Conference Program

This paper investigates how local school authorities, understood as school owners and school leaders, initiate and lead the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools. Digital technologies have been present in schools for decades. However, studies show that school owners and school leaders have limited understanding of what it means to lead in an era shaped by digital technologies (Tømte 2024). AI is rapidly impacting teaching, learning, assessment and school administration. In this context, AI literacy becomes an important leadership competence, referring to leaders’ capacity to critically understand, interpret, and govern AI technologies within educational decision-making and school development processes. School leaders therefore play an important role in working out how to introduce AI into their schools, acknowledging its potential benefits and risks (Fullan et al., 2024). The limited research on AI and school leadership and on school leaders’ readiness to adopt and implement AI in local school contexts (Adams & Thompson, 2025; Tyson & Sauers, 2021; Wang, 2021) highlights the need to understand how district level school authorities and school leaders organise and lead the implementation of AI in local school contexts across leadership levels.

This study adopts a multi-level perspective on leadership and answers the research question: How do district-level authorities and school leaders organise and lead AI implementation in schools and what barriers and enablers are identified for implementing responsible AI in schools?

We followed how the work was initiated, organised and led across leadership levels over a period of 1.5 years in one county school district in Norway governing 43 high schools. The study follows the process from the initial mandate to establish a county-based working group for AI in upper secondary schools, through the AI group’s work, to the implementation of local school development processes at two upper secondary schools organising professional development for teachers’ pedagogical use of AI.

Data consist of semi structured interviews with the regional district school director; members of the county AI working group, including five school authority representatives, four AI pedagogues (teachers hired as technology leaders to work 50% of their time in the county AI working group); two high school principals, two department heads; and 2 teachers appointed project leaders for local school professional development at one high school.

Preliminary findings show that although a formal mandate guided the establishment of the county AI working group, the purpose and intentions of the initiative were interpreted differently across leadership levels. These differences also extended to understandings of the role of AI in schools. Furthermore, the study reveals variation in how local school development processes and teacher professional development related to AI were organised at the two participating schools. The paper provides new insights into how leadership across governance levels shapes the organisation and implementation of AI in schools. We discuss how AI implementation introduces new forms of data and algorithmic decision-support, raising questions about how school leaders interpret, negotiate, and act on these knowledge resources in organisational decision-making processes.