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

Abstract

Background/purpose. With the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI), it has become possible to invent computer systems that can perform human-like processes to tackle large data and solve complex problems. AI has manifested itself in the field of education through several technologies such as intelligent tutoring systems, adaptive teaching/learning, large-scale assessment and evaluation designs, predictive modeling and learning analytics, educational games. AI has incrementally begun to transform the ways teachers teach, students learn, and schools function with inevitable implications for school management and leadership. Materials/methods. This study aims to focus on these implications through highlighting possible contributions of AI-based innovations to school leadership and management based on a comprehensive review of early evidence. Practical implications. With its capability to process large datasets, engage in human-like cognition, thinking, and conversation, make decisions, and execute actions by this means, AI technologies offer several opportunities to improve school-wide leadership, practice open management based on the principles of transparency, participation, and digital skills, create the required synergy to achieve ever-changing educational goals by integrating teachers, students, and parents into educational processes. These technologies have also proven their capacity to help school leaders manage various technical tasks ranging from the management of food/transportation services, supply of instructional materials, human resource management, security, and student information processing. AI also enables learning analytics, or educational data mining, which allows for taking preventive actions and providing customized education by obtaining comprehensive data from students' educational activities across a period. Conclusion. It is undeniable that the integration of AI-based digital technologies bears several opportunities and challenges for adapting the functioning of schools to the new conditions in the interest of students, teachers, and other stakeholders.

Enactment of Transformational School Leadership—Insights from Primary School and System Leaders

“…To embed a sustained approach to school leadership in an Irish context, the authors consider distributed leadership as a practice of shared leadership, the values of which are commensurate with transformational school leadership, and as such we advocate that transformational school leadership can reasonably be considered as an underpinning model that can support the sustaining of distributive leadership. We tentatively suggest that this may have international resonance in an ever-changing global educational landscape [17,18].…”