Abstract:
Major reforms in early childhood education and care (ECEC) by successive Australian governments have resulted in widespread changes throughout the sector over the past decade. One component of these reforms is the requirement to appoint an ‘Educational Leader’ in all early childhood education and care settings. This paper will examine the role of the Educational Leader in their pedagogical leadership enactment and decision-making, with a view to deepening current insights and understanding. Pedagogical leadership refers to the way in which the central task of improving teaching and learning takes place in educational settings. It is understood both as a contextual and a cultural phenomenon. This paper offers a literature review pertaining to pedagogical leadership in early childhood education and care from its emergence during the 1990s to contemporary theories and perspectives. It critically analyses themes that have emerged from the current discourse around leadership in education both locally and from a global perspective. This includes analysis of: definitions of distributed leadership across education sectors; the tension between ‘managing’ and ‘leading’ in ECEC; understandings of leadership for learning and feminist scholarship in a female-dominated field.