‘We have- we had a digital debt’: a case of digitalized school leadership practice

Abstract

The article adopts a critical approach regarding the political ambition of educational technologies (edtech) in schools. The focus of the article is to understand how school digitalization policy works on people in schools through meaning-making objects for thinking and acting towards digitalization in schools. A case of Swedish principals working with digitalization in schools was investigated in their municipal context of school development, where they were guided by a policy instrument of the Swedish National Agency for Education. Policy documents, from the agency’s instrument, transcribed interviews with principals, and principals ‘development plans’ (local policy), were analyzed with a focus on what objects seem to guide the thinking and actions of the principals. Specifically, the focus of the analysis regards what meaning digitalization school policy may be conveying to principals in schools, what meanings they attribute to edtech, and how they orient their and teachers’ work towards objects of digitalization in schools.