The digital era has transformed education, making digital literacy essential for teachers to integrate technology and enhance student outcomes effectively. This study aims to examine how school culture influences teachers’ performance through their digital literacy, focusing on junior high school teachers in Malang City, East Java, Indonesia. Employing a quantitative approach, data were collected from 214 teachers out of a 457 population using questionnaires. The analysis was conducted through AMOS for Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), SPSS for descriptive statistics, and PLS-SEM for hypothesis testing. The findings reveal that school culture significantly affects teachers’ digital literacy (Ho1) and teacher performance (Ho2) with supportive and innovative environments, while rigid cultures limit creativity. Furthermore, digital literacy was found to enhance teachers’ performance (Ho3) and mediate the impact of school culture on teachers’ performance (Ho4), enhancing teachers’ effectiveness in planning, implementing, and evaluating instruction. This study highlights the critical role of school culture in shaping digital literacy and offers new insights for improving teacher practices in diverse educational settings. Moreover, the role of education policies in fostering a collaborative school culture that enhances teachers’ digital literacy and performance, leading to improved educational outcomes, plays a crucial implication.

This research aims to examine the role of learning leadership on teacher performance in elementary schools, analyze the influence of digital literacy on teacher performance, analyze the role of emotional intelligence on teacher performance and analyze the role of intellectual intelligence on teacher performance. In this digital era, digital literacy plays an important role in education. The application of digital literacy in education is still not optimal and there is no previous research that discusses the variables of instructional leadership, teacher performance, digital literacy, emotional intelligence and intellectual intelligence. The research method used is quantitative, the population of this research is all teachers who have used e-learning methods, and the analysis of this research uses structural equation modelling (SEM), the respondents for this research are 675 Indonesian teachers. The sampling method is simple random sampling. Research data was obtained from distributing online questionnaires designed using a 5-point Likert scale, namely scale 1 is strongly disagree, scale 2 is disagree, scale 3 is neutral, scale 4 is agree and scale 5 is strongly agree. Data processing uses SmartPLS 3.0 software tools. The SEM test stages in this research are the outer model test, namely convergent validity, discriminant validity and composite reliability, and then the inner model test, namely hypothesis testing. The results of the analysis using SEM are that the Instructional leadership variable has a positive and significant relationship to teacher performance, the Digital literacy variable has a positive and significant relationship to teacher performance, the Emotional intelligence variable has a positive and significant relationship to teacher performance and Intellectual intelligence has a positive and significant relationship to teacher performance. The novelty of this research is the discovery of a model of the relationship between instructional leadership variables, digital literacy variables, emotional intelligence variables, and intellectual intelligence variables on teacher performance which did not exist in previous research studies. This research has a novelty, namely a model analyzed using SEM-PLS in the digital era. The principal must be able to determine and set learning objectives in his school, in his implementation the principal always involves teachers in developing and implementing learning goals and objectives and the principal also refers to the curriculum set by the government in developing learning. The dimensions of instructional leadership are defining school goals, managing learning programs, and creating a positive learning climate. In other words, the principal has implemented Instructional Leadership with indicators of setting learning goals, indicators of being a resource for staff, indicators of creating a school culture and climate that is conducive to learning, indicators of communicating the school’s vision and mission to staff, indicators of conditioning staff to achieve their goals.