Strategic Educational Leadership in the Digital Era: Enhancing Student Performance through Technology Adoption
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63282/3050-9246.IJETCSIT-V7I2P136Keywords:
Strategic Educational Leadership, Technology Integration, Student Performance, Leadership Support, Technology Adoption, Digital Learning, ZimbabweAbstract
This study aims to explore the connection between educational leadership, technology use, and students' academic achievement in an electronic-based learning environment. The focus on how the functions of leadership behavior and leadership support in technology adoption affect learners. A quantitative approach was used in this research involving 100 participants, including students, educators, and educational leaders. Descriptive analysis, Spearman correlation, ordinal regression, and multiple regression were used as statistical tools for testing relationships among the examined variables. The results show that technological integration and strategic educational leadership have a somewhat favorable link (ρ = 0.538, p < 0.001). This suggests that more successful technology integration results from greater levels of strategic educational leadership. In a similar vein, a strong positive connection (ρ = 0.627, p < 0.001) was found between student accomplishment and technological incorporation. It implies that technology-integrated learning environments improve the performance of students. Moreover, the findings indicate that leadership support is a strong predictor of technology adoption (β = 2.380, p < 0.001) accounting for 55.8% variance in adoption levels (Nagelkerke R² = 0.558). In the combined regression analysis, both strategic educational leadership (β = 0.781, p = 0.021) and technology integration (β = 0.865, p = 0.006) were found to predict student performance accounting for 36.8% variance (R² = 0.368). The research has indicated that performance can be considerably enhanced through a combination of educational leadership and technology utilization. However, challenges such as inadequate infrastructure, digital divide, and digital illiteracy keep hindering its effective implementation, particularly in nations like Zimbabwe.
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