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

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.

When a crisis undermines quality public service provision: Romanian early childhood education and care through the SARS-Cov-2 epidemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 508-528
Author(s):  
Borbála Kovács
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Service Provision ◽  
Family Policy ◽  
General Pattern ◽  
Early Years ◽  
High Price ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Education And Care ◽  
The Impact

What appeared to be the success of many Eastern European states in managing the toll of the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic in its first round has been attributed to the early introduction of strict lockdown. However, erring on the side of caution came at a high price, with mixed economies of welfare shifting sometimes radically towards families, with the related costs unevenly distributed. Using the case of early childhood education and care (ECEC), the article explores the specifics of what has been a more general pattern in epidemic-induced social policy adaptation in the Romanian context: the overnight, radical and prolonged individualisation of service provision without the corresponding remaking of the cash nexus. It expands on the timeline of government decisions on family policy adaptations, including ECEC service provision. The article also reviews fragmented evidence about the impact of ECEC service suspension on the mixed economy of early years care. The article explains how and why the Romanian government was able to effectively suspend ECEC service delivery between March and September 2020 while keeping related financial arrangements practically unaltered, and do so without open protest. The Romanian case reveals how and why a family policy environment historically characterised by fragmented, selective and partially adequate provision, directly and indirectly maintaining the familialisation of young children’s care, acts as a catalyst for more of the same in hard times: fragmented, selective and only partially adequate intervention. In conceptual terms, the article suggests that familialist family policy is particularly sticky, more so in times of crisis than in ‘good’ times.

Leadership emergence and development: Organizations shaping leading in early childhood education

2020 ◽  
pp. 174114322094032
Author(s):  
Leanne Gibbs
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Leadership Development ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Effective Leadership ◽  
Leadership Roles ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Leadership Emergence ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Practice Architectures ◽  
Outcomes For Children

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.

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

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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