26. Educational Leadership
Paper
Leading Digitalization in Preschool Education - Principals’ Professional Development through Action Research
Emelie Johansson
Karlstad university, Sweden
Presenting Author: Johansson, Emelie
Diversity and differentiation are in various ways critical aspects of education. Equality was one of the driving forces of establishing a unified school system in Sweden during the 60’s, as well as the formation of the public preschool and the formation initiatives towards the (Richardson, 2010). Further, problems in differentiation was one of the reasons for decentralizing the Swedish school system during the 90’s. The idea was to move the power closer to the local schools, to take the local context and needs into account when leading schools. Diversity in leading was supposed to increase equivalence through differentiation (Jacobsson, 2017). Contrary to the ambition, differences in the local contexts has come to be consider a threat to equivalent education.
The decentralization, and succeeding reforms, have affected the role of the school leader, by regulations of the school leader’s work as well as regulations of the schools in which they lead.
In response to the European commission’s (2014) initiatives for entrepreneurship education, the Swedish government adopted a national digitalization strategy for the Swedish school system (2017), with visions of the Swedish schools at the forefront of using the opportunities of digital technology. The policy expresses expectations on principals to lead digital development at their local schools. In addition, the revised version of the Swedish preschool curricula also clarifies principals’ responsibility of leading school development and create conditions for teachers to enact the new policy in educational practice. This indicates that principals are the ones responsible to develop education, by using the opportunities of digital technology.
Researchers, as well as political representatives, implies that school leaders, in their roles as facilitators of educational reforms and policy, are the ones with possibilities to develop future education (Huber & Muijs, 2010; Leithwood, Sun, & Pollock, 2017; Pont, Nusche, & Moorman, 2008). Competent school leaders are said to be the ones who meet political requirements with a focus on education, a work that requires that school leaders continuously develop their own leading practice to adapt policy to the prerequisites of the local schools. Interpreting policy in educational practice requires professional knowledge and connects to school leaders’ professional development. Although research on school leaders’ professional learning has increased, it mainly concentrate on training programmes for new principals and crucial aspects of learning in these programmes. Research on school leaders’ continuous professional development is insufficient (Aas & Blom, 2017) and more knowledge is required about the processes, in which school leaders develop their understandings of leading in relation to societal changes. Not least, research on continuous professional development in collaboration with other school leaders.
This study focuses on school leaders’ professional development in a collaborative action research project, aiming to develop knowledge of how to lead digitalization in preschool education.
The theory of practice architectures (Kemmis et al. 2014) is used to examine what happens in the professional development practice when the principals develop their knowledge of how to lead digitalization in preschool education. The theory of practice architectures encompasses arrangements of three different kinds. Cultural-discursive arrangements are the sayings of a practice, mediated through language and discourses, used in and about a practice. Material-economic arrangements are resources that shape the doings of a practice, mediated in activity and work as doings. It includes the physical environment, human and non-human entities, schedules, money and time. Social-political arrangements are shaping how people relate to other people and to non-human objects, mediated in the social space as rules, hierarchies, solidarities and other relationships.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThis study is part of a collaborative action research project about leading digitalization in preschool education. The researcher and 14 principals, working in a municipality in Sweden, participated in the two-year project. The work followed the cyclic process of action research, alternating actions in the principal’s leading practices, as well as the researcher’s actions of communicating analyzes of the process, and conversations in focus groups. A process aiming to generate practice-oriented knowledge.
The theory of practice architecture model by Kemmis et al. (2014) was a transformative resource in the work process, as a tool used in the ongoing analyzes of the communicative practice between the meetings. The theory of practice architectures was also used in the analysis of the empirical data, consisting of recordings of focus group conversations. The conversations were transcribed and analyzed to identify changes in the (sayings, doings, relatings) of the action research practice and to analyze how different arrangements affected the practice.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe tentative results describe leading as relational practice. In order to understand how to lead digitalization in preschool education, the principals had to develop their understandings of digitalization as phenomena. They did so by relating to a book that used digitization and digitalization as a pair of related concepts to help distinguish between technical and social aspects of technological development. Further, the principals discussed how the technological development might change preschool practice in the future. Reflecting back on how technology have changed other practices through history made the principals re-think digitalization as a technological process, instead of a programme to insert in preschool education. This in turn changed the ways the principals related to the preschool teachers. It also changed how the principals understood the leading practice and how they organized for educational change.
