Horizontal violence in early childhood education and care: Implications for leadership enactment

Abstract

Leadership is a contested term in many contexts and means various things to different people. In early childhood education and care (ECEC) it is understood in multilayered terms. The enactment of leadership in ECEC emerges as heavily influenced by factors both internal and external to the field. This chapter discusses horizontal violence as one of the significant internal impediments to leadership enactment. Horizontal violence, in this chapter, highlights contradictions between a lingering discourse of niceness and a culture that condones behaviours that marginalise and exclude others. The outcome is a powerful expectation of compliance, which does little to foster or encourage leadership activity. Suggestions are made that focus on an open discussion of this phenomenon within the ECEC field in order to address behaviours which are constraining leadership activity.