Digital Leadership of School Administrators under the Songkhla Primary Educational Service Area Office 1

Abstract

The purposes of this research were to: (1) examine the level of digital leadership among school administrators under the Songkhla Primary Educational Service Area Office 1; (2) compare their digital leadership based on gender, age, work experience, and school size; and (3) investigate guidelines for developing digital leadership among these school administrators. The population consisted of 134 school administrators. The sample comprised 97 participants, determined using Krejcie and Morgan’s table and selected through proportionate stratified random sampling based on school size, followed by simple random sampling without replacement. The research instrument was a two-part questionnaire using a five-point Likert scale, with a reliability coefficient of 0.986. Data were analyzed using frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, independent samples t-test, one-way ANOVA (F-test), and content analysis. The findings revealed that: (1) the overall level of digital leadership, as well as each individual dimension, was at the highest level; (2) no statistically significant differences in digital leadership were found among school administrators when classified by gender, age, work experience, or school size; and (3) the guidelines for developing digital leadership consisted of four key dimensions: (1) Digital Vision, emphasizing role modeling, agile planning, and network resource sharing; (2) Digital Literacy, focusing on context-based professional development through mentoring systems and innovation sandboxes; (3) Digital Communication, promoting communication channels appropriate to school size, encouraging constructive two-way communication, and establishing effective data governance; and (4) Digital Culture, emphasizing mindset transformation through quick wins, creating spaces for innovation, and developing standard operating procedures (SOPs) integrated with an intelligent dashboard system.