Leadership and Management Article 2022

Running head: LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT
Leadership and Management
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Stamopoulos, E. (2015). The professional leadership and action research training model:
Supporting early childhood leadership. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 40(4), 39-
48.
The article contains elements of a training model that has been considered to help in the
evaluation of leadership skills in early childhood. It contains strong information about the
training model that has been developed and the data that this model has given in its outcome is
highly reliable, since the method used to acquire the data is primary (Aubrey, Godfrey & Harris,
2013). Moreover the model in question is not rigid; it is flexible and is equally responsive as per
individual needs, which is why the chances of having a biased outcome are almost negligible.
The research shows the traits of early childhood leadership skills, management and also
pedagogy at the times of intense change and not during normal times which is very significant.
The survey that was conducted covered 17 independent school teachers and the
evaluation was done accordingly (Sims et al., 2015). The sample size was too small to come up
with a general evaluation of the matter in hand; moreover there is an evident lack of criticism of
neither one of the elements discussed, which makes it clear that the negative sides of the survey,
or the gaps that the survey left was still undiscovered, thus the data is not completely reliable in
that aspect. Apart from the survey, the data was also drawn from conversations, focus groups,
empirical research reports, interviews, reflective journals and more. Thus the sources derived
from the secondary sources of data, moreover covering such a small sample size is not
trustworthy.
The paper seems to be contributing more to the PLAR training model instead of the
“supporting early childhood leadership” facet of the article. The article has contribution in terms
of the evaluation of the six elements of the training model on the basis of just 17 school teacher

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leaders who have the same overview and no criticism. The methods of inducing good leadership
kills in early childhood is a major topic that seems to have been ignored; moreover the
professional learning needs that is explained in the article needed to have more elaboration to
make the topic distinct in its aims and objectives.
However, the PLAR training model is useful when applied. It must be notified that the
application of this model should be in a bigger sample size to get a justified outcome. The
challenges provided by each elements stands unique and are helpful in finding out the leadership
capabilities from early stage of childhood with transitioning the focus not only from school, yet
to community and family.
Loo, J. K. Y., & Agbenyega, J. (2015). A critical analysis of the Australian ECEC policy
reform: An opportunity for transforming educators into pedagogical leaders?. Australasian
Journal of Early Childhood, 40(2), 127-131.
The article provides an in-depth analysis of the multiple layers of understanding that the
Early Childhood Education and Care professionals have about leadership and the changes in
conceptualisation that needs to be done. A critical insight shows the insight of the article which
aims to bring forth the existing practice system of ECEC and the issues that is hindering the
enactment of leadership in early childhood (Melhuish et al., 2015). The paper is bold enough to
state the dominant practices that ECEC disrupts and it also brings into notice the benefits of
accepting both the implicit and explicit layers of leadership in the pedagogical practices of the
children.
In spite of having strong viewpoints along with the negative aspects of the practice
system, the article digresses in multiple stances. Most of the information is from drawing on

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theories from the concept of “new image of the child”, making the statements less likely to be
appropriate (Fonsen, 2013). There is evident lack of the insight that was promised by the author
about the implications provided by ECEC over the concept of the children’s leadership practices.
The identification and analysis of two issues has not been made distinct in the context of
Australia; moreover there is no such indication of any solution to the problem that has been
identified by the author.
Early childhood care and education is a vital preparation provided to the children before
their primary school. The article puts forth the importance of this care and the impact that it
makes on the leadership quality of a child. The impact that this care implies over the mind of a
child is dominated by the challenges faced by the professionals. The author stressed more the
challenges instead of providing a general notion about the concept and the affect it has. The
article should have showed both the positive and the negative sides of the care program in order
to explain the difficulties that the professionals are facing.
However, the article highlights the presence of such care that not many people may have
been aware of. The processes used by this care everywhere including Australia is of great help
since nowadays in a globalized world like this, this care helps a child to be adaptive, resilient and
shrewd to cope up with the demands of the dynamic way of living (Mao et al., 2015). The
recognition of the challenges can also be termed useful in a way that the perception of solution
can be formed now that the problem has been detected; thus making the care more significant
and helpful than before.
Rouse, E., & Spradbury, G. (2016). The role of the educational leader in long day care–how
do they perceive their role?. Early Child Development and Care, 186(3), 497-508.

