Artificial intelligence and school leadership: challenges, opportunities and implications

The Work Environment of the School Leader in Australia: The Case for Sustained Change in Role and Practice

“…The key questions addressed in this essay are (1) how has the work environment of school leaders changed in the early years of the 21st century, (2) how have these changes affected the role of the school leader, (3) what is the association between an evident deterioration in the work environment and the trend to more autonomy for schools and their leaders, and (4) how can school systems be more effective in supporting school leaders?…”

“…The power of AI could be used to reduce much of the mechanical load of teachers and even to provide some basic support for students under the direction of teachers who would be freed to work with each other, with students, parents, and others in the community to maximise support and learning for all students. (p. 6) [2] A survey by the Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia (AHISA) found that in responding schools, 24 per cent of primary teachers, 34.5 per cent of middle school teachers and 39 per cent of secondary teachers had used generative AI by mid-2023. The top five teacher-assisted tasks were concerned with lesson plans or learning designs, learning resources, ideas for curriculum unit outlines, discussion questions, and rubrics for assessing student work.…”

“…The main features of these changes are well documented [1] and these include a higher level of turbulence in the wider environment; abandonment of principal-focused leadership in favour of more collaborative styles; intensification of the work itself, with far more tasks to be completed in the same amount of time; shifts along the centralisation-decentralisation continuum toward decentralisation on some matters and centralisation on others; demands for a higher level of accountability, especially on indicators of quality and equity; and expectations of parents that the individual needs and interests of their children will be addressed. Concurrently, school leaders are coming to terms with advances in technology, the latest manifestation being innovation in Artificial Intelligence (AI) [2].…”

School Leadership and Management in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (AI): Recent Developments and Future Prospects

“…For instance, Ottestad (2013) found that teachers' willingness to incorporate these innovations into their daily practice was closely linked to their shared leadership efforts for that matter. This collaborative effort by teachers can also support student learning and development to a significant extent (Fullan et al, 2023). As a result, the primary suggestion for today's principals could be to practice open government and involve the whole school community, including students, in working out how technology can be best integrated into education.…”

“…Research has so far evidenced that AI could improve the learning environment through stimulating enthusiasm, enhancing the creativity of teachers and students, promoting better classroom management, or supporting customized learning (Colchester et al, 2017;Huang et al, 2021;Papadakis et al, 2024;Wang, 2021). The latest development in the AI world, the generative AI, has become central to discussions over AI-integrated education, particularly after the launch of ChatGPT, an AI-based large language model that is capable of engaging in human-like conversations to discuss or solve various complex questions (Chen et al, 2020;Fullan et al, 2023). Similarly, the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic initiated a rapid increase in the use of such digital technologies such as virtual online classrooms and social media platforms (Harris & Jones, 2020), which has begun to redefine and alter the nature of learning and teaching irreversibly (García et al2023).…”