Pedagogical Leadership among Directors and Deputies in Early Childhood Settings in Australia, Finland and Norway : A Summary of a Small-scale Study

Abstract

Pedagogical leadership in this chapter is understood as a broad concept enacted within early childhood education (ECE) centres. Involving several actors, who can vary according to the country or local context. The extent to which the distribution of leadership can influence core pedagogical tasks and programme quality is not yet fully understood in the early childhood sector in Australia, Finland and Norway. Although in these three countries there are other leaders in ECE centres who are responsible for leading pedagogy, this paper focuses on how pedagogical leadership is shared among centre directors (Ds) and deputies (DDs) . Although there is some research on the centre director’s role in pedagogical leadership (Heikka and Suhonen, 2019) , the role of a deputy director is vague and under researched.