Enactments of Distributed Pedagogical Leadership Between Early Childhood Centre Directors and Deputy Directors in Norway
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37134/saecj.vol13.1.10.2024Keywords:
Distributed leadership, early childhood, centre director, deputy director, pedagogical leadership, NorwayAbstract
This study aims to investigate how early childhood directors and deputy directors describe their enactments of distributed pedagogical leadership. An interpretive qualitative study was conducted by way of semi-structured individual interviews and job-descriptions of six participants. Distributed leadership frameworks that involve multiple persons enacting pedagogical leadership in interdependent ways, inform the study. The findings of this study illustrate that enactments of distributed pedagogical leadership between ECE directors and deputy directors occur both by leading together where they enact the same leadership task and where they work separately with tasks they have divided between them. Additionally, shared authority, dialogue on pedagogical development, support and division of tasks show various forms of distributed pedagogical leadership enactments. The study highlights some implications for further attention to take benefit from distributed pedagogical leadership. This is important as distributive leadership is seen to increase the capacity of pedagogical leadership through collaboration to deal with challenges and high workload resulting from new requirements and changes.
Downloads
References
Alvesson, M., & Kärreman, D. (2011). Qualitative research and theory development: mystery as method. Sage.
Bolden, R. (2011). Distributed Leadership in Organizations: A Review of Theory and Research. International Journal of Management Reviews, 13(3), 251-269. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2370.2011.00306.x
Brinkmann, S. (2014). Doing Without Data. Qualitative Inquiry, 20(6), 720-725. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800414530254
Douglass, A. (2019). Leadership for quality early childhood education and care, OECD Education Working Papers. (211). https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/content/paper/6e563bae-en
Elomaa, M., Pakarinen, E., Eskelä-Haapanen, S., Halttunen, L., Von Suchodoletz, A., & Lerkkanen, M.-K. (2020). Directors' stress in day care centers: related factors and coping strategies. International Journal of Educational Management, 34(6), 1079-1091. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEM-10-2019-0383
Eskelinen, M., & Hujala, E. (2015). Early childhood leadership in Finland in light of recent research. In M. Waniganayake, J. Rodd, & L. Gibbs (Eds.), Thinking and Learning about Leadership: Early childhood research from Australia, Finland and Norway. Community Child Care Cooperative NSW.
Fonsén, E., Lahtinen, L., Sillman, M., & Reunamo, J. (2020). Pedagogical leadership and children’s well-being in Finnish early education. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143220962105
Fonsén, E., & Mäntyjärvi, M. (2019). Diversity of the assessments of a joint leadership model in early childhood education. In P. Strehmel, J. Heikka, E. Hujala, J. Rodd, & M. Waniganayake (Eds.), Leadership in Early Education in Times of Change. Verlag Barbara Budrich Opladen.
Fonsén, E., & Soukainen, U. (2019). Sustainable Pedagogical Leadership in Finnish Early Childhood Education (ECE): An Evaluation by ECE Professionals. Early Childhood Education Journal. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-019-00984-y
Gronn, P. (2002). Distributed leadership as a unit of analysis. Leadership Quarterly, 13(4), 423-451.
Gronn, P. (2011). Hybrid configurations of leadership. In A. Bryman, D. Collinson, K. Grint, B. Jackson, & M. Uhl-Bien (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of leadership (pp. 437-454). Sage.
Halttunen, L., Sims, M., Waniganayake, M., Hadley, F., Bøe, M., Hognestad, K., & Heikka, J. (2019). Working as early childhood centre directors and deputies – perspectives from Australia, Finland and Norway. In P. Strehmel, J. Heikka, E. Hujala, J. Rodd, & M. Waniganayake (Eds.), Leadership in Early Education in Times of Change. Research from Five Continents (pp. 221-243). Budrich.
Halttunen, L., & Waniganayake, M. (2021). Views from the Inside: Roles of Deputy Directors in Early Childhood Education in Finland. 11(11), 751. https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/11/11/751
Hargreaves, A., & O’Connor, M. T. (2018). Collaborative Professionalism: When Teaching Together Means Learning for All. CA: Corwin Pres.
Harris, A. (2008). Distributed leadership: according to the evidence. Journal of Educational Administration, 46(2), 172-188. https://doi.org/10.1108/09578230810863253
Harris, A., Jones, M., & Huffman, J. (2017). Teachers Leading Educational Reform: the Power of Professional Learning Communities. Routledge Press.
Heikka, J. (2014). Distributed Pedagogical Leadership in Early Childhood Education University of Tampere]. Tampere University Press.
Heikka, J., & Hujala, E. (2013). Early childhood leadership through the lens of distibuted leadership. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 21(4), 568-580.
Heikka, J., Pitkäniemi, H., Kettukangas, T., & Hyttinen, T. (2019). Distributed pedagogical leadership and teacher leadership in early childhood education contexts. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603124.2019.1623923
Heikka, J., & Suhonen, K. (2019). Distributed pedagogical leadership functions in Early Childhood Education settings in Finland. Southeast Asia Early Childhood Journal, 8, 43-56. https://doi.org/10.37134/saecj.vol8.no2.4.2019
Hujala, E., Eskelinen, M., Keskinen, S., Chen, C., Inoue, C., Matsumoto, M., & Kawase, M. (2016). Leadership Tasks in Early Childhood Education in Finland, Japan, and Singapore. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 30(3), 406-421. https://doi.org/10.1080/02568543.2016.1179551
Kristiansen, E., Tholin, K. R., & Bøe, M. (2021). Early childhood centre directors coping with stress: firefighters and oracles. International Journal of Educational Management, 35(4), 909-921. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEM-12-2020-0584
OECD. (2019). Providing Quality Early Childhood Education and Care: Results from the Starting Strong Survey 2018, TALIS. O. Publishing. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/content/publication/301005d1-en
Senge, P. M. (2006). The fifth discipline: the art and practice of the learning organization. Currency/Doubleday.
Sims, M., Forrest, R., Semann, A., & Slattery, C. (2015). Conceptions of early childhood leadership: driving new professionalism? International Journal of Leadership in Education, 18(2), 149-166. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603124.2014.962101
Spillane, J., Halverson, R., & Diamond, J. (2001). Investigation school leadeship practice; a distributed perspective Educational Researcher, 30(3).
Spillane, J. P. (2006). Distributed Leadership. CA: Jossey-Bass.
Spillane, J. P., & Diamond, J. B. (2007). Distributed leadership in practice. Teachers College Press.
The Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities. (2020). Sentral Forbundsvis særvatale vedrørende barnehager, skolefritidsordninger, skole og familiebarnehager. https://www.ks.no/contentassets/77f137f584a64d6f9e141867944c1bde/Barnehageavtalen-SFS-2201-ny-avtale-01-01-2020-31-12-2021.pdf
The Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research. (2005). Kindergarten Act. Retrieved from https://lovdata.no/dokument/NLE/lov/2005-06-17-64
The Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research. (2018). The kindergarten teaching profession – present and future. Summary of a report developed by an expert group appointed by the Ministry of Education and Research. https://www.regjeringen.no/en/dokumenter/the-kindergarten-teaching-profession--present-and-future/id2662934/
Torrance, D. (2013). Distributed leadership: challenging five generally held assumptions. School Leadership & Management, 33(4), 354-372. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2013.813463
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Marit Bøe, Karin Hognestad
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.