Distributed pedagogical leadership and teacher leadership in early childhood education contexts

Abstract

The topic of distributed pedagogical leadership has attracted researchers’ interest in early childhood education leadership. A growing body of research focuses on investigating leadership enacted between leaders and teachers in ECE settings. In this article, we focus on the enactment of distributed pedagogical leadership in Finnish ECE settings and their relations to teacher commitment to pedagogical leadership on staff teams. The study employed an explanatory sequential mixed methods design. Data on the perceptions of 130 ECE professionals, ECE center directors, ECE teachers, and child care nurses on the enactment of distributed pedagogical leadership and teacher commitment were collected with a survey. A qualitative inquiry included six ECE professional interviews. The results indicate that the studied ECE centers have adopted leadership approaches congruent with distributed pedagogical leadership and the implementation of distributed forms of leadership related positively with the ECE teacher’s ability to lead reflection and learning in their teams.