Abstract:

In today’s challenging times subject to daily changes, the active participation of individuals in all spheres of business and social life requires a certain level of digital competence. This strongly applies to the principals of schools in and for the 21st century. In holding this position, they must be actively involved, with great responsibility, in the development of young people so that they can become successful in acquiring the knowledge, skills and competencies needed to overcome challenges and problems in both modern digitally transformed businesses and their private lives.

Within the project “e-Schools: Development of the System of Digitally Mature Schools” (e-Schools project), which is in the second phase of its implementation in the Republic of Croatia, it was decided to develop a framework for digital competencies of school principals in order to develop the digital competencies of these very important stakeholders in the educational process. Development of the Framework for Digital Competencies of School Principals was based on scientific research and the steps of the scientific methodology used are described in this paper.

The logical requirement placed upon the Framework for digital competencies of school principals was to be aligned with the Framework for Digital Maturity of Schools previously developed within the e-Schools project which defines areas and levels of digital maturity. A total of five areas of digital competencies in the Framework for Digital Competencies of School Principals has been identified:
(1) Planning, management and leadership,
(2) Digital technologies in learning and teaching,
(3) Development of digital competencies,
(4) Digital culture and
(5) Digital infrastructure.

For each of these areas, a set of digital competencies was identified based upon a review and analysis of the relevant literature and strategic documents, and the identification of key school principal tasks. In the next step, content validation of the competencies was performed with the help of a group of experts. Over twenty experts in the field of digital competencies participated in the content validation. In addition to content validation, the experts also determined the degree of importance of each particular competence in a specific identified area.

In addition to experts in content validation as well as in the validation of the clarity of digital competencies' formulations, the school principals themselves participated. Validation was performed through focus groups, guided by a qualified moderator according to a predefined protocol. The final version of the competencies was obtained after updating the competencies based on qualitative validation by the experts and school principals who participated in the research. In the last step, after defining the final version of the competencies, a description of the competence and typical activities related to it were identified for each defined competence. As a final result, a total of twenty-five competencies and more than one hundred and seventy typical activities in the five identified areas were defined.

Keywords:

School, education, digital transformation, maturity, competence.