The results of the study also analyzes how different arrangements enabled and constrained the professional development. The principals also described their leading practice as constituted by other practices, for example, the municipality management, municipal and national politics, the action research practice, as well as experiences from practices of their private life.
Leading as a practice is aiming to create conditions for other practices. School leaders need to develop their understandings of policy and societal changes in relation to the site of the teacher’s teaching practice and the children’s learning practice. It is about managing diversity at various levels. This study contributes with knowledge of arrangements that enable and constrain school leaders’ professional development by providing insight into the process of the school leaders’ professional development practice.
ReferencesAas, M., & Blom, T. (2017). Benchlearning as professional development of school leaders in Norway and Sweden. Professional development in education, 44(1), 62-75.
European Commission, Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry, (2014). Entrepreneurship education : a guide for educators, Publications Office. https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2769/51003
Huber, S.G., & Muijs, D. (2010). School leadership effectiveness: The growing insight in the importance of school leadership for the quality and development of schools and their pupils. In: Huber, S. (eds) School leadership - International perspectives. Studies in educational leadership, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht.
Jacobsson, K. (2017). Processer och motorer i lokalt skolförbättringsarbete (Karlstad University Studies, 2017:11) [Doktorsavhandling]. Karlstads universitet.
Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Hardy, I., Grootenboer, P. & Bristol, L. (2014). Changing education, changing practices. Singapore: Springer.
Leithwood, K., Sun, J., & Pollock, K. (Eds.). (2017). How school leaders contribute to student success: The four paths framework (Vol. 23). Springer.
Pont, B., Moorman, H., & Nusche, D. (2008). Improving school leadership (Vol. 1, pp. 1-199). Paris: OECD.
Richardson, G. (2010). Svensk utbildningshistoria: skola och samhälle förr och nu (8. rev. uppl.). Studentlitteratur.
Sveriges regering, Utbildningsdepartementet (2017). Nationell digitaliseringsstrategi för skolväsendet. Bilaga till regeringsbeslut I:1, 2017-10-19. https://www.regeringen.se/4aa9d5/contentassets/72ff9b9845854d6c8689017999228e53/nationell-digitaliseringsstrategi-for-skolvasendet.pdf
26. Educational Leadership
Paper
School Websites – a Missed Opportunity for Digital Leadership?
Sonja Beeli-Zimmermann, Melodie Burri, Anne-Sophie Ewald, Evelyne Wannack
Pädagogische Hochschule Bern, Switzerland
Presenting Author: Beeli-Zimmermann, Sonja;
Burri, Melodie
Educational leadership encompasses a multitude of tasks in diverse settings – a situation which has been rendered even more complex by recent technological developments (Håkansson Lindqvist & Pettersson, 2019). In this context, it is of interest how school leaders deal with the respective demands. Numerous studies focus on the role and relevance of school leaders in the integration of technology (for critical reviews see Dexter & Richardson, 2019; or Waffner, 2021). Much of this work approaches the theme from a classroom or student learning perspective, yet the employed frameworks also include other aspects such as a school’s vision of using digital technology or individuals’ mindsets or competences. One aspect that is dealt with differently in these frameworks is that of communication and cooperation. While it can be considered to be included in domains such as a school’s organization, administration or culture, as identified in the six frameworks presented by Waffner (2021), it constitutes a separate domain in the framework employed by Dexter and Richardson (2019). Communicating and cooperating with various stakeholders is one of the key tasks of school leaders and technological developments have opened up numerous new communication channels that have also been adopted by schools. In our contribution, we ask how school leaders in Switzerland use school websites in managing school-family relations, thereby focusing on communication as one area of school leadership which has received little attention in the context of technology integration.
To date, existing empirical work addressing school-family relations and digital media is fragmented and much of it focuses on specific tools, for example on text messages (Goodall, 2014) but also websites (Gu, 2017). Key insights include that due to their specific characteristics, digital technologies change the school-family relationship (Thompson et al., 2015) and have the potential for a more systematic inclusion of parents (Olmstead, 2013). School leadership issues are hardly explicitly treated in these studies. Therefore, in order to adequately address our research question, we draw upon concepts from the following three fields of research: (1) digitalization; (2) school leadership, and (3) school-family relations:
(1) Dealing with technological developments can be described in three broad phases (1) integration, where new technologies are integrated into routines without fundamentally altering them; (2) modification, where existing practices are enlarged or changed; and (3) transformation, which occurs when revolutionary changes take place (among others: Puentedura, 2013).
