Abstract:

Educational institutions need to quickly adapt to the changes determined by digital transformation and other challenges and to prepare students for the jobs of tomorrow. The purpose of this paper is to examine the key themes that emerge from a semi-structured interview applied to educational managers from Romania regarding their perception about integrating innovative insights in their current jobs. The interview guide has been designed considering the following issues: proposals for management teams of the educational institutions to stimulate yourself and your colleagues' interest in learning, students’ representatives involvement in the decision-making process at the institution level, ways to stimulate flexible thinking, opportunities to capitalize on the learning potential of your students, ways in which educational managers interact effectively with other educational institutions and to connect in national / international educational networks.
Based on a qualitative research design, 15 educational managers addressed their opinions related to 8 clusters related to an innovative mindset (Empathetic, Problem-Finders/Solvers, Risk Takers, Networked, Observant, Creators, Resilient, Reflective). The conceptual framework was adapted from the model previously developed by George Couros – “The innovator's mindset”. The key themes from the qualitative data retrieved from online interviews were analysed through Nvivo12 software, which provided a text-mining analysis of the information related to the features of the innovative mindsets in education. The findings outline a visual perspective of relationships and word trees to better understand how educational managers from Romania are dealing with a wide range of challenges related to the transformation of the educational context. The results are inspirational for educational leaders as they will find ideas regarding the transformation of their colleagues mindsets in order to deliver students valuable experiential learning outcomes.

Keywords:

educational leaders, digital transformation, innovation, vision