Learning-rich leadership for quality improvement in early childhood education (ECE)
Louise Kay, Elizabeth Wood (University of Sheffield), Joce Nuttall (Chief Investigator, Australia Catholic University, Melbourne), Linda Henderson (Monash University, Melbourne)
The development of designated leadership positions is a growing feature of ECE policy internationally, informed by evidence of a positive relationship between effective leadership, the quality of provision and improved outcomes for children. Although such discourses have global influence, we are interested in their local touchdown and take-up in the context of ECE workforce reform in England and Australia. Funded by the Australian Research Council (DP180100281) our cross-national study looks at Educational Leaders (ELs) in Australia and Early Years Teachers (EYTs) in England.
In Phase 1 of the project we examined key policy texts about leadership in early childhood services in both countries. Kay, Wood, Nuttall and Henderson (2019) use rhetorical analysis to understand this arena of public policy-making in England, its actors, decision-making, outcomes and consequences (Gottweis, 2006). As Gottweis (2006) argues, the interplay among logos, ethos and pathos brings into focus the performative nature of the policy process, in which argumentation is used to describe and produce what it refers to. We use the concepts of logos, ethos and pathos to identify the drivers underlying the reform process, the re-forming of the EYT in policy texts, the persuasive techniques and discourses used within those texts, and how EYTs are positioned as moral agents to solve perceived problems and crises.
Our analysis reveals a regulatory framework in which government-defined standards for EYTs are linked to outcomes for children and inspection criteria, with the Office for Standards in Education acting as the sole arbiter of ‘quality’. The circular discourse is at work in these texts: the logos for reforming EYT status relies on policy-led evidence from ‘approved’ sources such as government-funded research and commissioned reports, and OfSTED inspection reports.
A rhetorical analysis of relevant policy and implementation texts has allowed us to look beyond discourses of economic rationalism to identify the systematic formation, through policy, of early childhood leaders as autonomous moral agents, with a critical role in raising quality (where ‘quality’ is a contested concept). The pathos of addressing inequalities through ECE reinforces this appeal to moral agency, based on the social and educational challenges affecting many young children. We argue that the traditional moral and emotional commitments of the (predominantly female) early years workforce has been appropriated by the dominant policy logos. There are also significant risks, such as the difficulty of innovating outside the restrictive policy logic — standards define quality, and quality is evaluated on the evidence of standards being achieved. Furthermore, policy frameworks act to turn the moral commitments of early childhood professionals towards the cause of global economic competitiveness, as evidenced in the coupling of economic and educational effectiveness in the framing of ‘quality’. We conclude by problematizing the performative nature of policy reform and re-forming processes.
Recent research identifies the problems of narrowing rather than expanding constructs of leadership and professionalism in response to the external challenges presented by ECE policies. Based on the ARC project, we propose that new opportunities may be presented for defining professionalism and the nature of leadership from within the field, such as increased recognition of the demands and complexity of leadership work.
Gottweis, H. 2007. Rhetoric in Policy Making: Between Logos, Ethos, and Pathos. In Handbook of public policy analysis: theory, politics, and methods, edited by F. Fischer, G. Miller and M. Sidney. Florida: CRC Press.
Kay, L., Wood, E., Nuttall, J. and Henderson, L. (2019) Problematising policies for workforce reform in early childhood education: A rhetorical analysis of England’s Early Years Teacher Status. Journal of Education Policy
