General

This systematic literature review analyzed 13 peer-reviewed articles published between 2010 and 2024 to examine how higher education administrators conceptualized and implemented pedagogical approaches in online and distance education. Drawing on Transformational Leadership Theory and the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework, the review synthesized evidence on leadership practices that foster innovation, collaboration, and faculty development in digital contexts. Findings revealed that intellectual stimulation was the most frequently observed leadership dimension, while technological pedagogical knowledge was the most consistently represented TPACK intersection. Together, these results highlight how academic leaders advance technology integration by inspiring faculty members, supporting professional learning, and shaping inclusive digital learning cultures. Implications are offered for leadership preparation, institutional policy, and future research.

Although the literature underscores the importance of teacher educators’ roles in technology leadership, there remains a need to clearly define this concept within teacher education and to understand the attributes and practices that enable teacher educators to act as technology leaders, as well as the factors influencing their leadership in technology integration. To address this gap, the authors conducted a systematic review of the literature on technology leadership in teacher education. Guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA), 29 studies were identified, published between 2010 and July 2024 from five databases. Through thematic analysis, a functional definition of technology leadership in teacher education was proposed and the essential attributes and practices that underpin teacher educators’ leadership in technology integration were unveiled. The study revealed a range of contextual factors that could shape technology leadership in teacher education programs, including institutional influences, programmatic challenges, mentor teacher readiness, and national policy and cultural norms. These findings provide important implications for future research on teacher educators as technology leaders.

Over the past few decades, technology-enhanced learning has positioned instructional design as a crucial catalyst for academic innovation within higher education. The emergence and rapid integration of artificial intelligence (AI) are now reshaping instructional design practices. This review study reveals a rapidly expanding ecosystem of AI tools that extend instructional design’s content generation, creativity, and analytics aspects. Yet, while AI enhances efficiency and scalability, this review also identifies growing concerns over the erosion of design intentionality, learner-centeredness, and pedagogical depth in the pursuit of automation. Importantly, this study argues that AI is no longer merely a supplementary, augmenting tool, but is becoming an embedded and cocreative partner within modern instructional design practice — signaling a paradigm shift from tool use to design partnership in the AI era. As AI reshapes higher education, instructional designers must exercise technology leadership — ethically steering rapid change and orchestrating evidence-based teaching, learning, and assessment.

The authors conducted a secondary deductive analysis of 53 written reflections submitted by 12 middle-level mathematics preservice teachers (PSTs) who had each participated in up to five web-based interactive scenarios. The reflections were originally designed to gather data for a previous study about the development of professional judgement using web-based interactive scenarios. However, in reviewing the reflection documents, the authors concluded that there was sufficient data to support a secondary analysis that might inform future scenario development. The article describes the design framework and original development of the scenarios, written by a panel of retired public school administrators and university teacher education faculty members. In anticipation of continued and future development of additional scenarios, several technology delivery formats were used, including still photos with text-based dialogue, video clips with human actors, computer animated images with computer synthesized speech, and computer animated images with human speech dubbed in for audio. The analysis revealed five of nine design elements: commentary, artifacts, personal choices, technology-general, and products were mentioned most frequently by PSTs. The remaining four design elements: technology-positive, branching, control, and technology-negative, provided nuance to the recommendations for future web-based interactive scenario development.