Leadership Advocacy and Research Report - University Assignment

This report delves into the critical aspects of leadership advocacy and research within the context of early childhood education. It begins with a personal statement exploring the roles of family and community in shaping educational programs, emphasizing the significance of parental and societal involvement in a child's development. The report then shifts to a comprehensive analysis, examining the roles of policymakers and professionals in fostering robust early childhood education systems, particularly in the Australian context. It defines advocacy leadership at various levels and highlights the contributions of organizations like the OECD. The discussion covers key arguments, principles of advocacy, and the connection between leadership and advocacy, stressing the ethical considerations and responsibilities of advocates. The report concludes with recommendations for effective leadership in advocacy, underscoring the importance of creating positive changes and addressing challenges in early childhood education. The report also underlines the connection between leadership and advocacy, emphasizing that early childhood educators should strive to be effective advocates and leaders to bring about positive changes and effective support for teachers, families, and the social services.

Running Head: LEADERSHIP ADVOCACY AND RESEARCH
LEADERSHIP ADVOCACY AND RESEARCH
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note:

1LEADERSHIP ADVOCACY AND RESEARCH
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The paper aims to investigate about the issues of early childhood education and its relation with
leadership and advocacy. The paper aims to address some questions related to the concept and
the second part of the paper aims to make a report on the same. Hence, the paper enriched the
reader about the leadership problems and the proper definition of leadership and advocacy in
early childhood education.

2LEADERSHIP ADVOCACY AND RESEARCH
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Part A: Personal Statement..................................................................................................3
What is the role of family and community in contributing to the programs?......................3
Part B: Report......................................................................................................................4
Introduction..........................................................................................................................4
Discussion............................................................................................................................6
The arguments.................................................................................................................6
Principles of Advocacy in leadership..............................................................................7
The connection between Leadership and advocacy.........................................................8
Advocacy and the contemporary image of a child...........................................................9
Ethical consideration of early childhood advocacy........................................................9
Modern responsibility of the advocates to address the challenges...............................11
Recommendation for leadership in advocacy................................................................12
Conclusion.........................................................................................................................13
References..........................................................................................................................14

3LEADERSHIP ADVOCACY AND RESEARCH
Part A: Personal Statement
What is the role of family and community in contributing to the programs?
Education and curriculum is a teaching and learning procedure. In the procedure of
teaching and learning the teachers or educators possess the main role. According to the study,
Family is the initial environment of education as it is the place where the child gets the first
education and guidance. The main responsibility of the family behind the education and its
foundation is the building a foundation of discipline. According to Lascarides & Hinitz, (2013)
the involvement of the parents in schools, education, and curriculum is linked with the academic
success of the students. Hence, the involvement of family with curriculum is very crucial for the
entire program.
On the other hand, after family the second most important educational environment of a
child is the community or the society. Society is a collective group of people that holds a place
with some experienced persons and share their knowledge through effective communication. The
role of community in curricular development is to prepare the younger generation fit for the
realistic challenges.
Professional leader is the person who is well acquired with the leadership behavior with a
well-defined goal and robust vision spread through clear communication. A professional leader
has the capability to bring about the excellence with the team members (Warde, Vermillion &
Uijtdehaage, 2014). An efficient leader possess the skills of coaching, delegating, guidance
providence, questioning, listening, supporting, and dealing with conflicting issues.

4LEADERSHIP ADVOCACY AND RESEARCH
The Early Childhood Australia’s Advocacy (ECA) is the regular and trusted body to
advocate the public policy debate on all the aspects related to young children and also with their
families. The organizational values of ECA include assurance for informed, authentic, ethical,
and transparent behavior and the convictions guidance about their activity and the way of their
performance. To put is simply, it can be said that there is a proper integrity between their
activities and the process for performing the activities.
Hence, in the curriculum program, both the family and community play vital role. Family
is the initial training academy from where the children get basic cognitive knowledge. Here, the
leaders are the family members especially the parents. On the other hand, the community is
equipped with different experienced personalities. Hence, a child can gain various effective
knowledge covering different aspects of life. Both the family members and community members
develops the basic education that helps a child to develop the cognitive skills. It helps to increase
the individual and social equality. An individual or the group of people can improve themselves
and identify themselves as responsible citizens of the community or any educational institution.
Additionally, it should be recognized that the basic concept of education teach the human being
about unity. Transformation of knowledge from generation to generation is possible only with
the effective involvement of community and family in curriculum and in the entire educational
system.
Part B: Report
Introduction
Childhood education and leadership is the major concerns for many of the researchers
working in the recent era. Hence, this paper aims to describe the role of policymakers and the