(2) Dexter and Richardson (2019) make use of a general model of effective school leaders’ practices (Hitt and Tucker, 2016 in Dexter & Richardson, 2019) when critically reviewing the integration of technology in schools. Their model consists of the five domains, namely: establishing and conveying the vision; facilitating a high-quality learning experience for students; building professional capacity; creating a supportive organization for learning and connecting with external partners. More generally, numerous authors stress that leading schools in the digital age requires leaders to not only integrate technology into the classroom, but also transform schools from an organizational and administrative perspective, therefore calling for digital leadership (among others: Schiefner-Rohs, 2016).
(3) The frame of reference for capturing school-family relations is Epstein’s (1987) model of overlapping spheres of influence on children’s learning. In the context of Switzerland, the respective responsibilities have traditionally been clearly separated and efforts towards a more partnership-oriented approach are limited (Egger et al., 2015).
Our contribution, therefore, aims to add to the fragmented knowledge on how school leaders manage digital communication in school-family relations in the context of Switzerland, a country with a highly decentralised school system. We will present data from an ongoing research project focusing on school websites, relying on data gathered through interviews with school personnel.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedIn our project investigating school websites in German-speaking Switzerland, we adopted a multi-method approach based on three sources of data: (1) school websites (40 schools); (2) in depth, problem centred interviews (Witzel & Reiter, 2012) with school personnel (eight schools) and (3) short, semi-standardised interviews with parents (seven schools). This contribution focuses on the data gathered in the interviews with school personnel, mostly school principals. These interviews were conducted in person by two members of the research team and lasted between 33 and 100 minutes. They covered three areas, namely the background of the school’s website (history, maintenance, etc.); specific aspects of the current website as they were identified in the analysis thereof, and general topics such as the school’s approach to school- family relations and its integration of information technology.
To achieve as heterogenous a sample as possible, we employed purposeful sampling with the aim of achieving maximum variation (Patton, 2015). In doing so, we considered the following variables for the first sample of 40 schools: location of the school (rural, intermediary, urban); structure of the school (number of locations); levels taught at the school (primary only, primary and secondary, secondary only). For the selection of the second sample of eight schools, additional features specific to the website were included, among them the linkage between the school and municipality website, the use of templates, and the presence of specific content, particularly information specifically directed at parents.
After transcribing the recorded interviews, they were analysed using qualitative content analysis (Mayring, 2000). A system of categories constitutes the core element of any content analysis. The categories for our project were developed deductively, i.e., derived from specific concepts and models such as the previously mentioned framework for school leadership (Dexter & Richardson, 2019), and inductively, i.e., on the basis of the data gathered. In a first step, current practices were described by linking the reported activities to the various domains of school leaders’ practices. Furthermore, additional categories relating to broader technological developments were identified in the interview data. Finally, the findings were interpreted in view of school-family relations and their potential for further development.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsFrameworks in the context of school leadership and technology often focus upon pedagogical issues and neglect the area of communication. Furthermore, they are based on the perspective of technology integration, disregarding the potential for fundamental transformations that digital technology possesses. Addressing the specific task of managing school-family relations, our contribution analysed how school leaders use digital tools, particularly school websites. In doing so, we found that establishing and maintaining school websites relates not only to the domain of connecting with external partners, but also to a school’s vision or the creation of a supportive learning environment – all domains to be considered relevant for the effective integration of technology (Dexter & Richardson, 2019) or digital leadership more generally. Managing school websites can therefore be considered a crosscutting task, and as such highly pertinent when systematically examining the extent of change associated with digitalization in any school. In line with previous research, we found that the investigated sample of school leaders displayed a superficial rather than fundamental change (Avidov-Ungar et al., 2022) also when dealing with websites.
