Abstract: Strong ideological and political leadership is not only a fundamental trait of a leading country in education, but also a crucial guarantee for its development. As the digital-intelligent transformation of education deepens, the value of this leadership in fostering virtue through education has become increasingly prominent, especially in overcoming cognitive rigidity, bridging emotional detachment, forging value consensus, and promoting the unity of knowledge and action. However, the rapid advance and wide application of digital intelligent technologies have also created new difficulties. For example, uneven technological development and disparities in algorithmic recommendation exacerbate cognitive divergence among different groups; over-reliance on digital-intelligent media reduces deep interpersonal interaction and intensifies emotional alienation; information overload and algorithmic bias fragment value-laden content and dilute the cohesive efficacy of mainstream values; and the lack of seamless integration between virtual space and the real world triggers action delays or a knowledge-action gap. All these difficulties constrain the effective exertion of ideological and political leadership. To overcome them in the digital-intelligent era, it is necessary to carry out rational reflection across the four dimensions of cognition, emotion, will, and action. Such reflection should center on core strategies of data empowerment, algorithmic optimization, content aggregation, and scenario integration, thereby laying a more solid theoretical foundation, providing deeper emotional support, establishing a clearer value orientation, and creating more effective practical vehicles for the exertion of ideological and political leadership. In this way, it can truly empower high-quality development of education and earnestly fulfill the fundamental task of fostering virtue through education.

Key words: digital-intelligent era, ideological and political leadership, cognitive gap, digital ideological and political education, algorithm recommendation, digital and intelligent transformation of education