Principals as Technology Leaders: The Result of anExploratory MixedStudy in Smart Schools of Tehran

Technology leadership is an emergent field in school leadership literature and suggests that school principals play a proactive role in implementing technology in their schools. Current Iranian knowledge about this role is very scarce. The aim of current exploratory mixed research (qualitative-quantitative) was to investigate principals’ role in integrating technology at schools. Initially in qualitative phase of the study, educational technology experts were interviewed. The participants were selected using purposive and snow-ball sampling. The results of content analysis and coding of interviews revealed 58 indicators and 9 dimensions including: principals'''' belief to employ technology, illustrating technology objectives and expectations, technology planning, establishing and reinforcing the culture of utilizing technology, teachers'''' empowerment for utilizing technology; encouraging and stimulating teachers to employ technology; appraisal of teachers'''' technology performance, strengthening the sharing of technology knowledge, and technology support. Using the identified indicators and dimensions, a Technology Leadership (TL) questionnaire was designed and developed by the researcher to gather quantitative data. 335 teachers were, then, selected from smart schools of Tehran and were requested to complete the questionnaires. The collected data were analyzed using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). The result of CFA revealed that the measurement model of TL has fit suitably to the observed data. This study highlights the role of principals in technology integration by teachers and recommends TL variable and questionnaire to researchers. The results are discussed in the final section of the paper.