Overview Topic 2: What is leadership in ECE?

Welcome to Topic Two: What is leadership in ECE?

This section of the resource examines the need for Leaders in the ECE sector to understand the intricate relationship between leadership styles and one's underlying values to support and sustain effective, ethical, culturally responsive, accessible, and inclusive practices. This acknowledges the delicate balance between the 'heartwork' involved in ECE and the business acumen needed to successfully lead ECE organisations. “Leadership is developmental. Take your time and be patient with your own learning. Take extra care of the leaders and followers around you and also the leader in you. You can only get better and better. We need your leadership!” (Sullivan, 2023, p.143).

Topic Two will allow you to reflect on your leadership style and consider how your leadership traits and values inform and impact your leadership practices.

You will further consider the correlation between your values-based decisions and professional accountability and how reflective and reflexive practices can support you in growth and development as an ECE leader who honours rights-respecting, equitable, diverse and inclusive environments.     

The estimated time to complete Topic Two based on content, activities, and assessments is six and a half hours (6.5 hours or 390 minutes)

Learning Outcomes 

Learning outcomes serve as a valuable resource to guide your learning journey and ensure you can maximize your learning experience. The primary purpose of this section is to clearly communicate the intended learning outcome of Topic Two: What is Leadership in ECE? 

The learning outcomes for Topic Two align with the content, activities, and assessments you will encounter throughout Topic Two, enabling you to track your growth and identify improvement opportunities. 

After completing all activities and assessments within Topic Two, participants will: 

• Reflect on the impact of professional accountability and ethical, values-based ECE leadership practice,
• Explain an ECE Leader’s role in fostering an ECE program that honours rights-respecting, equitable, diverse and inclusive environments, and   
  
• Describe ways to encourage reflective and reflexive practices in ECE programs as an ECE leader.    

Topic Two Activities and Assessments

There are no formal grades awarded for completing the activities and assessments within this OER; instead, embrace this experience as a unique approach to learning that is intended to support you in a more enriching journey of self-reflection and personal growth. 

You are encouraged to assess your progress and engage in reflective practice as you move through the activities and assessments to foster self-discovery and continual improvement as an ECE practitioner. 

Three activities and one assessment within Topic Two include:

• ACTIVITY 2.1 | Leadership Styles, Professional Accountability & Ethical Leadership Practices  
  • You will explore foundational leadership styles and consider how these leadership styles can directly influence your leadership practices, approaches, and decisions and impact those you manage and provide care for. Furthermore, you will consider how leadership styles play a pivotal role in shaping professional accountability and ethical leadership practices.
• ACTIVITY 2.2 |  Your Leadership Values 
  • In this activity, you will consider what ECE leadership values are critical, examine what other values those in your sector think are critical, identify your core values, reflect on the impact of your values on your leadership approaches, and evaluate the usefulness of your values in practice.
• ACTIVITY 2.3 | Inclusive Leadership Practices
  • You will examine your priorities, preferences, and biases more deeply to build and sustain a safer environment where every child and staff member can thrive. 
• ASSESSMENT Topic Two | ECE Ethical Leadership Guidelines
  • You will examine the ten activities Daft (2008) associates with moral leadership, review the five principles of ethical leadership suggested by Northouse (2016) and subsequently create ethical guidelines to inform your leadership practices.