Journal of School Leadership

A cross-case analysis of five case studies of team-based technology leadership in middle schools with laptop programs identifies systems of practice that organize teams’ distributed leadership. These cases suggest that successfully implementing a complex improvement effort warrants a team-based leadership approach, especially for an improvement concerned with using technology to support teaching and learning. Not only does such an effort include technical and curriculum/instruction issues, but the constantly changing nature of technology has implications for teaching and learning. A group of people working together on a technology leadership effort makes it more likely that the necessary amount of expertise is available and that the team can keep up to date and address all technology leadership needs. Key artifacts that organize important leadership practices include sharing a technology vision, providing instructional support personnel, aligning technology resources to the curriculum, and ensuring opportunities for teachers to learn, share, and provide input to the leadership team.

Beginning in the 1990s, national educational policies around the world have mandated massive investments in information and communications technologies (ICT) to transform teaching and learning in ways appropriate for developing “21st-century skills.” Recent research indicates significant success in bringing teachers and students into contact with ICT in many national education systems; however, significant challenge remains in integrating ICT into the pedagogical practices aimed at developing 21st-century skills. This article inquires into one commonly cited obstacle to pedagogical change around ICT: school-based support. Using data from the 2006 Second Information Technology in Education Study survey, we investigated whether the availability of school-level support for 21st-century skills teaching activities predicted the increased use of ICT in conjunction with those 21st-century teaching activities in the classroom. We studied 18 national education systems and found that in only three—namely, South Africa, the Russian Federation, and Thailand—was school-based support for ICT use in 21st-century teaching activities consistently associated with the odds of using ICT on such activities. These counterintuitive findings are interpreted against the literature framing the inquiry.

This study focused on understanding the extent to which technology leadership is discussed, framed, and given voice in the fields of educational leadership and educational administration. To do this, we collected data and conducted content analyses on conference programs from three leading professional organizations in the field and on a selection of professional journals spanning 1997 to 2009. We found 2.12% of American Educational Research Association presentations had a technology leadership focus, compared to 2.94% for the University Council for Educational Administration and 7.40% for the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration. After determining the 25 most often-cited journals in the field, we found that 43 articles in these journals had a focus on technology leadership, most often centering on technology integration, staff development, and technology policy. Suggestions for moving forward are included.

This research, looking through the lens of Fullan (1991) regarding the complexity of implementing school wide change, sought to explore preparation and requirements of new administrators with respect to the integration of technology by first gathering data regarding licensure and course requirements from state departments of education and educational institutions. Overall, most states and institutions do not require any formal preparation in understanding or implementing technology for instructional purposes, and likely their graduates are not prepared to implement technology systemically in their school. Given that these data were remarkably uniform and next researchers sought to gather experiences, training, and perspectives of technology-savvy administrators as to how they learned what they know and how they lead their schools in the 21st century. We learned that administrators do learn on their own, have a dedication to these changes, and promote their staff members’ implementation through professional development, by modeling its use, and purposefully setting goals for their school.

On the basis of a secondary analysis of survey data collected from 1,872 secondary school principals in the 2005–2006 School Survey on Crime and Safety, we examined the frequency of and reasons for severe disciplinary actions and the relationship between school characteristics and severe disciplinary actions. We found that severe disciplinary actions were frequently taken for insubordinations and physical attacks or fights rather than for weapon-related problems. After controlling for the level of students’ problem behaviors, we found that schools serving a larger number of disadvantaged students (underachievers, special education students, ethnic minority students, and students in poverty) tend to use severe disciplinary actions more frequently than do schools with a smaller number of disadvantaged students. Recommendations for ameliorating this inequality in disciplinary practices are offered.

This cross-case study utilizes the publically available data of three urban low-performing, low-socioeconomic-status districts designated as districts in need of improvement under No Child Left Behind legislation. Despite multiple interventions aimed at improving student learning, these and other districts remain in corrective action. Critics attribute responsibility for such low-performing schools in part to leadership preparation programs and their failure to prepare leaders who are capable of improving student learning. Current research points to the value of preparation programs focusing on the development of instructional leaders and a curriculum that focuses on improving student achievement (Darling-Hammond, Meyerson, LaPointe, & Orr, 2010). We argue that preparation programs must prepare leaders who can ensure that a well-articulated curriculum aligned to the state standards exists and, more important, is implemented effectively.