School-level leadership refers to the shared leadership responsibilities carried out by actors within the school, such as the head teacher or principal, deputy head teacher, teacher leaders, school management committees or boards, and student leaders. The Gambia’s Education Sector Strategic Plan (ESSP) identifies improving educational quality as a paramount goal. A significant disconnect exists; while digital transformation is seen as a global imperative, leadership models in The Gambia are either non-existent or borrowed from contexts with vastly different infrastructural and socio-economic realities (Sheninger, 2014; Suksai et al., 2021). This gap is exacerbated by challenges such as unreliable electricity, low internet penetration, and limited digital skills among educators.
Without a context-specific model, Gambian school leaders cannot effectively use technology to enhance communication, support teaching, manage resources, or use data for decision-making, creating a critical bottleneck in the education system. As such, the purpose of this research is to develop, refine and validate a practical, context-appropriate Gambian School Digital Leadership (GSDL) Toolkit that defines core competencies and practices of effective digital school leaders in The Gambia.
