The role of the teaching principal in promoting ICT use in small primary schools in Ireland

Abstract

The focus of this study was to examine the leadership role as lived by teaching principals in a selection of small primary schools in the west of Ireland and in particular the implications information and communications technology (ICT) has for that role. The study involved the use of individual one‐to‐one semi‐structured interviews with a selection of 13 primary school principals in the mid‐west region. Following analysis of the interview data a focus group interview with eight of the principals was conducted to validate and explore the issues to emerge from the one‐to‐one interviews. Principals had enthusiastically responded to the national ICT in schools initiative (Schools IT2000) but it had significantly added to the demands of their positions. While the lack of up‐to‐date resources, poor levels of technical support and time were identified as the main impediments, a lack of familiarity of ways in which the technology could be integrated across the curriculum affected the quality of pedagogical leadership provided by them. The research highlights the need for alternative models of support and leadership to be considered.

Keywords:

• principal
• leadership
• ICT
• schools
• pedagogical leadership

Notes

1. In an article in The Irish Times on 25 March 2006, John Collins noted that: ‘Teachers feel angry that, since 2002 and the culmination of the last strategy and funding programme, IT 2000, which pumped more than [euro]50 million worth of technology and services into schools, the department has not even had an IT strategy document’.

2. See ‘Back of the Class for IT in Education’ by John Kennedy, Irish Independent, 27 April 2006 and ‘Fears for ICT in Schools as Election Looms’ by Brian Skelly, Irish Times, 2 February 2007.