5LEADERSHIP ADVOCACY AND RESEARCH
professionals for generating strong early childhood education. There are major policies and
regulatory reforms in the current Early Childhood and Care prior-to-school settings that affect
the workforce with the volume of 140,000 leaders in the education system of Australia. The term
Advocacy leadership is described as the literature with few levels including – local, national, and
international. The construction of leadership and its advocacy at the international and national
level are more significant than the local creating of the advocacy in leadership.
Within the Australian regions, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD) is considered to have a greater contribution for advocacy leadership via
the vision of long-term planning to reform the international ECEC policies including the
thematic review of OECD (Gordon, & Browne, 2013). According to the review, it was
established for describing the concerned areas that is linked with ECEC policy under the
supervision of OECD members including Australia. This review reported the areas of leadership
and its quality as a matter of concern in the international level. On the other hand Gordon, &
Browne, (2013) mentioned that the national ECEC commission of productivity investigate and
relates the reports that can be considered as the main contributor for the concept of advocacy
leadership.
London, (2018) mentioned that the new migrants and native community may have the
willingness to take on a leadership and advocacy role to represent the interest of the entire group
of citizens in a better way. Hence, the researchers consider the community advocates as the part
of the democratic process. According to the study, the term advocacy refers to the active support
for the concept that is expressed through various strategies and methods with the ability to
inspire the decisions of organizations and people. In the context of social and economic factors

6LEADERSHIP ADVOCACY AND RESEARCH
the leadership of advocacy aims to create or alter the existing policies, laws, regulations and
proper distribution of the resources for the others.
London, (2018) demonstrated that advocacy of leadership in early childhood education is
to provide the guiding voice through persuasion, argument, or direct action that is intended to
draw attention for bringing positive changes and provide ample solution for the issue. Advocacy
in early childhood refers to the ethical, practical, and social responsibilities aroused only after
growing concern with about the children and families. Hence the leaders advocate about the
identification of social and personal issues that restricts the families ands the society from
disallows the healthy development of the children. On the other hand, the leaders advocate the
challenges or the barriers and perform the removal of the changes in regulations at the national or
local stages. These advocates use wide range of tools to incorporate inclusive information about
the status and dilemma of children and apply particular approaches to bring change in the
behaviors in which the organizations and the communities respond to the children and the
families. These approaches can include collaborative and participatory maintaining at the basic
level as well as the less connected way including the candidates and the families.
Discussion
The arguments
Sharpe et al. (2015) mentioned that the term early childhood advocacy commonly relies
on the various rationales to argue on the behalf of children and families. As per the custodial
rational community has a collective and shared responsibility to provide appropriate care for the
young children and their parents. On the other hand, the developmental rational state that the
quality early childhood experiences including both the home and outside benefit of the young

7LEADERSHIP ADVOCACY AND RESEARCH
children and enrich them with the skills required in school and for the society. The rational of
human capital presumes that the investment for early finance and the lives of children generates
long-term return invented for safeguarding the community and the early childhood generation.
The citizen rational states that the Western Europeans think about young children and consider
them as common citizens with fundamental rights and common human rights. Finally, the ethical
consideration suggests for the community that it should give highly qualified, affordable services
to the children belong to early childhood group. This is the moral stance initiated for saving the
expenses and enabling the parents to work outside the home and enhancing the children’s
academic achievement.
Principles of Advocacy in leadership
As mentioned by Collay, (2014) early childhood covers a wide range of strategies
depending on the circumstances and the desired goals. The principles of advocacy in professional
leadership are mentioned in the following sections.
Internal and external advocacy – internal advocacy refers to circumstance when the teachers and
social reformers, health care practitioners and other trainers perform various activities on the
behalf of the children and their families (Crawford, Arnold & Brown, 2014). These are the
professionals who attempt to enhance the process the organizations in which they work for
meeting the needs of the parents and the children. On the other hand, the external advocacy
occurs at the circumstances of the activity of the professionals who are not directly employed
with the organization. within many occasions the internal and external advocate perform with
proper alliance to put stress on the administration and elect officials in order to bring changes
within the organization and the community.