This somewhat limited approach to leading schools through the ongoing fundamental changes has been identified by other authors (e.g., Schiefner-Rohs, 2016; or Waffner, 2021) who repeatedly identified the need to find answers to fundamental questions such as what the meaning of school is in the context of rapid changes or how it should be designed in times when content is available to anyone at any time and in any place. Systematically and strategically discussing school-family relationships might contribute to finding answers to these questions. However, this is not exclusively the task of school leaders, it also raises numerous questions such as what knowledge is needed to manage such changes or how school oversight needs to be shaped in these times of transformation.
ReferencesAvidov-Ungar, O., Shamir-Inbal, T., & Blau, I. (2022). Typology of digital leadership roles tasked with integrating new technologies into teaching: Insights from metaphor analysis. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 54(1), 92–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/15391523.2020.1809035
Dexter, S., & Richardson, J. W. (2019). What does technology integration research tell us about the leadership of technology? Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 52(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/15391523.2019.1668316
Egger, J., Lehmann, J., & Straumann, M. (2015). “Collaboration with parents isn’t a burden. It’s just a natural part of my work.” - Parental Involvement in Switzerland – An Analysis of Attitudes and Practices of Swiss Primary School Teachers. International Journal about Parents in Education, 9(1), 119–130.
Epstein, J. L. (1987). Toward a Theory of Family - School Connections: Teacher Practices and Perent Involvement. In K. Hurrelmann, F.-X. Kaufmann & F. Lösel (Hrsg.), Prävention und Intervention im Kindes- und Jugendalter: Bd. 1. Social Intervention: Potential and Constraints (S. 121–136). De Gruyter.
Goodall, J. S. (2014). School-Home Communication: Texting. Bath. University of Bath. https://purehost.bath.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/128944169/Submitted_version.pdf
Gu, L. (2017). Using school websites for home–school communication and parental involvement? Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 3(2), 133–143. https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2017.1338498
Håkansson Lindqvist, M., & Pettersson, F. (2019). Digitalization and school leadership: on the complexity of leading for digitalization in school. The International Journal of Information and Learning Technology, 36(3), 218–230. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJILT-11-2018-0126
Mayring, P. (2000). Qualitative Content Analysis. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 1(2), Art. 20, 28 paragraphs. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0002204
Olmstead, C. (2013). Using Technology to Increase Parent Involvement in Schools. TechTrends, 57(6), 28–37. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-013-0699-0
Patton, M. Q. (2015). Qualitative Research & Evaluation Methods: Integrating theory and practice (Fourth edition). Sage.
Puentedura, R. R. (2013). SAMR: Moving from Enhancement to Transformation. http://www.hippasus.com/rrpweblog/archives/2013/05/29/SAMREnhancementToTransformation.pdf
Schiefner-Rohs, M. (2016). Schulleitung in der digital geprägten Gesellschaft. In H. Buchen & H.-G. Rolff (Hrsg.), Professionswissen Schulleitung (4. Aufl., S. 1402–1419). Beltz.
Thompson, B. C., Mazer, J. P., & Flood Grady, E. (2015). The Changing Nature of Parent–Teacher Communication: Mode Selection in the Smartphone Era. Communication Education, 64(2), 187–207. https://doi.org/10.1080/03634523.2015.1014382
Waffner, B. (2021). Schulentwicklung in der digital geprägten Welt: Strategien, Rahmenbedingungen und Implikationen für Schulleitungshandeln. In A. Wilmers, M. Achenbach & C. Keller (Hrsg.), Bildung im digitalen Wandel. Organisationsentwicklung in Bildungseinrichtungen (S. 67–103). WAXMANN Verlag GMBH.
Witzel, A., & Reiter, H. (2012). The problem-centred interview: Principles and practice. Sage. http://gbv.eblib.com/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p=1046516
26. Educational Leadership
Paper
School innovation through knowledge flows- Does Open Innovation make the difference?
Jasmin Witthöft1, Marcus Pietsch1, Colin Cramer2, Christopher David Brown3
1Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, Germany; 2Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen; 3University of Warwick, Coventry
Presenting Author: Witthöft, Jasmin
Schools are considered knowledge-creating organizations (Harris, 2008) that are in constant exchange with their environment (Bastedo, 2006). Accordingly, educational research assumes that schools primarily innovate effectively when they are involved in learning networks with other schools (Hargreaves, 2003) and/or when there is an exchange of knowledge with other external partners, e.g., universities (Coburn and Penuel, 2016). In the face of current crises and to keep up with social and technological developments, schools are, nonetheless, more than ever requested to implement innovations, some of which are long overdue (Brown and Luzmore, 2021).
