Principals’ technological competencies and technology integration in Moroccan public schools

Abstract

ABSTRACT Supporting the integration of technology into schools can be one of the daunting tasks and challenging role for school principals. It requires them to have basic technology skills, standards, and competencies from which to work, lead and finally integrate technology appropriately in school. To investigate this new role and daunting tasks, the present study, examines Moroccan school principals’ technological competencies and technology integration using a quantitative method design. The General Technology Competency and Use framework (GTCU)was used to spot the predominant technological competencies that principals have and exercise as a form of leadership within their schools to integrate technology. Using a snowball sampling techniques to collect data, the population of the study was formed by 167 school principals from different regions of Morocco. The results obtained from descriptive statistics revealed that there were significant differences in main scores between school principals in terms of their technological competencies. The lowest mean was scored on the social order competency sub-scale (M = 11.36), while the highest was on the technical order competency (M = 24.12). The other two sub-scales scored almost the same (M = 14.76 for informational competency, and M = 14.07 for epistemological competency). These significant differences reached significance in the inferential analyzes as well. Implications for research and practice are discussed.