Browsing by Subject "muutoksen johtaminen"

In recent years, the field of early childhood education has undergone exceptional amount of changes compared to the previous decades. Changes in the administration and legislation have had an impact on the curriculum for early childhood education. These changes have created new requirements for leadership and for the early childhood education. The changes, fundamental by nature, require significant adaptation in the organisation culture in which management has crucial role (Rytkönen, 2019). The thesis examines how the early childhood education managers experienced their roles in managing the change. Furthermore, the thesis explores the factors that managers perceived improving or preventing the change in the early childhood education. The theoretical framework was constructed by describing the past changes, leadership, pedagogical leadership, distributed leadership and change management in the early childhood education. The thesis is a qualitative research. The phenomena is examined by using phenomenological approach. Semi-structured focus group interviews from the EduLeaders project were utilised as core research material in the thesis. The Eduleaders project aims at developing leadership training in the faculty of education at the University of Helsinki. The interviews comprised of five focus groups and fifteen interviewees. The material was analysed by theory-based content analysis method. Based on the experience of early childhood leaders, the roles of leaders during the change emphasizes leaders as an inspirer, direction indicator, creator of structures and supporter of change. The way the leaders perceived their roles were largely related to leading people (inspirer, direction indicator and supporter of change). They also emphasized that the frames for change should be structured (creator of structures). According to leaders involvement of staff, positive operating culture, distributed leadership and curriculum of early childhood education promotes the change management. On the other hand, they pointed out that change management is hindered by insufficient personal skills of staff and leaders, as well as human and management resources.