School Librarians as Technology Integration Leaders: Enablers and Barriers to Leadership Enactment

The highly technological environment of 21st-century schools has significantly redefined the role of school librarians by presenting the opportunity to assume leadership through technology integration. Despite the abundance of literature that has suggested the need for and the importance of school librarians to be a proactive leaders in technology integration, this role is one that has been ignored in the research arena and left undefined for school administrators, teachers, and the school librarians themselves, leading to uncertainty concerning how school librarians enact this role in practice. This research, based on distributed-leadership theory, investigates current practice of accomplished school librarians to identify what factors are enabling some to thrive as technology integration leaders and what factors are hindering others. This report of the results includes the initial identification and categorization of the enablers and barriers experienced by school librarians in enacting a leadership role in technology integration, a discussion of implications for the profession, and areas of future research.