Abstract: In post-digital educational contexts, where digital technologies are embedded, ubiquitous, and increasingly platformised, the central challenge for educational leaders is no longer adoption but quality control and governance. Many EdTech evaluation practices remain fragmented, focusing either on pedagogical affordances without strategic prioritisation or on operational considerations divorced from learning impact. This paper proposes a hybrid EdTech evaluation framework that integrates the SAMR model of pedagogical task transformation with the MoSCoW prioritisation method to support evidence-informed leadership decision-making across the technology lifecycle.

The framework is designed for use at three critical checkpoints – initial review, interim evaluation, and end-of-cycle assessment – enabling institutions to assess whether a technology is fit for purpose, delivering sustained pedagogical benefit, and aligned with organisational values and capacity. Informed by post-digital theory and critical political economic perspectives, including surveillance capitalism and platform enshittification, the framework foregrounds issues of power, data extraction, sustainability, and degradation over time. A case-based application demonstrates how pedagogical potential, strategic priorities, and ethical considerations can be made explicit and contestable within leadership processes.

The paper argues that combining pedagogical impact analysis with explicit prioritisation advances EdTech evaluation from a technical exercise to a reflective governance practice, equipping educational leaders to make transparent, defensible, and context-sensitive decisions in complex digital learning ecosystems.