While for some, digitalization is primarily associated with innovation, progress, and promising prospects for the future, the concrete design of digitality is often less promising for other people. For these individuals, the practical implementation of digital technology usually presents significant barriers. Questions of social justice and equal opportunities are becoming increasingly apparent, especially in the digital context. These issues now represent not just a theoretical concern but a complex and pressing challenge to schools as places of social reproduction.

The international comparative study ICILS 2023 and the JIM Study 2023, clearly highlight the connection between socio-economic factors and the successful use of digital media. This reveals equipment problems in schools and disparities at the second and third levels of the digital divide (Senkbeil et al. 2019). Pupils from less privileged and less educated families usually only have basic digital skills compared to those from better-off households (ibid). This social disparity in the distribution of digital skills points to the disproportion between educational opportunities and social background (ibid.). In-depth analyses of the ICILS 2018 show that some schools in challenging situations can succeed in promoting the skills of their students above average, demonstrating that the school level can have a decisive impact (Eickelmann 2023).

The fact that school leaders are recognized as having a prominent role or key position in the context of digital school development is unanimously reflected in the educational science discourse (see e.g. Schiefner-Rohs 2016; Tulowitzki et al. 2021; Gerick et al. 2023). They are seen as mediators between the regional school supervisory and the school level and can both create conditions that promote equality at the meso level and make guiding decisions for educational arrangements at the micro level. Their decisions can shape the entire school's digital culture and thus influence student outcomes significantly. A responsible attitude of school management towards educational inequality due to socioeconomic factors seems to be the starting point for reducing inequity structures and achieving inclusive media education.

A central question is how digitality in schools can be (co-)designed by the school management to fulfill the ideal of an education system that is independent of individual factors such as social background, migration background, or gender and to reduce inequity-related perspectives about media. While much attention has been paid to infrastructural access and digital skills, less focus has been placed on how students and teachers experience digitalization in everyday school life — including aspects such as perceived digital overload, unequal participation, or the broader effects of digital practices on well-being and inclusion. Against this background, a systematic literature review will be used to analyze the extent to which school leadership and digital inequality have been considered and researched together in academic discourse to date.

Initial research results show that the German-language academic discourse particularly emphasizes the theoretical and inclusive education aspects of digital school development by school leaders, while empirical studies are relatively rare. At the same time, international studies highlight that school leaders can play a central role in reducing digital inequality, especially through targeted curricular measures and technology-supported teaching strategies. The importance of critically reflecting on digital technologies in education is also emphasized to avoid unconsciously reinforcing existing social inequalities.

The structure of this scoping review is based on the Arksey and O'Malley framework and the adaptations by Levac, Colquhoun, and O'Brien (see von Elm et al. 2019). The search was conducted using this method because it is primarily intended to provide an overview of existing publications in a research area and to enable rapid identification of a research gap (Munn et al. 2018). For this reason, the keywords were strung together to form a search string that was as open as possible. In May 2024 the databases FIS Bildung, Eric and Scopus were systematically and broadly searched for academic and practice-oriented sources. The search terms were adapted and expanded in two stages, confirming the iterative nature of the study search (von Elm et al. 2019). The evaluation was carried out using the literature management software Citavi, which resulted in 4.602 mother and daughter files being imported for 4.140 search hits due to the program's properties. After the duplicate clean-up, 2.674 files could be imported into the Citavi-project. This was followed by the exclusion of 2.605 articles based on a review of the title and abstract in non-school contexts, often in a development or gender policy context, where pupils were disadvantaged due to health factors, or in connection with adult or higher education. After the full-text review, twelve literature sources were ultimately included that address the perspectives of school leaders on digital inequity, or their role, position, or actions in this context. In the final step, a subject librarian from the local university library provided advice to identify possible gaps in the research, which did not lead directly to further inclusion. However, it became clear that various previously known publications could not be identified through the systemic search, as the corresponding sources are not available in the journal lists of the databases. For this reason, the search was extended to Google, Google Scholar, and Researchgate using the keywords, which emphasizes the open nature of the search strategy and enables a further five articles to be accessed.

The analysis of German-language discourse shows that school leadership and digital inequity are primarily interconnected within the broader concept of inclusion, particularly in the context of digital school development. In this context, school leaders are assigned a significant degree of responsibility and creative agency. Nevertheless, we see that the third level of the digital divide in connection with school leadership, for example in the area of school data practice, has so far received little attention. Although research over the past five years has increasingly linked the themes of school leadership and the digital divide, there remains a critical lack of empirical studies focusing on the actions of school leaders, thus highlighting a pronounced research gap within the German context. While the existing discourse in German-speaking regions continues to emphasize the connection between school leadership responsibilities and the notions of school development and inclusion, international scholarship offers a more extensive range of empirical studies and a more nuanced understanding of disadvantage. Although the research gap is not identical to that observed in German-speaking countries, there is still a pressing need for further inquiry, particularly regarding the third level of the digital divide and the role of school management in this area. Similar to the results of Weber (2024), Studies by Fazekas (2023), Starkey et al. (2019), and Liu et al. (2024), among others, indicate that the multidimensionality of the digital divide and its implications for the school context is not sufficiently recognized by school leaders or addressed with the necessary resources and at the necessary levels. That shows a great need for further research and exchange between research and practice.

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