Exploring the Lived Experiences of Kindergarten Through Grade 12 Education Leaders’ With Digital Transformation Strategies During and Post COVID-19

The rapid spread of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 in March 2020 had a profound impact on global kindergarten through Grade 12 (K–12) education, causing significant disruption to the learning environment and compelling many education leaders to immediately embrace emergency remote learning measures. There was a gap in knowledge of education leaders’ lived experiences of this transformation. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of U.S. K–12 education leaders in creating digital transformation strategies during the wake and aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. The conceptual framework consisted of Trist and Bamforth’s sociotechnical subsystem theory and Wade’s digital business transformation model. Purposive and snowball sampling techniques were used to recruit 11 education leaders in the K–12 school system who met the established criteria and shared common experiences with the phenomenon. The primary data collection method was semistructured interviews with open-ended questions; the responses were transcribed for thematic analysis to derive contextual meaning from the data. The three themes that emerged were education leaders’ pivot to online learning during the pandemic, their perspectives on the challenges and benefits of adopting digital transformation strategies, and the pandemic’s influence on societal needs. The two subthemes were the emergency economic response to an unprecedented global crisis and leveraging digital technologies for online learning. The study’s implications for positive social change include informing education leaders about effective digital transformation strategies they might adopt to promote a sustainable education system in a postpandemic society.