Schools’ motivation to innovate arises from different sources connected with cultural, societal, or political changes and transitions (Goldenbaum, 2012). However, the main drivers of innovation in schools are often local competition between institutions and the regressive effects of large-scale, standardized reform strategies (Sahlberg, 2016). Additionally, external driving forces requiring schools or whole education systems to innovate, i.e., disruptive changes in educational environments like the COVID-19 pandemic (Pietsch et al., 2022), natural catastrophes and disasters (Brown and Luzmore, 2021).
Even though the relevance of innovation, networks, and knowledge mobilization for school improvement has been studied extensively (Harris, 2008; Greany, 2018), little is known about knowledge management practices that make expertise accessible for innovation in schools (Cheng, 2021). Research proved that schools tend to maintain long-standing and well-established systems and serve multiple constituents, which makes implementing changes and innovations hard to plan and predict (Tyack & Tobin, 1994).
Thus, for innovations in schools to be successful, continuous “orchestrated complex combinations of vertical and lateral knowledge mobilisation” (Greany, 2018, p. 66) are required. As schools are open systems that constantly interact with their environment (Bastedo, 2006), their importance for innovation and change is exceptionally high when they act as nodes in educational learning networks (see Hadfield et al., 2006). Open Innovation (Chesbrough, 2006) offers considerable potential to better understand how, for example, knowledge can be shared across borders (for example) between organizations. Accordingly, different ways of inventing new ideas and technologies exist. Either they result from internal knowledge and need external paths to market or develop through external knowledge using internal paths to become successful (Chesbrough, 2006). Regarding schools’ central function for society, the relevance of knowledge flows between organizations, the professionalism of school leaders and teachers, and strategic management capabilities to integrate knowledge are particularly high (Bastedo, 2006; Hadfield et al., 2006).
Against this background, our study was guided by the following research questions to make a contribution to the fields of innovation and knowledge mobilization in the public sector, introducing the concept of open innovation (Chesbrough, 2006) as well as empirically investigate the impact of knowledge inflows on pedagogical innovation in schools.1) Do schools incorporate external knowledge for internal innovation? 2) If so, where does this knowledge for internal innovation come from, and to what extent is it used? 3) Does externally mobilized knowledge (open innovation) increase the likelihood of innovations being introduced in schools compared to knowledge mobilization within schools (closed innovation)? 4) Can different effects of knowledge mobilization be identified depending on the type of innovation?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe context of this study is Germany, a nation comprising 16 federal states that are fully responsible for their individual school system. The database of our study is drawn from the third wave of the Leadership in German Schools (LineS) study. Data was collected between August and November 2021 across Germany. The longitudinal study surveyed a random sample of school leader’s representative of Germany in each measurement wave (Pietsch et al., 2022). The forsa Institute for Social Research and Statistical Analysis, a leading survey and polling company in Germany, collected the data as a field service provider. Participants were recruited via its omnibus and omninet panels: a random sample of around 1,000 people aged 14 and above is interviewed on a mixed-topic daily basis, also asking about the current occupation. Thus, school leaders (N = 411) were identified on a random basis, leading to a nationally representative sample for general schools in Germany. The questionnaire comprised 35 item blocks. Of these, we only use a selection of items and scales.
The following variables were used as part of our study: Innovations, the dependent variable (e.g., Have any process innovations, i.e., innovations or noticeable changes that affect the pedagogical work of the school, been introduced at your school in the last 12 months? Open innovation was measured following Laursen and Salter (2006) and thus refers to inbound open innovation (“Now we would like to know where the knowledge came from for pedagogical innovations, i.e., teaching and instruction, introduced at your school in the last 12 months.”). Closed innovation is the amount of internal knowledge a school uses for generating, developing, and implementing pedagogical innovations (“The knowledge we used for the innovations came from the school itself/ the teachers of our school.”), measured on a six-point scale ranging from “not at all” to “to an exceptionally high degree.” Innovation Conditions include innovative climate, teacher innovativeness, innovation networking (Slavec Gomezel et al., 2019), and School Leadership to capture leadership for learning (“I ensure that teachers work according to the school’s educational goals” (Pietsch et al., 2019). The effects of open and closed Innovation practices on different types of educational innovation in schools were investigated through latent multinomial logistic regression models in MPLUS 8.4.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsBoth closed and open innovation depth affect innovations in teaching and learning. The schools in our sample for instructional innovation derive much more knowledge from closed innovation (M = 4.45) than from open innovation (M = 2.39) processes (W(1) = 992.587, p<.001). Results further show a strong correlation between open innovation breadth and depth (r = .84, p < .001), indicating that schools using a wide variety of external sources of knowledge for their innovations incorporated much external knowledge into the school’s internal innovation processes. The external knowledge for internal innovations in schools came primarily from professional training and conferences (M = 3.50). Knowledge rarely came from government agencies (M = 2.29), universities (M = 2.09), and parents (M = 2.09).