8LEADERSHIP ADVOCACY AND RESEARCH
Individual and organizational advocacy – Advocates and the leaders can work on behalf of
individuals or joining any organization. In individual advocacy guardians, friends, allies, or the
lawyers speak on behalf of a child or the family (Warde, Vermillion & Uijtdehaage, 2014). The
child and the family may not have the proper skills or knowledge or confidence to take stance for
themselves. It is an effective process when a child or the family members require to negotiate or
receive desired services within a complex and bureaucratic situation. On the other hand, the
organizational advocacy the institutions are concerned with certain practices and regulations that
affect or impact the group of individual or multiple number of societies.
Information-based advocacy – Collay (2014) mentioned about the information based or data-
based advocacy as a principle of advocacy. It is the way of operating the core values for the sake
of social justice that advocates and rely on the empirical data to speak on behalf of the children.
To support the issue the advocate, seek attention to the state and the nation for providing
information to kids count profiles and others.
Building coalition – the most essential strategy or principle of advocacy is building coalition. It
is the ultimate way to speak with one voice standing for speaking on behalf of the community
and the children. The advocacy for early childhood within the organization is already an example
of alliance or coalition. This alliance includes the teachers, leaders, social workers, and other
community organizers to work with collaboration for the sake of early childhood education.
The connection between Leadership and advocacy
Educators of early childhood expected to provide effective advocacies. However, they
must possess leadership roles in the schools, institutions, and societies also within the local ,
state, and national level. The nature of the good advocates provide good leaders as they are body
to articulate the needs or requirements of the children and the community. They also offer

9LEADERSHIP ADVOCACY AND RESEARCH
concrete resolutions to the challenges the children and their families (Crawford, Arnold &
Brown, 2014). In this regard, it can be said that early childhood educators should not focus on
only becoming a good teacher, but also should acknowledge the processes or the systems to
bring change and effective support for the teachers and the families and also the personnel serve
the social services. Hence the connection between the process of advocacy and leadership can be
summarized as follows –
 A feeling of purpose and ethics and considering honesty and trust as the fundamental step
of relationship.
 The connection is mooted in the service of facilitating skills, for framing, measuring and
moving the communication about learning and teaching procedure meaning construction.
 It builds the understanding of constructivist learning for all the living beings (Johnson,
2014).
 The connection provide understanding the process of change and transition as the change
is the ultimate procedure of the thinking procedure.
 It builds an understanding of the contest as the communities or the memories can gain
continuous benefits out of it (Gordon & Browne, 2013).
 It also helps to build a personal identity that provide risk and helps to reduce the effect of
ego and enhance the sense of possibilities.
Advocacy and the contemporary image of a child
The advocacy in the early childhood is based on the contemporary image of the child.
The contemporary picture of a child is made of two identified differences from the traditional
image of a child. In the wealthy locations the countries possess advent of modern psychology
and there are various laws and regulations about child labor. Lovett, (2018) reminds about the

10LEADERSHIP ADVOCACY AND RESEARCH
history of childhood provides a particular change is the concept about children now constructing
the cultural influence on the history of the community. On the other hand, the modern
understanding views the child’s active role in constructing the personality.
Ethical consideration of early childhood advocacy
The childhood education of the early childhood education encounter various ethical
consideration and issues about the children. To understand this fact clearly it is important to
understand the ethical responsibilities of the leaders (Meany‐Walen et al., 2013). The fact is,
irrespective of any circumstances the responsibilities of the leaders should be solely directed
towards providing quality services to the children and their families. Hence, the ethical
responsibilities of the advocates are –
 No matter what the circumstance the policies or the regulation must not provide any harm
to any children.
 The educators will not participate in any activities related to emotional damaging,
physical torturing, disrespecting, affective, exploitative and intimidating for the children
(Molchanov, 2016).
 The educators will dedicate their work towards promoting positive physical and mental
health of the children and the community.
Determining the situation, the ethical consideration is not to consider it as a responsibility
as it is a kind of ethical dilemma. Dilemma is a condition and there are various possible
resolutions with proper justification of moral circumstances (Sharpe et al., 2015). This condition
requires a responsible person for selecting various actions that have proper benefits with some
costs. Ethical dilemmas are the condition that describe the situation that involves rights for

11LEADERSHIP ADVOCACY AND RESEARCH
certain group of people and community. Hence, the educators need to understands the ethical
effective classroom for the children. To understand the effective classroom the educators must
address the following aspects.
 Providing extreme quality and age-appropriate curriculum for the children. It emphasizes
the direct interaction with the classroom materials for the adults and the children.
 Providing emphasis on early childhood literature including the responsibilities for the
children and their families.
 It includes the children and setting a significant and easily accessible goals for learning
and their selection and management.
 It also includes the procedure of employing a wide variety of instructional approach to
assure the learning levels and the styles of the individual for accommodating the children
education and learning.
 It includes the reduction of class size in the primary section for providing equal attention
to each and every children of the organization.
 It builds a complete alliance between the teachers and the children for proper
communication about the heterogenous group and the related ethical issues.
 It also provides measures for professional development that involves the teacher to
provide instructional strategies to engage the children for the entire learning procedure.
Hence, in the modern time being, the leaders are practicing some strategies for the younger
children based on some questions to be answered through the entire procedure –
 Bring development and learning measures with some normative patterns.
 Making different patterns for each and every individual child.