School Leadership for ICT and Teachers’ Use of Digital Tools

Abstract

International literature and Norwegian policy documents both identify school leadership as essential in order to implement ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) in teaching and learning practices in the classrooms. Data from an online survey in 2009 of 247 school leaders and 386 teachers from Norwegian primary and lower secondary schools are used to examine if conditions promoted by school leaders are associated with the use of ICT in classrooms by teachers. The research question posed in this paper is if the attitudes and behaviours of school leaders with regard to ICT in their schools correlate with the attitudes and behaviours of teachers? To answer the question, four construct variables are utilised as indicators of school leadership for ICT. These indicators are informative on school leaders’ decisions and beliefs regarding their schools as ICT-using organizations. Results showed that the indicators were correlated with the time teachers spend on ICT in the classrooms and for administrative use, their use of common digital tools and with a construct measuring the teachers’ attitudes towards innovative and student-centred pedagogy (life-long learning attitudes). The indicators of school leadership for ICT carry traits of perspectives from distributed, transformational and pedagogical leadership, but more research is needed in order to align the practice-based indicators with more overarching theoretical concepts.