Open Innovation measures revealed mixed effects of open innovation in schools. Positive effects of closed innovation processes for innovations in schools, especially in teaching and learning, can still be observed. Further, incorporating external knowledge for innovation, i.e., innovation depth, in schools is disproportionately larger with regards to innovations in digital teaching and learning (OR = 4.556, p < .05) and other relevant pedagogical innovations (OR = 5.166, p < 0.05) in schools. Internally, the likelihood of introducing such innovations approximately quintuples. However, the diversity of knowledge sources, i.e., open innovation breadth, has a negative effect on all reported innovations (all p < 0.05 or higher).
The intensity of knowledge inflow in schools, i.e., open innovation depth, has a far greater effect on pedagogical innovations in schools than closed innovation processes if the conditions of the individual schools. Besides, innovation is primarily related to the school type, conditions, and contexts. Consequently, there are no generalizable mechanisms for how innovations can ideally be implemented in schools from the outside, but schools can be prepared to be open to appropriate knowledge flows.
ReferencesBastedo, M. N. (2006). Open Systems Theory. In F. W. English (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Educational Leadership and Administration (pp. 711–12). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Brown, C., & Luzmore, R. (2021). Educating Tomorrow: Learning for the Post-Pandemic World. Emerald Publishing Limited. https://doi.org/10.1108/9781800436602
Cheng, E. C. K. (2021). Knowledge management for improving school strategic planning. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 49(5), 824–840. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143220918255
Chesbrough, H. (2006). Open innovation: a new paradigm for understanding industrial innovation. In H. Chesbrough, W. Vanhaverbeke, & J. West (Eds.), Open innovation: researching a new paradigm (pp. 1-12). New York: Oxford University Press.
Coburn, C. E., & Penuel, W. R. (2016). Research–Practice Partnerships in Education. Educational Researcher, 45(1), 48–54. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x16631750
Goldenbaum, A. (2012). Innovationsmanagement in Schulen: Eine empirische Untersuchung zur Implementation eines Sozialen Lernprogramms. VS.
Greany, T. (2018). Innovation is possible, it’s just not easy: Improvement, innovation and legitimacy in England’s autonomous and accountable school system. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 46(1), 65–85. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143216659297
Hadfield, M. et. al. (2006). What does the existing knowledge base tell us about the impact of networking and collaboration? A review of network-based innovations in education in the UK. National College for School Leadership.
Hargreaves, D. H. (2003). Education Epidemic: Transforming Secondary Schools Through Innovation Networks. Demos.
Harris, A. (2008). Leading Innovation and Change: knowledge creation by schools for schools. European Journal of Education, 43(2), 219–228. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-3435.2008.00343.x
Laursen, K., & Salter, A. (2006). Open for innovation: the role of openness in explaining innovation performance among UK manufacturing firms. Strategic management journal, 27(2), 131-150. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.507
Pietsch, M., Tulowitzki, P., & Cramer, C. (2022). Innovating teaching and instruction in turbulent times: The dynamics of principals’ exploration and exploitation activities. Journal of Educational Change. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-022-09458-2
Pietsch, M., Tulowitzki, P., & Koch, T. (2019). On the differential and shared effects of leadership for learning on teachers’ organizational commitment and job satisfaction: A multilevel perspective. Educational Administration Quarterly, 55(5), 705-741. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161X18806346
Sahlberg P (2016). The global educational reform movement and its impact on schooling. In K. Mundy, A. Green, B. Lingard, & A. Verger (Eds.), The handbook of global education policy (pp. 128–144). Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118468005.ch7
Slavec Gomezel, A., & Rangus, K. (2019). Open innovation: it starts with the leader’s openness. Innovation, 21(4), 533–551.
