affect schools as organisations and what enhances their resilience. In doing so, the presentation will reflect on the concept of organisational resilience, which has been used by scholars to conceptualise the ability of organizations to anticipate disasters, productively cope with them and learn and grow from the experience. The concept of organizational resilience is not without its critics, and has been portrayed as ambiguous and “fuzzy” (Hillman and Guenther, 2021), akin to the more general concept of “resilience”. Contributing to this fuzziness, according to Hillman and Guenther (2021), are its multiple definitions, its relation to different context-specific phenomena, its single and yet also multi-level nature, and its heterogeneity across organizations. Against this background, and drawing on the work of Vakilzadeh and Haase (2021), Orru et al. (2021), and Ball’s (2012) discussion of the “micro-politics of the school”, the presentation will forward a critically-informed sociological concept of organisational resilience as an analytical tool for exploring the empirically neglected internal politics and dynamics of schools, as well as the external framework conditions shaping them ahead of, during and following states of “rupture”. Organisational resilience encapsulates interwoven aspects of formal and informal school life that can be subsumed under the categories of organizational structure and procedures, school infrastructure, equipment, and the skills required for benefitting from it, school finances, school organizational culture with an emphasis on values, social relations among staff, social relations between staff and external collaborators, leadership, and external political, social and economic dynamics. In terms of the latter, as Ball (2012) notes, a question needs to be raised about “the extent to which the internal dynamics of an organization are independent of, conditioned or determined by, outside forces” (2012, pp. 247). Accordingly, the objective of the presentation is to provide insight into the foci of existing research on education and disasters (largely conducted outside Europe, in the USA and countries of the Global South), and to reflect on the concept of organisational resilience in an educational setting by drawing on findings from a multiple-case study approach which explored how schools in Croatia coped with the effects of disasters. Study insights will be compared and contrasted with similar research studies in Europe and beyond.

Similar to Tipler et al.’s (2018) study on how schools in Christchurch New Zealand responded to the effects of an earthquake, the study reported in this presentation used a multiple-case study approach in order to explore how three schools in Croatia had been affected by disasters. According to Jensen and Rodgers’ (2001, p. 237-239) case study typology, this is an example of comparative case study research where multiple case studies are used for cross-unit comparison, thus enabling an intensive investigation of several instances of the researched phenomenon. The selected public primary schools suffered significant physical damage during a disastrous event: two were affected by an earthquake in 2020 and one by a flood in 2014. Two main methods of data collection were used. Semi-structured interviews were carried out in June and September 2022 with school principals and teachers from each of the three schools (20 in total). These interviews followed an interview guide informed by the concept of organizational resilience, while also incorporating questions raised in conversation with the study participants. In addition, appreciative inquiry (Cooperrider and Srivastva 1987) was used with interviewed school staff. Appreciative inquiry is a method aimed at contributing to organisational learning and change rooted in the experiences of those participating in the life of the organisation. In the researched schools it took the form of day-long workshops that involved school staff in a series of activities aimed at encouraging collaborative reflection on the effects of the disaster and contributing to the development of a joint school resilience plan. Activities included group drawing of a time-line of school life prior to and immediately following the disaster as well as present-day school life, a group discussion on school values, and co-writing in pairs a vignette on the most significant change in school life experienced as a result of the disaster. According to Tierney (2019, pp. 113), ethical questions regarding what is owed to participants in research can be especially poignant in the case of disaster studies. In the reported study, appreciative inquiry was used as a method of data collection grounded in collaboration and dialogue, but also as a tool for enhancing reciprocity. The use of this participatory approach in exploring the effects of disasters in education is a contribution to methodological diversity in educational research since reviewed studies in this field predominantly use survey and interview data.

Thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2021) will be used in order to identify how schools as organizations have been affected by disasters and what enhanced or weakened their resilience. Preliminary findings suggest that school displacement due to damage to the school building, or having to house a displaced school, were the most significant disruptions to schools that required a reshuffling of organisational procedures, a process underpinned by both resentment and gratitude. Disasters also appear to expand teacher roles and affect social relations among staff. For instance, many teachers recounted having to undertake physical labour to help school recovery. Divisions and tensions between those who were more and those who were less involved in recovery were highlighted in one school in particular. An urge for continuity and “going back to how things were” in the school was initially a priority for the study participants, though many shared a realization that “things would never be the same again” and that disasters were a push for reinvention. Unlike many other studies which have examined the effects of disasters on schools and focussed on building resilience in terms of strengthening physical infrastructure and developing and implementing disaster management plans, preliminary findings of the reported study suggest that building school resilience also requires subtler processes, including relationship building within schools and beyond and working on the conceptually-evasive “spirit” of the school. Organisational resilience is put forward as a useful analytical tool for engaging with the ability of schools to prepare for disasters, productively cope with them and learn and improve from the experience, but with the disclaimer that it should be treated as a flexible tool, rather than a prescription, in order to encapsulate “the peculiar nature of schools as organizations” (Ball, 2012, pp. 7).

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