Digital skills, teacher's leadership styles and academic performance in the digital learning context

Abstract

The main objective of the present study was to know the relationship between teachers digital skills, teachers leadership styles and academic performance of secondary school students; in addition, it was sought to identify the main challenges faced by teachers with a transformational leadership style in the context of virtual classes. The investigation was carried out with a mixed sequential approach; for the quantitative phase there was a sample of 189 high school teachers and for the qualitative phase we worked with 22 teachers. According to the results, A positive relationship was found between teacher's digital skills and student's academic performance. A positive relationship was also found between the teacher's transformational leadership style and the students' academic performance. Additionally, teachers from public educational institutions obtained higher scores in the transformational style than those from private institutions. On the other hand, it was reported that the main challenge identified was in the way of teaching, this changes forced teachers to leave their comfort zone.