Digital Leadership: Managing Schools’ Virtual Spaces in Times of Crisis

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic changed schools’ reality and posed a wide range of challenges for school leaders, such as a re-examination of principals’ and teachers’ authority and leadership in the schools’ virtual spaces. Teaching methods and social-emotional aspects of learning were challenged as well. The school faculty had to redesign their pedagogical environments to provide an extensive and complete response to these new challenges. The main difficulty lay in the need to create an immediate distance-learning environment that would provide solutions for the pedagogical, emotional, and social challenges in the new and virtual space that had been created. We investigated teachers’ perceptions of their and their principals’ roles as digital educational leaders (e-leaders) in the schools’ virtual spaces. The research was conducted using a qualitative method with a population of 16 female teachers in elementary schools in Israel. Data analysis yielded four major themes: new virtual space in the school's organization, principals’ and teachers’ roles in managing virtual spaces, opportunities in virtual space management, and challenges and difficulties. These themes were closely interrelated in the context of schoolwork. Findings highlight the importance of more fully understanding the role of extensive digital leadership, i.e., the management of virtual school spaces. It is proposed that management of schools’ virtual spaces can enhance overall school effectiveness, which in turn can help achieve better cooperation between school faculty and the surrounding community.