New Technologies And Educative Leadership

We have heard many times in recent years that the impact of technology is one of the most critical issues in education. If we are citizens of Western nations, then technology pervades almost everything in our lives – online banking, shopping, text messaging, movies-on-demand, coordinated traffic flow, light rapid transit scheduling, mobile telephone networks, climate control systems, and medical information access, to name but a few examples. Even in some developing nations and in former Soviet bloc countries we have come to accept almost without question the proliferation of satellite television dishes and cellular telephones. Despite the ubiquitous appearance of technology in societies around the world, we continue to grapple with how we might best make use of information and communication technology (ICT) in schools. Indeed, the articles in this issue of the Journal of Educational Administration demonstrate how educators are coming to terms with the educative potential of ICT and how it has altered the skills we need to do our jobs, how we access professional development and what we ask young people to do when they come to school. We have had to redefine “literacy” to include the ability to access and to analyze critically information available online. Further, students’ access to ICT tools at school and at home and their ability to communicate worldwide around the clock have forced us to reconsider basic assumptions about time and space. In fact, even the concept of “community” has morphed to include local, national, and international dimensions. Therefore, the theme of this issue, new technologies and educative leadership, is timely and important. We cannot (nor should we) avoid questions such as “How do new technologies: . challenge organizational structures; . reshape assumptions about leading; . internationalize leadership; . promote distributed leadership; . democratize education; . affect resource allocation; . foster new forms of leadership development; . promote social justice; and . politicize leadership practices?” For these reasons, I am confident that the articles that follow will challenge and provoke creative responses from our colleagues. For instance, Flanagan and Jacobsen draw on a five-part leadership model currently in use in a large urban school district in western Canada to describe challenges that need to be addressed if ICT is to be used effectively. They articulate the need for the effective use of ICT to address issues such as student engagement, shared vision, equity of access, effective professional development, and pervasive access to digital networks. They also offer a description of the roles and responsibilities of educational leaders who wish to optimize the educative capacity of ICT for their students and learning communities generally. In their article, Perez and Uline build on the work of Leithwood and his associates to examine computer use from a problem-solving