The global pandemic, COVID-19 shattered everyday life as we know it and disrupted education globally. In this study, we explore an initiated digital transformation accelerated by the pandemic from school leaders’ perspectives in the context of Swedish high schools. The data consists of a questionnaire with 105 school leaders containing both fixed and open-ended response types. The results reveal significant differences in school leaders’ views on how the transition has worked, whether they and their staff have developed their digital competence, and, how it will affect the school onwards. Contributions include theorising about school leaders’ experiences of navigating an accelerated digital transformation prompted by the pandemic. We introduce four school leader profiles: (a) the enthusiast, (b) the affirmative (c) the skeptical, and (d) the hesitant. These profiles serve to encapsulate the nuanced perspectives of school leaders, thereby enriching our comprehension of their diverse requirements and priorities. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Purpose: In this study, the authors explore teachers' experiences of work during the pandemic using the analytic lens of technostress. More specifically, the authors investigate how the sudden transition to distance education induces technostress among teachers in relation to their teaching practice. Design/methodology/approach: The data gathering method constitutes a questionnaire that explores how teachers' work situation was affected by shifting to distance education. 286 Swedish teachers answered the open-ended questionnaire. Findings: The results demonstrate how technostress creators, technostress strains and teachers' coping strategies are expressed in teaching practice during an extreme case of digitalization. Originality/value: The authors contribute to the work on technostress by suggesting the theoretical concept of “technorest” to shed light on alternative effects of the digitalization of work practice. Furthermore, the authors give examples of technorest creators which the authors term “techno-shields” and “techno-security”. The results could be interesting to enhance the understanding of the digitalization of work practices and cultivate a more favorable work situation. © 2023, Sara Willermark, Karin Högberg and Pernilla Nilsson.

As working life changes, it places new demands on vocational competence and the use of different digital technologies. It affects vocational teaching, yet digitalization within vocational education constitutes a scarcely researched area. In this study, we explore how vocational teachers relate to teaching in a digitalized society from a socio-material perspective and explore the possibilities as well as the discursive manifestations of contradictions it gives rise to. Data includes semi-structured interviews with ten vocational teachers, representing eight vocational programs in Sweden. Findings show how vocational teachers benefit from digital technology to realize pedagogical strategies and facilitate students’ vocational competence. At the same time, digitalization entails challenges of keeping up with changes in working life and providing students with relevant vocational digital technologies. Contributions include increased knowledge about digitalization in vocational education, and how it entails navigating different contradictions. © 2023, The Author(s).

Purpose: Due to the global outbreak of Covid-19, Swedish teachers in upper secondary education were forced to conduct emergency remote teaching. As of today, there is a stream of research that addresses digitalization in education in light of the pandemic. Previous studies show that the challenges with the sudden intensification of digitalization have been particularly challenging in practical and aesthetic subjects. The research question is as follows: What challenges did vocational teachers experience during the emergency remote teaching caused by Covid-19 and what emergent tactics can be identified in vocational teaching practice? Design/methodology/approach: The empirical data consists of (1) interviews with two vocational teachers and, (2) workshops with 25 teacher students from different vocational programmes that addressed vocational teaching during the Covid-19 crisis. Findings: Emergency remote teaching meant challenges due to the changed socio-material environment that cannot easily be transformed to a vocational teaching setting. The challenges were related to authentic situations and material, problem solving and dexterity. Tactics that emerged as a response to the challenges were mainly connected to attempts to mimic vocational practices. Originality/value: Contributions include explaining specific challenges and possibilities in developing vocational competence when teaching is digitalised. Furthermore, it increases the understanding of the relationship between theory and practice in vocational education. By adopting a socio-material perspective on vocational competence, the authors enhance the understanding of the importance of a shared socio-material environment. © 2022, Sandra Carlsson, Karin K Flensner, Lars Svensson and Sara Willermark.

Purpose – This study aims to explore virtual leadership work within educational settings in the light of social disruption. In 2020, a global pandemic changed the way we work. For school leaders, that involved running a virtual school overnight. Although there is a stream of research that explores leadership in solely virtual communities, there is a gap in the literature regarding practices that transition from analog to virtual practices and the changes in leadership in those types of work practices.Design/methodology/approach – The data gathering method constitutes a questionnaire to explore school leaders’ experiences of virtual work and virtual leadership in light of social disruption. One hundred and five Swedish school leaders answered the questionnaire covering both fixed and open questions.Findings – The results show that school leaders’ general experiences of transition to virtual school have worked relatively well. We show how the work changes and shift the focus in the virtual workplace.Originality/value – The author’s contributions include theorizing about leadership affordances in virtual schools and providing implications for practice. The authors summarize our main contribution in five affordances that characterize virtual leadership, including a focus on core activities, trust-based government, 1:1 communication with staff, structure and clarity and active outreach activities. The results could be interesting for understanding the radical digitalization of leadership in the digital workplace.

Teaching and learning design theory are challenging tasks. To solely teach design theory through rules or codes of conduct, could be seen as a static way of approaching a complex phenomenon. In this paper, we argue for the importance of engagement in sensitive design situations, an approach that entails a process of de-emphasizing objectivity and promoting subjectivity through real-life sensitive cases to learn from, to foster reflectiveness for the future designers. This study aims to explore how sensitive design situations can be used when teaching and learning design theory. The research approach consists of a case study in a Nordic university, and a course in interaction design in a software engineering program. The sensitive design situation involves designing a digital artifact that can help children that have been diagnosed with cancer, cope with their cancer treatment. The main contribution is a teaching method for cultivating ethical design, which includes the application of sensitive design situations when teaching ethics to students. We illustrate that by forwarding three characteristics that can be used when teaching and learning ethical design through sensitive design situations. 

In 2020, a global pandemic changed the educational landscape overnight and caused an abrupt transition to virtual classrooms. This study aims to gain increased knowledge of teachers’ experiences of facing such radical digitalization through ideal types. The data include a teacher survey with 1109 respondents from 15 high schools in Sweden, containing both fixed and open-ended response types. Educational affordances and digital competence are used as analytical lenses. The results show distinct differences regarding teachers’ perception of how teaching in a virtual classroom has worked and whether they and their students have developed their digital competence during this period. We present four ideal types: a) the enthusiast, b) the skeptic, c) the pessimist, and d) the affirmative, which capture the essence of teachers’ multifaceted experiences, actions, and affordances perceived in the transition to virtual classrooms. Contributions include theorizing about teachers’ encounters with radical cases of digitalization.

Hardly any organization remains unaffected by the digitalization of society and the whole global economy is shaken by disruptive digital innovations (DDI). This calls for strategic responses from incumbent firms to remain relevant in a changing environment. This study explores the phenomenon of digital transformation and the development of digital business strategy in the context of incumbent firms, in this case, the hotel industry. We address the following research questions: 1) How are hotel organizations disrupted by digital innovations? and 2) How do they respond strategically to these disruptions? The research approach consists of multiple longitudinal case studies of two international hotel chains, offering a rich dataset. “Strategy-as-practice” is used as a theoretical lens. The results show three overall organizational responses due to DDI including: 1) relating to a new digital business environment; 2) translating strategy to practices 3) renegotiating value. Contributions include extending the existing literature on digital strategies and responses to digital disruptions in incumbent firms as well as providing implications to practice. © 2022 The Author(s).