Digitally Competent School Organizations – Developing Supportive Organizational Infrastructures

Abstract

While research on digital competences so far has focused on the level of single actors (teachers, pupils, and school leaders), a growing but occasionally overlooked field of research looks at school-level competences when promoting digitalization and educational change. The aim of this study is to explore how schools structure their organizations, institutional infrastructure, and activities as conditions for digitalization. The study relies on interviews with school leaders and educational technologists from five upper secondary schools with extensive experience in digitalization and remote teaching. By using three categories, namely setting the direction, developing people, and developing the organization, as an analytical framework, this study identifies two types of digitally competent school organizations: goal- and structure-oriented schools and culture-oriented schools. This study’s insights serve as a point of departure for understanding the different ways schools can organize themselves to become comprehensive, stable, and digitally competent organizations and for understanding important challenges related to this process.