Urban Principals' Perceptions of School Librarians' Technology Leadership Roles

Established standards and guidelines promote school librarian leadership in technology integration. Despite the imperatives implicit in professional guidelines and standards, school librarians' active engagement as leaders is not pervasive practice. Technology rich 21st century school libraries present a challenge to school librarians to lead students and classroom teachers in the use of current and emerging technologies. The urban public school is one setting in which strong technology leadership of school librarians would benefit students. The utilization of technology both as a practice within the school library and as an instructional strategy in collaboration with teachers necessitates the use of transformative leadership. School librarians, through unique training and experiences, are prepared to interact with students and adults to achieve the promises and opportunities of classroom technological innovations. The purpose of this research was to investigate urban school principals' and school librarians' perceptions of school librarian technology leadership. The study was guided by three research questions that examined the extent to which urban principals perceived school librarians to be technology leaders, the ways in which principals enabled school librarian technology leadership engagement, and the school librarians' self-reports of leadership activities that reflected entry, adaptive, or transformative technology leadership. The study used a mixed methods sequential explanatory research design. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected using an email survey and semi-structured interviews. The study participants were employees of the Houston Independent School District (HISD). In my analysis, I found that principals perceived school librarians to be adaptive level technology leaders. School librarians also self-reported adaptive levels of technology leadership. The study had a small study population, thus, additional research is necessary in order to determine if a larger study population would produce similar results. Although the results of this study are not generalizable, the study was an exploration of the perceptions held by school librarians and principals in an urban public school setting.