Rural School Leadership and Digital Technologies: Understandings, Applications, Challenges, and Solutions

Abstract

Given the pivotal role leadership plays in organizations, especially during a crisis, there is a need to learn more about how much school principals are able to utilize their digital capacities, if at all, for continued or increased effective functioning of teaching and learning and overall school governance. This examination is important, not only because the matter is not widely explored in jamaica, but also because in some institutions, school principals may possess the skills and disposition, and the physical infrastructure might be missing. On the converse, in others, such as rural communities, high levels of disadvantage exist, including deficits in both digital infrastructure and skills. This chapter pulls on a qualitative method and a semi-structured single interview design to explore and describe the digital capacity experiences, during the COVID-19 pandemic, of ten school principals of rural schools, in Jamaica. To accomplish this aim, this research explored and presents findings on some challenges they experienced, how they were able to resolve them, how these resolutions may extend beyond the period of crisis and, school principals’ reflections on their perception of the influence the process of navigating, leading, and managing their schools online may have had on their leadership. The findings also shape framework of recommendations for advancing thinking about policies, practices and further research exploration of the subject matter.