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The article focuses on the small scale research of qualitative sources that shows the
importance of the education leaders and their role in the long day care in Australia which are
generally ignored. This article highlights the roles of these educational leaders and the perception
of their roles by others. However, the poor preparation that these leaders received before
performing in the day care is also negligible to the eyes of the outsiders and the challenges faced
due to such poor preparation has brought some additional complexities that needs to be sorted
out.
The article promises to present the challenges faced by the educational leaders when
being appointed and lacks to elaborate those challenges for the convenience of the readers. The
article gets deviated from its aim and talks about the Australian EC&C and Educational
leadership in EC&C instead of highlighting the challenges (Robertson, 2016). Moreover, as
mentioned before, the article comprises of qualitative sources of data and the facts which are
secondary in nature. The outcome is not much reliable when it comes to the dependency of the
article in the secondary sources yet it tries to put logic and facts to make its point.
The article explores the perceptions of the educational leaders during their role in the
long day care as well as their understanding of their role while working without the basic
preparation for the role allocated to them (Bøe & Hognestad, 2017). It is a significant problem
that has been outlined by the author and there is a study included in the article to figure out the
success that was impacted on these leaders. The interviews conducted, were about the
exploration of the process of their appointment, the equipment they were provided with and their
perception of what they thought about the role they were handed with. The interviews also
highlighted the issues that these leaders think they were facing and whether they themselves
thought that they were stand up with the expectations of their positions. The interviews should

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have included the understandings of the perceptions and understandings of the consumers too,
yet it was lacking in the article.
The article is useful in terms of understanding of EC&C in Australian context and the
educational leadership as provided in EC&C (Tran & Tyner, 2013). The interviews are
enlightening the condition of the leaders appointed and their process of inducing leadership
qualities in children before their primary education. Since the time that these children are in is in
rapid change, therefore their understanding of their work-process is significant for everyone to
expect a certain outcome.
Krieg, S., Davis, K., & Smith, K. A. (2014). Exploring the dance of early childhood
educational leadership. Australasian journal of early childhood, 39(1), 73-80.
The major strength of the respective article is the proper utilization of the Early Years
Learning and Development Framework which helps in managing the professional development
program (Male & Palaiologou, 2015). There has been inclusion of a program which was funded
by Early Childhood Policy in which the appropriate role of leadership has been discussed which
is suitable for the understanding of changing perceptions of the early childhood leadership.
The major weakness of the respective article is that it interweaves some of the initial data
drawn from evaluation of programs through the proper review of early childhood literature of
leadership. Moreover, there is lack of suitable educational leadership examples which can be
efficient in making the audiences understand the importance of the same in early childhood.
As commented by Heikka, Waniganayake and Hujala (2013), the educational leaders
have an influential role in motivating, affirming and inspiring the practice as well as pedagogy of
the different educators. It is considered to be the joint endeavor which is inclusive of the

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reflection and inquiry that can create significant impact on important work educators perform
with the different children as well as families. In addition, as commented by the Krieg, Davis and
Smith (2014), the child care professionals play a very essential role in shaping the experiences of
the children and in such scenarios, the educational leaders try to nurture along with support the
different interests from children and it helps in forming the foundation of the programs which
will be successful in maintaining their effectiveness. As commented by Hujala et al. (2016), the
early childhood provides the different leaders with collective as well as dynamic learning kind of
experiences which will be suitable for enhancing the capacity to influence the policy related to
early childhood which will be leading to positive outcomes for young children along with the
families (Kangas,Venninen&Ojala, 2016).
The respective article helps in understanding the different interests of the children which
has been playing a suitable role in shaping the experiences of the children suitably. The
educational leadership aspects support and nurture the different interests from children which is
supportive in making them enthusiastic and the core learning ways are being managed
successfully. However, there can be different challenging aspects in leadership, which can be
valuing the leadership roles in a positive manner. The educational leaders have the diverse roles
as well as settings that can be creating the diversity in the early childhood leadership aspects.
Conclusion:
All the above articles explore the pedagogical and educational leadership in an education
and care environment. It has been perceived that the roles that these educational leaders play in
the process of inducing the skill of leadership in the minds of a child from its early childhood are

