Leadership, technology, and education: achieving a balance in new school leader thinking and behavior in preparation for twenty-first century global learning environments

Abstract

Expectations for education are changing. The knowledge base of education is changing. Conceptions of how individual learning occurs are changing. The tools available to ‘do’ education are changing. The roles of teachers are changing. Understandings of what should be learned, who should be learning, how they learn, where they learn, and when they learn, are changing. So, in the face of this changing twenty-first century education it is not surprising that expecting school leaders to recreate their conceptions of appropriate leader behavior presents quite a challenge. This article explores the necessity of incorporating authentic global technology experiences in the preparation of school leaders and presents a description of the rationale and developmental stages of the Global Forum on School Leadership. Based on the existing practices of reflection and dialog found in the leader preparation program at Wichita State University in the United States, this Forum brings together leadership perspectives on common practices from a variety of global locations in an asynchronous, Internet-based discussion format. This learning experiment focused on incorporating a needed global orientation to leadership preparation following the September 11 and Bali tragedies, and emphasizes the use of appropriately selected technologies to achieve expanded course objectives at the same time as transforming the learning model traditionally employed in leader preparation programs