Homeroom Teacher Leadership and Digital Strategies in Chinese Classrooms: A Dual-Pathway Framework for Student Engagement
Keywords:
Homeroom teacher leadership, Student engagement, Dual-pathway framework, Digital transformation, Classroom managementAbstract
Under China’s Education Informatization 2.0 reform, classroom management is shifting from administrative control toward leadership-driven and digitally mediated governance. Although homeroom teachers are expected to integrate humanistic leadership with AI-supported strategies, existing research rarely explains how their integration sustains authentic student engagement. This study examines how transformational and distributed leadership can be combined with digital strategies to enhance behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement. Using a qualitative literature-based approach, it analyzes 20 practitioner monographs and 9 recent academic journal articles (2020–2025). Inductive coding and thematic synthesis were employed to construct a dual-pathway framework. Findings indicate that leadership-oriented practices cultivate emotional safety and autonomy, while digitally-enabled strategies improve precision and personalized feedback. Sustainable engagement emerges from their synergy rather than isolated application. The study proposes a Dual-Pathway Framework that integrates moral leadership with intelligent governance, offering a human-centered model for classroom management in the AI era.
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