Browsing by Author "Halinen, Taina"

The theoretical context of this qualitative study are the leadership in early childhood education and the organizational change. The leadership and the change of leadership are studied generally and then the distributed leadership and the distributed organization are studied specifically. This study examines how teachers and leaders view the distributed leadership and what kind of skills the leaders and the workers need in the organization of distributed leadership and how they view the organizational change. This is qualitative phenomenology research. The material of the study was collected at half structured interviews which were taken part in six teachers and two leaders from the city of Hamina during November and December 2017. The interviews were recorded and transcribed for analysis. The analysis was done with the methods of content analysis. This study shows that the leadership in early childhood education is in change and the leadership meets new challenges. Distributed leadership challenges both the leaders and the workers. The results of the study show that the interviewed teachers and leaders see distributed leadership as teamwork and interactional work custom. The distributed leadership was difficult to execute, because teachers worked as leaders without the status of the leader. The interviewed viewed that the difficulties of distributed organization are indefinite structures and work tasks of leadership and too large entireties of leadership. The interviewed viewed that the organizational change was unsuccessful. The interviewed teachers and the leader felt that they didn't have an opportunity to influence the change and the given reasons for doing the organizational change were incoherent and the results of the change were not estimated. They would like to increase the number of leaders and clear the determinations of work roles and responsibilities. This study suggests that the city of Hamina should increase the competence of the leaders and the personnel. In practice distributed leadership means investing the knowhow of leadership and working community skills. The human resource management and the motivating of the personnel are the main challenges in the future. Qualitative early childhood education is possible only with the motivated workers.