UC Berkeley

This qualitative multi-case study explores how secondary school district leaders in the San Francisco Bay Area navigate the procurement and implementation of educational technology and generative artificial intelligence amid organizational complexity and persistent inequity. Grounded in a hybrid framework of educational systems change and applied critical leadership and interpreted through the lens of tempered radicalism, the study draws on semi-structured interviews with 12 district leaders and an analysis of governance documents. Findings reveal a persistent disjuncture between equity-oriented leadership commitments and the structural conditions of practice, conceptualized here as “tempered agency.” Leaders operate as “outsiders within,” constrained by vendor influence, institutional instability, and compliance-driven systems that limit transformative action. Across cases, equity is predominantly enacted as access, reflecting a technical orientation that leaves the instructional core largely untouched. The study identifies systemic fragmentation as a central barrier, in which decentralized decision-making and short-term governance undermine coherence. In response, an emergent shift toward coherence reflects leaders’ efforts to align the technological, instructional, and ethical dimensions of practice. This study proposes a critical systems leadership framework and an equity-centered edtech procurement heuristic as conceptual tools emerging from the analysis, suggesting that equitable technology leadership depends not only on critical consciousness but also on the development of systemic coherence as a structural and moral condition for change.