Current Japanese leadership roles in meeting social changes in early childhood education

Early childhood education (ECE) effects positive outcomes for children, but outcomes depend upon the quality of the program with which children engage. Program quality is positively influenced by effective leadership; yet we do not fully understand how effective leadership emerges and develops within ECE sites. This lack of knowledge potentially compromises the development of effective leadership and, subsequently, a child’s right to high-quality ECE. This paper, therefore, contributes to the field of research on ECE leadership development by describing a qualitative Australian study that investigated leadership cultivation. The mini-ethnographic case study examined the emergence and development of leadership in three high-quality, diversely governed ECE settings. Findings of the study suggest the practice of leading is foundational for positional leadership roles and is enabled by the practice architectures of an organization. Practice architectures comprise cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements. Arrangements, found within organizations, included cultures of trust, use of professional knowledge and language, collaborative development of philosophy, democratic allocation of resources, sharing of power and openness to activism, disruption and creativity. Such arrangements play an important role in the emergence and development of leading and therefore offer organizations alternative ways to consider leadership cultivation.

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Views from the Inside: Roles of Deputy Directors in Early Childhood Education in Finland

Education Sciences ◽

10.3390/educsci11110751 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (11) ◽

pp. 751

Author(s):

Leena Halttunen ◽

Manjula Waniganayake

Keyword(s):

Early Childhood ◽

Early Childhood Education ◽

Service Provision ◽

Quality Service ◽

Leadership Roles ◽

Leadership Position ◽

Relational Dynamics ◽

Childhood Education ◽

Task Distribution

This study explored the perceptions of deputy directors about their leadership in Early Childhood Education (ECE) centres in Finland. Our aim was to look beyond task distribution and understand how deputy directors enacted leadership with their colleagues. Six deputy directors employed in one municipality in Finland participated in this study. Interviewed individually, the participants discussed how they themselves perceived being in a leadership position and what their leadership looked like in practice. The emphasis they placed on the various relationships highlight the importance of paying attention to the relational dynamics amongst staff within a centre, taking into account both formal and informal authority. Given the increasing global interest in understanding leadership enactment within ECE centres, and its connection with quality service provision, knowledge of the positional leadership roles of deputy directors is of importance to the ECE sector. This is one of the first studies dedicated to exploring the work of ECE deputy directors.

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Early-Childhood Education for the Developmentally Delayed: Diagnosis, Intervention, and Evaluation

Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools ◽

10.1044/0161-1461.1002.81 ◽

1979 ◽

Vol 10 (2) ◽

pp. 81-92

Author(s):

Susan Freedman Gilbert

Keyword(s):

Early Childhood ◽

Early Childhood Education ◽

School Children ◽

Developmental Delays ◽

Delayed Diagnosis ◽

Language Impairments ◽

Developmentally Delayed ◽

Speech And Language ◽

Childhood Education

This paper describes the referral, diagnostic, interventive, and evaluative procedures used in a self-contained, behaviorally oriented, noncategorical program for pre-school children with speech and language impairments and other developmental delays.

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