Leadership In Early Childhood Education Research Articles

Professional learning communities: Enhancing collaborative leadership in Singapore early childhood settings

Leadership in early childhood education has been promoted as a collaborative process in which all teachers, rather than just the positional leader, are involved. Collaborative leadership practices are not well understood within the marketised Singapore early childhood education context. Beyond mandatory leadership training, little is known about how leaders are supported to strengthen their leadership practices and involve others in leadership activities. School-based literature suggests that learning through professional learning communities expands the collective capacity of organisations; however, literature on professional learning communities in early childhood education is limited. This article reports on the findings of an interpretive case study examining the current understandings and leadership practices of principals in the Singapore early childhood education context, and investigating how participation in professional learning communities can support the development of collaborative leadership practices. The participants in two professional learning communities established as part of this study were six principals from an anchor-operator childcare provider and five principals from private childcare centres in Singapore. Two teachers working with each of the respective principals were also involved in focus group interviews to ascertain if there were changes in their principals’ leadership practices. Data was collected from professional learning community meetings, online reflections, pre- and post-professional learning community interviews with the principals, and follow-up focus group discussions with the teachers. The key findings indicate that praxis as a result of participation in a professional learning community led to some shifts in principals’ thinking about collaborative leadership practices and resulted in reported changes to their leadership approaches, distribution of leadership, and improved collegiality and collaborative learning for teachers. The results indicate that considering and implementing collaborative leadership practices through professional learning communities in the Singapore early childhood education context requires sensitivity towards Asian Singapore sociocultural values related to hierarchy and economic pragmatism.

What early childhood leadership for what kind of world?

This article uses autoethnography as the method of inquiry to explore definitions and contexts of early childhood education leadership. This affords a new space between the subjective and objective, the autobiographical and the cultural, to write in a way that lies between literature and the social sciences. Against a backcloth of scientific and cultural change, five turning-point moments are identified that link personal social circumstances to continuity and change in conceptions of leadership and management, particularly in the early childhood education sector. Modernist hierarchical and more recent subjective or postmodernist models are considered along the way. It is concluded that there is a role for theory in both guiding and interrogating practice. If leaders’ conceptions are to be better informed by knowledge of contrasting and competing theories, then through a process of praxis, critical awareness may increase. This depends, however, on access to the training and development that early childhood education professionals do not currently enjoy.

Leadership in early childhood education: The case for pedagogical praxis

In this conceptual article, the authors examine the context of early childhood education and care in England and the underpinning predominant ideologies to explore how these impact on the framing of leadership. The English context entails several contradictions (antinomies) at ontological, epistemological and axiological levels, and is heavily influenced by an ideological struggle concerning the value of play within the sector as opposed to a climate of child performativity. Moreover, the predominately female workforce (a factor itself) has faced relentless changes in terms of qualifications and curriculum reforms in recent years. With the introduction of the graduate leader qualification (Early Years Teacher Status), a vast body of research has been seeking to conceptualise what leadership means for early childhood education and care. In this article, the authors argue that these attempts are helpful and contribute to this discourse of leadership, but it needs to be thought of not only abstractly, but also practically. Thus, the authors conclude, the (re)conceptualisation of leadership should locate it as pedagogical praxis after evaluating the inherent deep dispositions of leaders in conjunction with their history, surrounding culture and subjective perspectives/realities.

Distributed leadership in ECE: perceptions and practices

ABSTRACT Leadership within the New Zealand early childhood education (ECE) sector is both positionally assigned and a practice required of all teachers. Within this context, distributed leadership, where all team members have the potential to lead through intentional practice, is increasingly seen as an effective leadership model. This article focuses on the perceptions and practices of teachers and leaders regarding distributed leadership. ECE teachers and positional leaders’ perceptions of distributed leadership and leadership practice were gathered through surveys, and explored through individual and group interviews in three previously identified high-quality ECE services. Data analysis revealed some differences in the perceptions of teachers and leaders surveyed, whereas in the interviews, the teachers and leaders had similar perceptions. Differences in perceptions about leadership create the potential for positional leaders to be unaware of areas requiring improvement either in their leadership practice or in the service as a whole. Effective leaders supported distributed leadership through building relational trust, mentoring and coaching teachers, and providing opportunities for teachers to enact leadership. The findings of this study may provide guidance for positional leaders wishing to support distributed leadership practice.

