A comparative case study of leadership and the integration of technology into the education program

Rural schools face particularly daunting problems due to the nature of their location and isolation from information. Tools that can help equalize the playing field between rural schools and their metropolitan counterparts are computers, high speed internet connectivity, and highly qualified, trained teachers. The purpose of this qualitative research was to study and report the relationship between the change leadership functions and the integration of technology into the educational programs. The goal of the researcher was to provide qualitative data that could be used by educational leaders to advance technology integration.;The researcher, through the McLean County Regional Office of Education, identified and sent proposal letters to 11 school districts that met the study participation criteria. Three public school districts of varying size and similar socioeconomic values from rural communities in central Illinois comprised the final population. The superintendents, principals, tech-coordinators and teachers were all interviewed at their school sites; six males and nine females participated in the study. The interviews were digitally recorded, downloaded to the computer and later transcribed. The transcripts were used to develop district interview guides for reference to the data.;Firestone and Heller (1983) developed six leadership functions they believed were performed during the change process. The six functions included: providing and selling a vision of the change, obtaining resources, providing encouragement and recognition, adapting standard operating procedures, monitoring the improvement effort and handling disturbances. The researcher patterned the interview questions from Firestone and Heller and adapted them to technology integration. The findings from this study confirmed that, in these three districts, the six leadership functions were instituted and, on occasion, were performed by persons other than the administrators.;Two recommendations were made: expand the study to include additional school districts and a larger population of respondents and conduct similar studies in other rural areas in different parts of the country to confirm the findings of this study.