School Leaders Agency – the role and impact of AI.

The tasks and role attributions that school leaders are confronted with in the age of the increasing output-orientation of education systems differ significantly from those that were assigned to them just a few years ago. More and more, school leaders are expected to fulfil the role of quality manager, for example, develop staff and also carry out PR work with a public impact, to name just a few additional tasks. Numerous far-reaching - sometimes contradictory - interventions or externally driven development requirements - such as the introduction of educational standards, the mandate to pursue quality development, the introduction of standardized school-leaving examinations and diploma examinations or the introduction of new curricula - are to be transferred into guiding school structures by the actors involved and thus individual schools on site. School leaders are primarily responsible for these processes and are in a certain ‘sandwich position’, as they are supposed to carry the impulses coming from outside into the school and implement them, while at the same time balancing the resistance coming from within with concerns and plans for change. Against the background of these developments, Pashiardis and Brauckmann (2018) formulate the demand that school leaders should be so-called edupreneurial leaders with the task of transforming schools from static organizations into fluid, flexible, customer-oriented organizations. School leaders see themselves confronted with a "multiple role as change agents, knowledge brokers and procedural helpers" (Brauckmann & Eder 2019, p. 7). In this context, the question arises as to the extent to which the developments outlined above have an influence on the ability of principals to act and how they deal with these challenges, which sometimes have the potential to become highly stressful. This is a question of the agency of school leaders and the influence of AI on this agency (Human-AI Agency). Agency is understood here as the interaction between human users and AI, where both human and machine play a role in decision-making and action. (Kang & Lou, 2022)

In this contribution, the developments outlined at the beginning as examples and their influence on school management are described in more detail and the problem is then developed. These developments are then embedded in the context of the agency of the school management. Building on this, we develop the connection between AI and Agency and derive how AI can influence Agency. The contribution is followed by the empirical part, in which the methodological approach is described and the data collected is presented. The contribtuion ends with a summary article.

This contribution takes up this topic and examines the extent to which current developments in various AI solutions have the potential to support school prinicpals in the fulfilment of their tasks and thus also to relieve them and, if necessary, support them in their decisions. The results of a qualitative interview study with 10 school leaders, which we evaluated using content analysis (Mayring 2010) are presented.

We expect this study to provide answers to the question of whether and to what extent AI changes the agency of school leders - positively or negatively. For example, the specific question here is whether AI expands the decision-making autonomy of school leaders or restricts it due to possible dependencies. The use of AI could lead to school leaders relying more heavily on technological assistance systems, which raises the question of who ultimately bears responsibility for decisions. This could mean a shift towards a more collective or technocratic decision-making structure in which the agency of school leaders depends not only on their own expertise, but also on the availability and quality of AI-generated suggestions. Ultimately, this discussion leads to the question of whether the use of supporting technologies might also create room for manoeuvre that can then be used for other - more meaningful (?) - activities.

Brauckmann, S. und Eder, F. (2019). Führungsforschung im Bildungsbereich: Schulleitung im Spannungsfeld erweiterter Rechte und Pflichten. Zeitschrift für Bildungsforschung (S. 5–15), DOI: 10.1007/s35834-019-00242-6. Kang, H., & Lou, C. (2022). AI agency vs. human agency: understanding human–AI interactions on TikTok and their implications for user engagement. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 27(5). https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmac014. Mayring, P. (2010). Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse. Grundlagen und Techniken. Weinheim und Basel: Beltz Verlag. Pashiardis, P. und Brauckmann, S. (2018). New Public Management in Education: A Call for the Edupreneurial Leader? Leadership and Policy in Schools (S. 1–15), DOI: 10.1080/15700763.2018.1475575.