Making sense of teacher leadership in early childhood education in China

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this paper is to offer a theoretical discussion on teacher leadership in early childhood education (ECE) in Chinese contexts. Since 2010, the Chinese government has initiated a comprehensive education reform in ECE, with strategies for developing teacher leadership and promoting education quality. However, at the school level there is a lack of leadership preparation and development, along with a gap between policy initiative and its implementation. How to narrow this gap between policy and practice in teacher leadership has become a critical issue for ECE in China. This paper suggests that ‘formal role or informal role’ and ‘role or practice’ are important dimensions of teacher leadership in a Chinese, policy-driven context. In this regard, it is worth exploring how teacher leadership is conceptualized and enacted in the process of quality improvement and related contextual factors. In doing so, an agenda could be identified for future research, contributing to theories on the development of teacher leadership in the global discourse.

Making sense of leadership in early childhood education: Tensions and complexities between concepts and practices

AbstractEffective leadership within early childhood settings is aligned with the perceived successful implementation of high quality care and education programmes (Thornton, Tamati, Clarkin-Philips, Aitken & Wansbrough, 2009). With growing attention on the role early childhood education (ECE) plays in preparing children to be successful in their lives, it is not surprising that there is increased focus on the work and impact of educational leaders in this endeavour. An expanding body of research specifically exploring leadership within ECE settings illustrates how much of the educational leadership theory corpus lacks contextual relevance and fails to recognise the complexities and realities of leading in early years contexts (Rodd, 2013). The qualitative research reported on in this article examines the leadership understandings and perceptions of five qualified, registered early childhood leaders. The findings illustrated that whilst participants were cognisant of the role effective leadership plays in providing quality care and education, there was much confusion about what leadership entailed and how leadership differentiated from management in this context. The contextual complexities of the ECE sector were a significant influence on each participant’s opportunity to learn about, and practise leadership. Findings also revealed a need for contextually relevant and progressive approaches to leadership learning to support early childhood leaders and teachers in their leadership work.

Leading today’s kindergartens

Studies on school leadership in Hong Kong have mainly focused on primary and secondary schools, with only a handful of studies looking at leadership in early childhood education. This paper aims to report the findings of a study on strategic leadership in Hong Kong’s kindergartens. It discusses the challenges that Hong Kong kindergarten leaders are facing and the need for practising strategic leadership. It then reports the findings of practices valued by the leaders of Hong Kong kindergartens. The findings of this study reveal, that apart from the abilities to exercise sound planning and management in school, leaders’ reflective, flexible and systems thinking and their willingness in continuous professional and network development are crucial to leading today’s kindergartens. This study also indicates that leaders’ contextual intelligence is important for exercising strategic leadership. The significance of this study lies in its contribution to the investigation of leadership practices in early childhood education, the need to further explore how well kindergarten leaders are practising strategic leadership and the implications for the development of principal preparation programmes.

Pedagogical Narrations and Leadership in Early Childhood Education as Thinking in Moments of Not Knowing

Abstract to Follow

Leadership in Early Childhood Education Contexts: Looks, Roles, and Functions

Situated in the field of early childhood education (ECE), this paper uses literature on educational leadership to answer four questions about leadership in ECE contexts. Firstly, what is leadership and how important is it for the success of an organisation? Secondly, what does it look like in ECE? Thirdly, what does leadership in ECE involve? And fourthly, how does efficient and effective leadership function in an ECE context? It is important to answer these questions because there is an understanding that leadership in ECE contexts is unlike leadership in other educational institutions. It requires special administrative and managerial skills to plan, organise, lead, control and direct the operations in the ECE context, as well as leadership skills to provide an organisational vision, direction and aculturation. An understanding of what leadership in ECE contexts looks like, its roles and functions can inform ECE leaders in ways that help them to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their educational institution.

Early childhood leadership through the lens of distributed leadership

ABSTRACTThis study aims to investigate distribution of responsibilities for leadership in early childhood education (ECE) context. It focuses on the enactments of leadership by investigating how ECE stakeholders, e.g. teachers, ECE centre directors and administrative ECE leaders in municipalities perceive the leadership responsibilities. Using focus groups, the data was collected in seven municipalities in Finland. The study was based on contextual and distributed view of leadership. Quality improvement and pedagogical leadership was seen as primary responsibilities in ECE leadership by all studied groups. The study indicated different practices of distribution of responsibilities for leadership. However, it indicated that developed forms of leadership distribution were rarely used. In developing ECE leadership, focusing on interdependencies of leadership enactments between teachers, centre directors and municipal ECE leaders and building structures for interaction between stakeholders, increase the quality of distributed leadership.

