Digitization in School Leadership and Educational: Governance Examples from Policy and Practice

Abstract

This PhD project investigated how digitization unfolds in school leadership and educational governance by interrogating examples from policy and practice. The project centers on the premise that digitization has certain effects at the school level, produced by a complex interplay between different governing actors. The thesis has three empirical articles and an extended abstract. The first article unfolds governmental ambitions to digitalize school leadership and teaching practices in key policy documents in Ireland and Norway. The second article investigated school leader subjectivities in interactions between Irish school leaders and one school management system. The third article investigated how anticipation and time unfolded in Norwegian school leaders’ interactions with two learning analytic platforms. The findings demonstrate how new actors (human and non-human) are now involved in educational life, which poses consequences for how we think about agency, governing structures and leadership practices. In sum, the thesis shows how digitized practices open up new spaces for governing and leading education.