EnablEd:  Empowering stakeholders in school education for digitality

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The EnablEd project is investigating which skills and attitudes school staff need in the digital transformation. The aim is to develop an empowerment model that supports school management in the further development of their schools.

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Profile

Project leadership
Nicole Rosenberger (ZHAW), Eliane Burri (PHZH), Tobias Röhl (PHZH), Colette Schneider Stingelin
Organisational unit
F-BW-BDW (Bildung und Digitaler Wandel)
Project phase
In progress (1.9.2025 – 29.2.2028)
Project type
Research & development project
Funding
Digitalization Initiative
Participating institutions
Zurich University of Applied Sciences

Description

The digital transformation has long since affected not only teaching, but also schools as organisations. A particular challenge here is staff development. How can school staff be empowered to help shape the digital transformation in schools? An important aspect here is skills and attitudes within the team. In order for schools to empower their staff accordingly, various factors are key: the attitude of the school management, a shared vision, how to deal with multiprofessional teams, and how to communicate the digital transformation and the empowerment offers – to name just a few.

However, there is a lack of systematic research that correlates these factors and derives concrete recommendations and conclusions for the professional development of school staff. This is where the EnablEd project comes in. It begins by using guided interviews with digital pioneers within and outside the school field to examine which skills and attitudes a “culture of digitality” (Felix Stalder) requires. This addresses a cultural change that is not limited to technical questions about digital media, but rather starts with the actors and their lived practice.

Accordingly, the perspective of various school stakeholder groups (school management, PICTS, teachers, etc.) is to be collected using different methods (diaries, focus groups, Q-method) in order to capture the practice of empowerment and communication in primary schools in the Canton of Zurich, to contrast it with the results from the guided interviews and to derive conditions for the success of digital empowerment. The aim is to develop an empowerment model that provides school leaders with a means of equipping their staff with skills that enable a self-determined orientation for schools in the digital transformation. This is linked to a three-fold transfer into practice: workshops with the schools involved in the project, development of further training offers for other schools, and further development of existing tools for school development (Compass Digital Change/​PHZH, Self-Assessment for School Communication/​ZHAW). The project thus contributes to responsible school development against the background of a comprehensive digital change.

Contact

Portrait photo of Prof. Dr. Tobias Röhl

+41 43 305 68 17

Prof. Dr. Nicole Rosenberger