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Abstract

Background: As China builds an innovation-driven economy, vocational education provides essential skilled workers for key industries, helping to elevate vocational colleges into crucial centers for talent development and social mobility. In this context, the dean’s transformational leadership may play an important role in supporting institutional digital transformation.

Research Question: How do deans’ transformational leadership domains predict institutional digital transformation maturity across leadership and pedagogy in vocational education?

Methods: A sequential explanatory mixed-methods design combined a faculty survey with semi-structured interviews. Valid survey responses from 30 faculty members were analyzed using descriptive statistics, correlations, and regression, followed by thematic analysis of 10 semi-structured interviews. The quantitative and qualitative findings were integrated using joint displays.

Results: Quantitative findings showed uniformly high ratings across the leadership domains and digital maturity indicators, with strong associations among vision, teamwork, collaboration, and individualized support. However, the regression of mean leadership on mean digital maturity was weak and not statistically significant, providing limited evidence of a predictive relationship in this sample. The interview findings generally aligned with and provided additional context for the quantitative results.

First Page

161

Last Page

176

Ethics Approval

Not Applicable

Declaration Statement

data availability statement: The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.

Funding statement: This research was supported by the 2025 China–ASEAN Vocational Education Research Center Self-Financed Project (Project No. ZGDMKT2025ZC029) and the 2025 Annual Research Project of Guangxi Human Resource Service Industry Association (Project No. GXRZXH-2025-027), titled Research on Paths to Improve the International Competence of Teachers in Higher Vocational Colleges in Guangxi under the Background of RCEP — Based on the Practice of International Cooperation Projects of Guangxi Vocational College of Water Resources and Electric Power.


conflict of interest disclosure：The authors declare no conflict of interest.

participation consent statement：Obtained

permission to reproduce materials from other sources： N/A

clinical trial registration： N/A

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