Congratulations to Laura Cahill who on Tuesday, August 12, 2025, successfully defended her dissertation proposal. The title of Laura’s dissertation is: "Evaluating Technology Leadership Competency Among Elementary School Principals: A Quantitative Study of ICT Preparedness and Training in New York Schools."
Overview of Problem: Information and communication technologies (ICT) have been instrumental in increasing academic standards. Many countries leverage ICT as one tool that might help with increasing the effectiveness and caliber of the educational process. Educators' technology competence and self-efficacy are crucial for employing technology to improve teaching and learning. The administration of school culture, particularly the shift to information technology, is a crucial responsibility of educational leadership.
Research Purpose: Using a conceptual framework grounded in the construct of technology leadership competency - which encompasses a principal’s capacity to lead strategic technology integration, support instructional transformation, and foster a school-wide culture of innovation - and the theoretical framework of technological pedagogical content knowledge learning theory, this quantitative study seeks to examine how specific demographic factors, namely age group, gender identity, and number of years in teaching and leadership roles, influence the technology leadership skills of elementary school principals in New York State. .
Research Design: A quantitative descriptive research design will be used for the proposed investigation.
Sample: Public school elementary principals from the 732 districts in the state of New York.
Data Collection and Analysis: Data will be collected using demographic questions and the Principals Technology Leadership Assessment via a SurveyMonkey questionnaire. After reviewing and cleaning the data, for the first research question, analysis of variance will be conducted to determine whether there are statistically significant differences in identified profiles by various socio-demographic categories. Descriptive analysis will be conducted to analyze the data collected for the second research question, and finally, for the third research question, Chi-test analysis will be used to examine the association between perceived technological leadership aptitude and the decision to pursue training.
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE CHAIR:
Dr. Yiping Wan
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Dr. Martin Fitzgerald
Dr. Nora Broege
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