Looking to the future: producing transdisciplinary professionals for leadership in early childhood settings

This paper reports on an Australian initiative Developing and Sustaining Pedagogical Leadership in Early Childhood Education and Care Professionals, where academics and professionals shared knowledge, experience and research about transdisciplinary practice. The project aimed to develop an understanding of the strategies and skills early childhood professionals and practitioners required to strengthen pedagogical leadership when working in multi-agency organisations. The conceptual framework underpinning the design, analysis and evaluation of the project was bricolage. Bricolage enabled the researchers, professionals and practitioners and other organisational members to consider the principles of multiplicity, complexity, relationality and criticality. The use of bricolage created an opportunity for a more comprehensive level of analysis to occur. A model of professional development emerged from the analysis of the data and was subsequently used to develop an open source learning website.

Love-Based leadership in early childhood education

Love-Based leadership in early childhood education

Leadership Development during Times of Reform

EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP IN EARLY childhood education and care settings has been integrated within the National Quality Framework in Australia, which came into effect on 1 January, 2012. While the appointment of educational leaders within the field is a step in the right direction, leadership development has been overlooked at governmental level until recently. The issue is being examined at this time due the regulatory reforms currently underway within the field in Australia. The paper calls for more leadership development within the field since most educators with leadership responsibilities have been appointed to their position with limited, or no, leadership training. A cultural shift is recommended in order to significantly improve the status of the profession.

Leadership in Early Childhood Education

Leadership in early childhood education is greatly under-represented in academic literature. Derek Glover’s review of the contents of EMAL, for the 40th Anniversary Issue in September 2012 (Bush and Crawford, 2012), showed that only 15 papers have focused on primary education in the past decade, compared to 41 on secondary schools, and most of those do not address early childhood settings. This issue of the journal begins to address this inequity with two papers on this sector. It is now well established that student outcomes are strongly influenced by children’s early learning experiences and leadership is a key factor in making early childhood education successful. The first article, by Carol Aubrey, Ray Godfrey and Alma Harris, explores what leadership means for participants in 12 diverse early childhood settings in a large Midlands city. They surveyed almost 200 staff and governors, interviewed 12 early childhood leaders, conducted group interviews with other staff, and produced vignettes of leaders, based on diaries and video observations of their practice. They draw on all these data sets to show that leadership was distributed across the wide range of children, families, communities, professionals and agencies involved in early childhood education. They caution that one leadership approach cannot be appropriate for such a diverse sector and conclude that ‘flexible leadership is the way forward’. In the next article, Manjula Waniganayake, Johanna Heikka and Eeva Hujala link distributed leadership to early childhood education, drawing on the work of Alma Harris and other leading writers, in a systematic literature review. They confirm that published work on this sector is ‘sparse and difficult to locate’. They comment that, within early childhood education, research has been focused on relationships between leaders and followers. More recently, distributed leadership has been applied to the sector, as Aubrey et al.’s paper also suggests. They conclude by claiming that distributed leadership can bring about better interconnection, consistency and coherence in service delivery amongst the diverse stakeholders involved in early childhood education. Achievement for All (AfA) is a major initiative which has transformed provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in England. Sonia Blandford has been centrally involved with AfA since the pilot in 2009 and the next article presents her assessment of its impact on school leadership. Drawing on focus group interviews with heads and local authority project leaders in ten local authorities, she identifies 54 different leadership issues arising from the implementation of AfA. Unsurprisingly, the most frequently cited ‘leadership lesson’ was to ‘communicate vision to all stakeholders’. Second was the need to distribute leadership, to achieve ‘ownership’, connecting with the points made in the first two articles in this issue. The author concludes that AfA has produced clear evidence of impact on SEND leadership practice. The next two articles both relate to countries under-represented in the educational leadership literature. Jamila Razzaq and Christine Forde examine the impact of curricular change on secondary school leaders in Pakistan. Drawing on interviews with the heads of 20 schools in Rawalpindi and Islamabad, the authors note several disadvantages of the change process; limited engagement Educational Management Administration & Leadership 41(1) 3–4 a The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1741143212462968 emal.sagepub.com

Conceptualizing teacher leadership in a Chinese, policy-driven context: a research agenda

