PLANNING, MANAGING AND LEADING THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF SCHOOLS

The Digital Maturity Framework for Schools in Croatia has been designed as a part of the e-Schools pilot project that is part of the “e-Schools: a comprehensive informatisation of school operation processes and teaching processes aimed at the creation of digitally mature schools for the 21st century”. It is based on the European Framework for Digitally Competent Educational Organisations. The School Digital Maturity Framework is structured in 5 characteristic areas of the Croatian education system: Planning, Management and Leadership, ICT (Information and Communications Technology) in Learning and Teaching, Development of Digital Competencies, ICT Culture and ICT Infrastructure. According to the 2016-2018 Digital Maturity Evaluation, schools have the lowest level of digital maturity in the areas of Planning, Management and Leadership. Therefore, it can be assumed that majority of schools are not ready for the upcoming digital transformation challenges. The purpose of this paper is to determine which core individual competencies defined by the information constructs, Knowledge, Skills and Abilities, significantly set the degree of school management digital maturity. Thereby, the primary objective was to create a new information construct Experience and to explore the correlation between relationships of two constructs. Principals of primary schools in the Republic of Croatia were selected as the research sample (860). The survey was conducted using a questionnaire method that contains original metrics of the influencing factors Knowledge, Skills, Abilities and Experience on the basis of which the information model was designed. By descripting the information model, it is possible to determine the impact of a particular construct on the school digital maturity in the area of planning, management and leadership. Therefore, this paper represents a contribution to the information and communication sciences field and opens initiatives for further interdisciplinary research related to the development of an original methodology for conceptualizing the management of school’s digital transformation.