There is nowadays a wealth of evidence linking educational leadership to student outcomes (Grissom et al., 2021). School leaders influence teacher capacity, motivation and working conditions which then in turn affect classroom instruction and student performance (Leithwood et al., 2017). Additionally, school leaders have long been identified as “change agents” (Fullan, 1993) that can act as gatekeepers or drivers of innovation in schools (Hall & Hord, 2019). These innovations include ICT usage in schools. Here, school leaders have been shown to influence teachers’ knowledge and usage (Dexter, 2018). This has been linked to the competencies and usage patterns of principals and to their leadership approaches (for example Navaridas-Nalda et al., 2020). Generally speaking, instructional leadership has been shown to be beneficial for the quality of classroom instruction and student learning in the anglophone world (Robinson et al., 2009), with some scholars questioning the effectiveness of this approach in other contexts (Klein et al., 2022). As the integration of digital technologies into classroom practices can significantly alter teaching and learning (De Florio-Hansen, 2018), it stands to reason that instructional leadership practices nowadays might need to include or integrate aspects of digitization in order to have a beneficial impact on classroom instruction and student learning. ICT-related competencies of teachers and student might especially benefit from such adapted leadership practices.

However, corresponding research is rare, with some scholars even stating that the “field has no knowledge of digital instructional leadership” (Berkovich & Hassan, 2022, p. 1). Existing contributions are often aimed at practitioners (Sorenson et al., 2016) or rely solely on self-reported data from school leaders (for example Nurabadi et al., 2022). Additionally, such contributions tend to focus on the competencies or attitudes of school leaders. Contributions analyzing the (possible) influence of digital instructional leadership on teaching practices or student learning as well as studies of leadership (practices) that take into account multiple perspectives (for example data from school leaders and from teachers) are lacking. This lack is even more poignant when it comes to contributions making use of large, international datasets.

An international understanding of how school leaders use ICT and how they might influence ICT integration in schools seems especially important as the pandemic has highlighted the potential of ICT in schooling but also – in many countries – that the current state of integration in many countries leaves room for improvement (Karakose et al., 2021; Ramos-Pla et al., 2021).

This contribution and the underlying study were designed to fill in some of the gaps mentioned before. The aim was to study digital instructional leadership, how it might be perceived by school leaders and teachers and its possible effects on inner-school factors. The following research questions guided the research:

1. How is instructional leadership in a digital world perceived by school principals and teachers in Germany and to what extent do the perceptions of school principals and teachers differ?
2. What are the effects of digital instructional leadership on various inner-school factors as well as on student learning?

To answer the research question, secondary analyses of data from the International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS 2018) are used. The ICILS 2018 study is an international comparative school achievement survey that was conducted in 2018 in its second cycle (Eickelmann et al., 2019). The focus is on the computer-based measurement of computer and information literacy of eighth graders in Germany in an international comparison as well as the assessment of the framework conditions of acquisition via extensive background questionnaires for the stakeholder groups teachers, IT coordinators, and school administrators (Mikheeva & Meyer, 2020; Vennemann et al., 2021). The focus of this paper is on the information from the administrators and the teacher questionnaire. To operationalize instructional leadership in a digitized world, national supplements (6 items), which were only used in Germany, are used. Those 6 items were used in the administrators as well the teacher's questionnaire to be able to compare both perspectives (research question 1). Secondary analyses are used to answer the previously formulated research questions using descriptive statistics (research questions 1) as well as correlation analyses and structural equation modeling (research question 2). The complex data structure is taken into account by using the IEA IDB analyzer as well as the software Mplus. Since the ICILS 2018 sample design for schools is designed to obtain best possible samples and estimates at the student and teacher level, the school-level data, and thus the data from school administrators, are considered to be characteristics of teachers and students respectively, i.e., the data from school principals are weighted to the teachers as well as for students. The analysis sample for this contribution comprises an average of n = 2,328 teachers and n = 3,655 students.

In summary, the findings show for research question 1 that school administrators in Germany themselves perceive their leadership actions to be more pronounced than teachers perceive them to be. This is particularly the case for the perception of providing support for teachers who have difficulties with the use of ICT in the classroom. Results for research question 2 show very small positive effects of digital instructional leadership on various factors relevant to student learning, notably teachers’ ICT-related self-efficacy as well as on the emphasis of teachers promoting computer and information literacy in their teaching. However, no significant direct effects between digital instructional leadership and students’ computer and information literacy could be identified. This possibly indicates that while school leaders might play a significant role when it comes to influencing the ICT competencies and usages of teachers, their influence does not extend to students (not even indirectly). It’s possible that teachers who enjoy a high degree of autonomy in Germany act as a “buffer” for any possible impact school leaders might have. If this were the case, then successful professional development for school leaders related to ICT should not focus (much) on using ICT for instructional purposes (as the influence of school principals on teachers in Germany might be too limited in this area), but more on fostering a whole school digital strategy. These results as well as further findings will be presented and discussed against the background of current European discourses on the role of instructional leadership in the context of the digitalization of schools and teaching (including Tulowitzki et al., 2022).

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