Session Information
26 SES 11 A, School Leadership in the New Era of Digital Educational Development: Emerging Perspectives and Challenges
Symposium
Contribution
Nowadays, both society and school organizations have become extensively digitized (Håkansson Lindqvist & Pettersson, 2019). Even if the use of technology in education has been prevalent since 1989 (U.S. Department of Education, 1996), the unexpected health crisis of COVID-19 led to a further significant surge in the usage of technology and digitalization in all school organizations across the globe. Particularly, the COVID-19 health crisis affected school organizations worldwide and changed the overall educational landscape, with nearly 1.6 billion students in more than 200 countries (Pokhler & Chhetri, 2021; UNESCO, 2020), and disrupted the way in which these students are educated. More precisely, school organizations were requested to adjust their educational materials and teaching methodologies, by transforming their teaching practice into a distance or online environment, in order to address the demands of this unknown situation and period of uncertainty. In this particular frame of digital educational development, school leaders must maintain their leadership dynamic, lead, coordinate, and facilitate their school organizations. Yet, up until now, literature has demonstrated the lack of school leaders’ preparation and leadership on digital education (e.g. Afshari et al., 2012). Since this health crisis brought to the surface the important aspect of digital education, the European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice (2019) in the report "Digital Education at School in Europe" mentioned that countries need to continually review and develop new strategic policies and measures to meet the new demands for high quality digital education. In fact, based on the report, half of the European education systems are currently reforming the curriculum related to digital competence, and only one third of the education systems have current measures for promoting school leaders’ roles in this digital transformation. Furthermore, according to a study conducted by Hkansson Lindqvist and Pettersson (2019), school leaders perceive digitalization as a broad and complex concept that encompasses many aspects of organizational management, including technical, pedagogical, administrative, and organizational challenges. Based on the aforementioned, this symposium will report on school leaders’ utilization of digital technologies both in autonomous and less autonomous educational systems (centralized and decentralized education systems) and present the technological challenges arising from this crisis, as well as the obstacles derived from the lack of digital capacity of school leaders. Following the health crisis, Tulowitzki, Gerick, and Eickelmann (2022) emphasized the significant role of school leaders as important drivers of innovation on ICT-related topics, whereas Hkansson, Lindqvist, and Pettersson (2019) argued for the need for school leaders to have a broad and comprehensive digital competency. This conference will thus offer a novel viewpoint on the subjects of school leadership and technology/digitalization by presenting data from Greece, Australia, Cyprus, and the United States.
References
Afshari, M., Bakar, K.A., Luan, W.S. & Siraj, S. (2012). Factors affecting the transformational leadership role of principals in implementing ICT in schools. Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology, 11(4), 164-176. Håkansson Lindqvist, M. & Pettersson, F. (2019). Digitalization and school leadership: on the complexity of leading for digitalization in school. International Journal of Information and Learning Technology, 36(3), 218-230. Pokhler, S. & Chhetri,R. (2021). A Literature Review on Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Teaching and Learning. Higher Education for the Future, 8(1), 133-141. Tulowitzki, P., Gerick, J. and Eickelmann, B. (2022). The role of ICT for school leadership and management activities: an international comparison. International Journal of Educational Management, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEM-06-2021-0251 UNESCO (2020, April 15). COVID-19 Impact on education. Retrieved June 20, 2020 from https://en.unesco. org/covid19/educationresponse. U.S. Department of Education. (1996), “Getting America’s students ready for the 21st century: meeting the technology literacy challenge. A report to the nation on technology and education”, available at: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED398899.pdf. (accessed 15 December 2021).
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