What are the most important issues of European school heads concerning digitalization?
At the final conference of the second year of the European Education Policy Network on Teachers and School Leaders (EEPN), in Barcelona, ESHA had the opportunity to ask school leaders, and other educational professionals present how digitalization impacts their professional life, and what are the most important issues they need support with.
The input we have received feeds in directly to the first output of the SAILS Safe resource for school leaders, the IO4.1 Initial Innovation Model/Whole School Approach.
The most mentioned issues were the following:
- Overwhelming number of tools available, but not enough time and expertise to test and try them in order to pick the most fitting solutions
- Concerns around privacy, especially in the case of online education, how to respect GDPR while teaching online
- Social media and professional life
- Digital tools as an asset to engage families
- Need for new pedagogical ways in online education
- Need for appropriate hardware for schools and students
- Low level of digital skills among many schools’ stuff, compared to the much higher level of skills of students
- Differences based on socio-economic status
- Lack of digital literacy, active citizenship, and critical thinking skills among teaching staff
ESHA and the SAILS consortium is committed to support school heads dealing with these challenges.