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very significant. The process that these leaders follow is also of utmost importance, no matter in
education setting or a long day care. The nurturing of the minds of the children, the concept of
teamwork and every trait that a leader should have is taught in these settings. These articles bring
forth the expectations that a parent should have from an educational leader and the outcome that
should be visible in their child in the form of enthusiasm and being supportive in nature. It is also
the role of an educational leader to teach the values of leadership roles and being positive about
the position provided to them as a leader. In an overall view, educational leaders have much
more diverse roles and it is important that they themselves understand their roles and have a clear
perception of their work-process.
There are training models like PLAR to determine the support of early childhood
leadership and the concept is validated by primary data via surveys, conversations, interviews
and other documents. Every element of the training model has been elaborated for the
convenience of the readers; each element is endorsed with the capacity to strengthen the skill of
leadership and pedagogy. The articles also contain critical analysis of ECEC method of
leadership through multi layered understandings of the concept of leadership by the
professionals. It brings forth both the implicit and explicit aspect of leadership in early childhood
pedagogical methods along with the identification of the issues present in the work-process of
the ECEC professionals. To make the concept distinctly clear, another article elaborates the roles
of these educational leaders in the long day care setting, which is based on the data of small-scale
qualitative sources, thus they are directly in context of the place a child in enrolled into. There is
an elaborate segment describing the work of EC&C in Australian context and also about the
educational leadership so that the parents can expect an outcome as well as the educational
leaders can perceive their roles.

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References and Bibliography:
Aubrey, C., Godfrey, R., & Harris, A. (2013). How do they manage? An investigation of early
childhood leadership. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 41(1), 5-
29.
Bøe, M., & Hognestad, K. (2017). Directing and facilitating distributed pedagogical leadership:
Best practices in early childhood education. International Journal of Leadership in
Education, 20(2), 133-148.
Fonsén, E. (2013). Dimensions of pedagogical leadership in early childhood education and
care. Researching leadership in early childhood education.
Heikka, J., Waniganayake, M., &Hujala, E. (2013). Contextualizing distributed leadership within
early childhood education: Current understandings, research evidence and future
challenges. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 41(1), 30-44.
Hujala, E., Eskelinen, M., Keskinen, S., Chen, C., Inoue, C., Matsumoto, M., &Kawase, M.
(2016). Leadership tasks in early childhood education in Finland, Japan, and
Singapore. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 30(3), 406-421.
Kangas, J., Venninen, T., &Ojala, M. (2016). Distributed leadership as administrative practice in
Finnish early childhood education and care. Educational Management Administration &
Leadership, 44(4), 617-631.
Krieg, S., Davis, K., & Smith, K. A. (2014). Exploring the dance of early childhood educational
leadership. Australasian journal of early childhood, 39(1), 73-80.

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Loo, J. K. Y., & Agbenyega, J. (2015). A critical analysis of the Australian ECEC policy reform:
An opportunity for transforming educators into pedagogical leaders?. Australasian
Journal of Early Childhood, 40(2), 127-131.
Male, T., & Palaiologou, I. (2015). Pedagogical leadership in the 21st century: Evidence from
the field. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 43(2), 214-231.
Mao, J., Wei, X., Yang, Y., Wang, J., Huang, Z., & Yuille, A. L. (2015). Learning like a child:
Fast novel visual concept learning from sentence descriptions of images. In Proceedings
of the IEEE international conference on computer vision (pp. 2533-2541).
Melhuish, E., Ereky-Stevens, K., Petrogiannis, K., Ariescu, A., Penderi, E., Rentzou, K., ... &
Leseman, P. (2015). A review of research on the effects of Early Childhood Education
and Care (ECEC) upon child development.
Robertson, J. (2016). Coaching leadership: Building educational leadership capacity through
partnership. New Zealand Council for Educational Research. PO Box 3237, Wellington
6140 New Zealand.
Rouse, E., & Spradbury, G. (2016). The role of the educational leader in long day care–how do
they perceive their role?. Early Child Development and Care, 186(3), 497-508.
Sims, M., Forrest, R., Semann, A., & Slattery, C. (2015). Conceptions of early childhood
leadership: Driving new professionalism?. International Journal of Leadership in
Education, 18(2), 149-166.

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Stamopoulos, E. (2015). The professional leadership and action research training model:
Supporting early childhood leadership. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 40(4),
39-48.
Tran, L. T., & Tyner, J. (2013). Teaching international students in vocational education: New
pedagogical approaches.