An Exploration of Leadership in High Quality Early Childhood Education Services

Abstract

It is now widely acknowledged that learning starts from birth and the quality of early interactions and experiences are fundamental to the development of children. Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) services play a significant role in this stage but need to be of sufficient quality to achieve beneficial outcomes. A small but growing body of research has found that leadership and leadership practices contribute to quality ECEC. The aim of this study was to explore ECEC service directors’ and educators’ inside-out (Harrist et al., 2007) perspectives on the practice of leadership in three ECEC services rated as Exceeding National Quality Standards in Sydney, Australia. The study adopted qualitative research methodology with the theoretical framework based on a constructivist paradigm which emphasises inductive and interpretive methods (Hatch, 2002; Punch & Oancea, 2014). Semi structured interviews were used as a data collection tool and the collected data analysed thematically (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Six key themes emerged from the analysed data related to the three research questions. These are: Making a difference; who can be a leader?; conflation of management and leadership; recognising, utilising and developing strengths; demonstrating perceived leadership attributes; and bringing out the best in staff. These themes assisted in answering the main research question of what leadership looks like in high quality ECEC services. Two important revelations of this empirical study, consistent with the literature reviewed, were that leadership practices exercised by participant directors contributed to quality in their respective ECEC services and that distributed leadership was the most commonly practiced leadership approach in the participating ECEC services. Furthermore, it was found that there was a variation in some of the leadership practices, and this appeared to be dependent on contextual features such as the director’s experience and qualifications, and the ECEC centre's management structure.