The Cloud In Education

Guidelines: e-leadership in education

The absence of e-leadership is said to be a barrier to the adoption of new technologies like Cloud Computing in education. In order to systematically integrate the Cloud in education, Jameson suggests a framework for e-leadership is needed.

This section will help to identify what e-leadership is, what the demands might be in Europe and the kinds of e-leadership characteristics required in education.

E-leadership? - Demands - Transformation - Trends in Europe - Return to the guidelines

What is e-leadership?

E-leadership refers to leadership in the information age, which is characterized by fast developments of technology. Confident e-leadership is needed to address many of the issues created by the information age.

In education the absence of e-leadership occurs because leadership, management and governance issues appeared on the whole to have been perceived as irrelevant to education technology issues and as a result have been ignored.

The “push” or real focus in education has been on the delivery of technology-focused solutions rather than on maximising possible benefits to learning and teaching.

So what is e-leadership all about?

What is E-Leadership? https://youtu.be/sK48DH1vvVY

The National College for School Leadership produced a report on strategic leadership for next generation learning. This provides a holistic view of leadership challenges for ICT and relates closely to the challenges faced.

E-leadership demands

What will the future e-leadership demands be in Europe? What will be required by 2020? What are the major challenges facing education? What has been the response from the European Commission?

e-Leadership: Demand and Supply in Europe https://youtu.be/83UaXo1tGbA

Some of the new skills required for e-leadership are:

i) innovative capacity for rapidly absorbing, prioritising and responding to new information and selectively dealing with overwhelmingly large amounts of information and

ii) high levels of interpersonal and intercultural skills in which the capacity to build high levels of trust in online environments.

Leaders have to respond fluently, with excellent communication skills, to cope with challengingly spontaneous levels of social media interactivity involving both staff and students in ways that have never previously been demanded of leaders.

Leaders need to apply rigorous levels of critical analysis and quality standards in discerning the most appropriate opportunities for improved learning and teaching, adjusting to emerging trends while avoiding unnecessary risks.

It has been suggested that distributed and collaborative leadership is needed in order to blend collegiality with authority; accountability with quality; and innovation, student learning priorities with marketing and finance; entrepreneurialism with risk.

A number of terms have been used:

• sense-making in complex adaptive systems,
• virtual team leadership,
• collegiality,
• trust in academic freedom,
• diversity and equal opportunities,
• research and enterprise management,
• presence and speed of response
• emotional intelligence and
• empowering others.

Educational transformation

From a review of literature concerning higher education, Jameson proposes three e-Leadership framework characteristics: purpose, people and structure/social systems.

Jameson, J., (2013), e‐Leadership in higher education: The fifth “age” of educational technology research. British Journal of Educational Technology, 44(6), 889-915

Ten components were said to be necessary for effective strategic and operational e-leadership (at senior, middle and lower hierarchical levels in higher education) in order that collegial and entrepreneurial high trust education environments could be enabled.

These components would emerge interactively through the development of technological innovations in tandem with e-leadership and good communication.

The ten components of the framework are:

1. Purpose: e-leadership visioning and strategic planning; meaning making and sense making in complex adaptive systems of higher education organisations

2. Purpose: learning and teaching, pedagogic leadership

3. People: e-leadership/virtual team leadership of collegiality, organisational values, behaviours and culture; trust; academic freedom; social, legal and ethical issues; diversity and equal opportunities; gender issues

4. Structures and social systems: organisational structure and policy; management, finance and operations including distributed leadership systems, speed of response and change management skills

5. People: e-leadership presence, interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence; empowering others

6. People: communication skills and organisational relations including speed of response; innovation; risk taking; distributed leadership: ownership

7. Structures and social systems: quality management and monitoring; assessment and evaluation

8. Purpose: research and enterprise management

9. People: human resources, training, productivity and professional practice

10. Structures and social systems: technology, support for infrastructure, problem-solving skills, information technology skills, innovation, risk taking.

Blau and Presser examined the e-leadership requirements of School Principals. Their results indicate the education system needs to provide extensive support for them in managing the organization, delegating responsibilities, promoting e-leadership among their staff, and, consequently, increasing pedagogical effectiveness of their school.

They confirm e-leadership through the school system changes the entire school culture and recommend delegating e-leadership responsibilities, and monitoring the level of teacher activity within the system.

Blau, I. and Presser, O., 2013. e‐Leadership of school principals: Increasing school effectiveness by a school data management system. British Journal of Educational Technology, 44(6), pp.1000-1011

E-leadership trends

Leaders need to be instantly open to the quicker, highly complex, emergent adaptive systemic changes in education that are currently occurring as a result of the educational opportunities afforded by the Cloud. What are the needs and requirements for the future? How might they be met?

What are the trends in Europe? E-leadership scoreboard Click to enlarge

Country reports and documents - Find out more (pdf)

What are the critical success factors for companies in Europe and what are the implications to education?

e-leadership: What it is and why it is relevant to industry? https://youtu.be/KW-rBmRmjlY

Return to the guidelines