Browsing by Author "Repo, Marika"

Objectives. The purpose of this study was to examine how ECE teachers pedagogical leadership was understood in ECE personnel and ECE centre directors speech, how ECE teachers implement their pedagogical leadership and what kind of things belong to ECE teachers’ pedagogical leadership in ECE teachers and directors views. Also the purpose of this study was to examine what kind of things were affecting to ECE teachers pedagogical leadership in early childhood education. This subject is very current because lately in Finnish ECE there has been many reformations in a social level that have impacted to ECE teachers work and position. Methods. This study was implemented as part of “Discourse of leadership in the diverse field of early childhood education” research project. The data of this study consists of six focus group interviews which were collected in three cities of Finland. Interview lengths varied from 34 minutes to two hours and 26 minutes. This study was a qualitative research and content analysis was used as a method of this study. Analysing method also has features about discourse analysis. In this study the philosophy of science were based on social constructivism. Results. In this study ECE teacher pedagogical leadership was acknowledged and pedagogical leadership was important in participants’ views. ECE teachers were implementing pedagogical leadership in three levels: child group, team and centre levels. Things that affected to ECE teachers pedagogical leadership were teacher own responsibility, support of the director and the staff, social situation, idea about the basic tasks, structures of the organisation and the maintenance of pedagogical competence. Results of this study are meaningful for ECE teacher’s implementation of work and also help supporting ECE teachers in their work.