Browsing by Author "Kurronen, Riikka"

The purpose of this study was to examine pedagogical leadership and quality in early childhood education in the context of the Finnish early childhood education and care system (ECEC). According to Fonsén (2014), pedagogical quality requires strong pedagogical leadership. However, studies indicate that there is instability of quality in Finnish day cares (Karila et.al., 2017). In addition, Finland’s ECEC system has undergone vast changes over recent years, which have led to unclarity of staff roles and responsibilities. This has increased the work pressure of day care directors in maintaining both the management of daily tasks as well as pedagogical quality. The main research focus was to examine how elements of pedagogical leadership in recent studies of pedagogical leadership in early childhood education relate to pedagogical quality in Finnish early child-hood education and care. Pedagogical leadership was approached from the perspective of national and municipal levels. The effect of pedagogical leadership on pedagogical quality was also explored from the perspective of staff education. The research findings were then applied to the practical levels of early childhood education by approaching quality from the perspective of guardians, children as well as staff and directors. The methodology for this qualitative study consisted of content analysis of the most recent studies on pedagogical leadership in early childhood education. The data was collected using purposive sampling methods and was analysed systematically through use of coding and thematic categorisation. Finland’s Education and Evaluation Centre’s (FINEEC) recent research-based structural and process quality indicators provided the themes that were used as a foundation to examine how pedagogical leadership related to the structural and process quality factors in the studies on pedagogical leadership from the year 2010 to the present. The findings were presented thematically using an interpretive ‘talking with theory’ approach that allowed the researcher to present the findings and the supporting theory simultaneously. The research revealed that changes in the governance of early childhood education in 2015 led to a distributed format of leadership that poses challenges to early childhood education and leadership in terms of defining the core tasks in early childhood education. Differing interpretations of roles and responsibilities of staff affect the quality of education and care in day care centres in Finland. Also, communication between the national, municipal and practical levels of leadership was also an influencing factor in the quality of early childhood education. This research revealed challenges in communication between different levels of early childhood education in Finland. Distributed pedagogical leadership presented itself as a major theme in the analysis as a method to alleviate the pressure of leaders in the field. However, the studies also revealed a complexity in the perimeters and definitions of the concept of distributed leadership that are yet to be overcome. The most recent advances in pedagogical quality in the field of early childhood education, which have been spurred on by the pedagogical leadership research studies that have been examined in this study, indicate that the improvement of quality in early childhood education in Finland is dependent on the strength of pedagogical leadership on all levels of management in early childhood education.