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.
Highlights
School leadership is strongly associated with the pedagogical use of technology in schools
This paper focus on the role of school leaders for the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in schools, for teaching and learning, hereby referred to by the term “School leadership for ICT”
The main research question in this paper is: Do the attitudes and behaviour of school leaders with regard to ICT in their schools correlate with the attitudes and behaviour of teachers?
Summary
School leadership is strongly associated with the pedagogical use of technology in schools. This paper focus on the role of school leaders for the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in schools, for teaching and learning, hereby referred to by the term “School leadership for ICT”. School leadership for ICT is found to be highly important in order to make teachers both implement and be innovative with ICT in their practice (Kirkland & Sutch, 2009; Kozma, 2003). School leadership for ICT is crucial in order to foster digitally competent pupils, by facilitating necessary infrastructure and a good working environment, together with explicit plans and visions on pedagogical use of ICT (Dexter 2008). The paper draws on data from a Norwegian survey in 2009 (Berge, Hatlevik, Kløvstad, Ottestad, & Skaug, 2009) of 512 initial sampled primary and lower secondary schools where 247 school leaders from separate schools and 386 teachers answered online questionnaires
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