Session Information
26 SES 11 A, School Leadership in the New Era of Digital Educational Development: Emerging Perspectives and Challenges
Symposium
Contribution
The forced implementation worldwide of online education due to the Covid pandemic has resulted in an unprecedented increase in the use of information technologies in schools and a surfacing of a new form of leadership, digital leadership. Being a digital educational leader requires the ability to use information technology, to understand the dynamics of organizational change, to promote a vision about the role of technology integration and its functions in schools, and to create opportunities for relevant professional growth (e.g. Blau & Presser, 2013). Today’s leaders must be socially and digitally connected through technology and must facilitate a similar engagement by all stakeholders. Although the term “e-leadership” has been around since the early 2000s, the term “digital leadership” has emerged only recently, propelled by emerging opportunities to apply technology while working and leading from remote sites. Although online schooling existed before Covid, it was limited in scope and far from being a mainstream approach (Saultz & Fusarelli, 2017). This condition changed drastically during the pandemic, when most, if not all, schools around the world engaged to varying degrees in virtual and online learning – prompting the emergence of digital forms of leadership. These developments led to questions about optimizing the delivery and assessing the effectiveness of digital leadership in schools. These concerns, in turn, have spawned related studies in many school systems around the globe (Pollock, 2020), especially in jurisdictions that have yet to widely utilize technological means for teaching and learning. One such jurisdiction is Greece. Although the Greek school system has made huge strides in the last decade towards incorporating various echnologies in teaching and learning, school leadership is still being exercised in traditional ways. However, this changed drastically during the Covid lockdown, when whole schools were forced to shift their operations to online, distance and with no previous experience or time for adequate training, Greek school principals suddenly had to become digital leaders. With this phenomenological/hermeneutic study, I look into the lived experiences of a selected number of Greek school principals as they traversed the unfamiliar pathed road to digital leadership. Specifically: a) How do principals make sense of their role as digital leaders? b) How did they experience digital leadership? c) How effective do they believe this form of leadership is for Greek schools? d) What are the facilitators, obstacles, and limitations of digital leadership?
References
Blau, I. & Presser, O. (2013). e-Leadership of school principals: Increasing school effectiveness by a school data management system. British Journal of Educational Technology, 44 (6): 1000–1011. Pollock K. (2020). School leaders’ work during the COVID-19 pandemic: A two-pronged approach. International Studies in Educational Administration 48(3): 38–44. Saultz. A. and Fusarelli, L.D. (2017). Online schooling: A cautionary tale. Journal of School Choice 11(1): 29–41.
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