Tyack, D., & Tobin, W. (1994). The “Grammar” of Schooling: Why Has it Been so Hard to Change? American Educational Research Journal, 31(3), 453–479. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312031003453
26. Educational Leadership
Paper
School Leadership under the Conditions of Digitality. Facets, Potentials, Challenges.
Ulrike Krein
University of Kaiserslautern-Landau, Germany
Presenting Author: Krein, Ulrike
School leaders are generally regarded as important actors and promoters of school development (e.g. Cramer et al., 2021; Eickelmann, 2010), and thus usually face a multitude of different tasks and demands. At the same time, school leaders, their everyday work and their activities are transformed by social transformation processes (Krein & Schiefner-Rohs, 2022). One example of such transformation phenomena, which is also frequently discussed in the discourse on development processes (in) schools, is digitality (Stalder, 2016). Digitality does not only affect school leaders in the context of school development and the related requirements of organizational, instructional, personnel, cooperation, or technological development (Eickelmann & Gerick, 2018). Likewise, the everyday work and actions of school leaders, e.g., school administration or cooperation with non-school actors, is cross-sectionally shaped by digitality (Schiefner-Rohs, 2019). In their explorative study, Tulowitzki and Gerick (2020) were also able to show that digital media "unfold potentials and possibilities as well as entail changes and consequences in the activities of school leaders" (p. 333; translation by the author). Similarly, school leaders also reported various challenges relevant to their actions (ibid.). However, more profound insights into such digitality-related potentials, changes, and challenges are still lacking. Furthermore, little research has been done on how school leadership action itself is concretely shaped in situ and in actu under the perspective of digitality or is transformed by it (e.g., Heffernan & Selwyn, 2021). In this context, Håkansson and Pettersson (2019) even state an international need for holistic research on school leaders and their everyday professional life and actions.
Addressing this desideratum, this contribution aims to provide insights into the actions of school leaders under the conditions of digitality. The focus is on different facets of school leadership actions and the potentials and challenges that become visible in these facets. Accordingly, the contribution is based on the following research questions:
- How do school leaders act under the conditions of digitality?
- How do digitality-related transformation processes manifest themselves in the everyday work of school leaders?
- What are the potentials and challenges of school leadership under the conditions of digitality?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedIn order to examine the actions of school leaders under the conditions of digitality, an empirical-qualitative research design was chosen. The research was conducted in several phases using a multimethodological approach:
First, explorative expert interviews (N=7) were conducted (Meuser & Nagel, 2009), which were intended to provide initial insights into the everyday work of school leaders and digitality-related transformation processes. This was followed in a second phase by a comparative case study using shadowing (Tulowitzki, 2019). Shadowing is a multi-method approach that includes participant observation as well as recording of conversations, anecdotes, and episodes as a central element. Two school leaders of secondary schools in Germany were each accompanied in their daily work for three weeks. In addition to the participant observations, reflective interviews were conducted with the shadowed school leaders during the shadowing, which were recorded and subsequently transcribed. Furthermore, methods of virtual ethnography (Koszinets et al., 2018) were used to also capture the school leaders' actions in the digital space.
The data obtained were analyzed and triangulated using qualitative content analysis (Kuckartz, 2018) and phenomenological analysis (Brinkmann, 2015) to highlight different facets and conditions of school leaders' actions under the perspective of digitality.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe analyses identified four digitality-related conditions of school leadership under which the respective actions of school leaders take different forms. These are (1) school leadership action under connecting conditions, (2) school leadership action under accelerated conditions, (3) school leadership action under panoptic conditions, and (4) school leadership action under over-administered conditions.
The results show a diversity of school leadership actions that are cross-sectionally characterized by digitality. On the one hand, transformations of actions, such as the shift of communication into the digital space, were observed, on the other hand, an extensification of school leadership actions and a shaping of new tasks of school leaders were noted.
For each of the four facets of school leadership action, it was also possible to identify both digitality-related potentials (e.g., direct communication) and challenges (e.g., increasing parallelism of actions) for school leadership action. These offer a variety of implications for school leadership research as well as for the professionalization of school leaders, which will be presented and discussed at ECER 2023.
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