In recent years, the Western discourse on distributed leadership has attracted increased attention in Chinese societies that have traditionally relied on highly centralized administrative systems in which power is located in the person of the school principal or other unit leader. This article explores the implications of applying the concept of distributed leadership in a Chinese context and outlines a research agenda for future work in this area. The article focuses specifically on teacher leadership in early childhood education in Hong Kong as an illustrative case. It suggests that change agentry, collaboration, collegiality, power, and authority are key aspects of discourse on teacher leadership in a Chinese, policy-driven context. It is argued that existing studies of leadership have failed to recognize the complexity of employing teacher leadership in hierarchical, policy-driven, high power distance, collectivist cultural contexts.

Thinking about Practice in Integrated Children's Services: Considering Transdisciplinarity

Integrated service delivery in the early childhood education and care sector is burgeoning as a direct result of government agendas in Australia that privilege services for young children and families, especially those considered most vulnerable and at risk. In many cases this means reviewing and revising current practice to work more collaboratively with other professionals. This paper reports the findings of one aspect of a larger Australian study entitled: ‘Developing and sustaining pedagogical leadership in early childhood education and care professionals’. The focus of this paper is the understandings and practices of professionals in both Queensland and Victoria working in integrated Children's Services across the education, care, community and health sectors. The notion of transdisciplinary practice is also explored as a way to sustain practice. Qualitative data collection methods, including the ‘Circles of Change’ process, the ‘Significant Change’ method and semi-structured interviews were used. The findings indicate concerns around professional identity, feeling valued, role confusion and the boundaries imposed by funding regulations. Working in a transdisciplinary way was generally considered a useful way to move practice forward in these settings, although the ramifications for leadership that this approach brings requires further consideration.

The Paradox of Power in Leadership in Early Childhood Education

Western frameworks for school improvement, including the stakeholder model and the model of decentralized leadership, have recently been promoted as solutions for school improvement. Using early childhood education in Hong Kong as an illustrative case, this article focuses on the power and authority of leadership in school decision making. The interview data collected from the two case study schools reveal a paradox of power in leadership that is characterized by tensions between centralization and decentralization in the change process, where decentralization is advocated by policymakers but traditional hierarchical cultures remain. The relationship between the leaders and school stakeholders incorporates a concept of harmony that functions to defuse the potential power struggle embedded in decision making.

Children's Leadership Strategies in Early Childhood

Young children's leadership is an undertheorized and underresearched topic. Much of the research literature involves paired children working on adult-set tasks that are aimed to provide data on specific aspects of children's collaborative work. This article describes and discusses an investigation into children's leadership styles within independent collaborative play episodes. The research project involved observing children's independent collaborative play in a daylong early childhood setting one morning a week for 5 months. It was an interpretivist study, and the researcher did not participate in any way in the children's play, which was documented using field notes and digital photographs. Although clear gender differences in leadership styles were evident, the predominant boy leader only used assertive strategies, whereas the predominant girl leaders used physical assertive strategies rather than relational strategies to exert their control. It is suggested that individual cultural experiences and contextual factors play a greater part in children's leadership in early childhood education than current gender-focused explanations would suggest.

Motivational leadership in early childhood education

Chapter 1: The Role of Motivation in Early Childhood Programs Chapter 2: Early Childhood Settings: Unique Challenges in the Workplace Chapter 3: The Motivational Leader Chapter 4: Its the Little Things that Count: Everyday Ideas Chapter 5: Organizational Incentives Chapter 6: Conclusions

The Role of Meaningful Dialogue in Early Childhood Education Leadership

ACTION RESEARCH WAS USED to study the effectiveness of Learning Organisation and Adaptive Enterprise theories for promoting organisation-wide learning and creating a more effective early childhood education organisation. This article describes the leadership steps taken to achieve shared vision via meaningful dialogue between board, management and staff that encouraged mental models to be revealed and modified as conflicts in deeply held beliefs became reconciled. Consideration of feedback relationships provided valuable systemic insights and a choice of organisation futures. Over time, the new mindset resulted in new infrastructure, policies, training and reward practices that enabled the organisation to compete very successfully against other service providers through a differentiation strategy of quality and responsiveness. Significant and enduring improvement in the self-esteem of empowered individuals was also noted. The results of this research should be of interest to any leader who needs to radically transform attitudes and beliefs, promote organisation-wide learning, and effectively implement widespread, enduring change.