How school leaders justify digitalization in vocationally oriented Swiss upper-secondary schools: a qualitative content analysis through the lens of convention theory in education

School leaders play an important role, when it comes to digitalisa-tion of teaching and learning. In this study, different arguments forschool-specific digital strategies by school leaders were analysedfrom a convention theory perspective. Semi-structured interviewswere conducted with 9 Swiss school-leaders of 2 secondary schooltypes (7 vocational schools and 2 upper secondary specialisedschools), regarded as digitally advanced schools. Content analysisrevealed legitimation patterns including enhanced pedagogicaladded value, but also efficiency and networking. Moreover, mostschool leaders described the COVID-19 pandemic as a strong boos-ter for digitalisation efforts at their schools. Schools with a bolderdigital integration policy tend to adhere to a project-oriented legit-imation. In this study we highlight the strong pedagogical focus fordigital integration uttered by school leaders, which is – as ourtypology reveals – combined with industrial, market and projectjustifications.