Ensuring Knowledge Sustainability in a Digital Era: Empowering Digital Transformation Through Digital Educational Leadership

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the educational sector as a whole reflecting on traditional models of education, particularly in the context of inclusive and flexible approaches that can enable the sector to become more resilient to crisis. One of the main enablers to supporting resilience is digital learning. Aligned with this, educational leaders must lead in the digital transformation of their environment, have the necessary awareness of the infrastructure and associated digital competencies. Traditional models of leadership are concerned with leading conventional educational systems and models that are concerned with physical learning environments and governance. Few studies consider how to support educational leaders to become digital leaders. As a result this paper explores digital educational leadership and presents the theoretical and the critical importance of learning culture and transformational learning. By situating the concept of digital leadership in theory the paper presents a conceptual model for educational leaders to apply within their educational contexts in order to support digital transformation. The ontology is one based in structural realism with three interweaving components at an individual level, educational/organisational level and at a cross-sectoral/ inter-institutional level. The paper’s central contribution presents and formulates a theoretical framework enabling a fundamental reconceptualization for digital educational leaders’ professional development and enactment of policy.