Traditional notions of leadership are at odds with the pedagogy and ethos of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), prompting increasing international concern to develop new understandings which are better suited and create greater leadership capacity. The introduction of the Early Years Professional (EYP) in England, as a leader of practice…

For the past 10 years, there has been ongoing research at the University of Ghent on professionalism in childcare (the 0-3 age group) in the Flemish Community of Belgium. This research has been inspired by the "Contesting Early Childhood" movement, which is based on the premise that pedagogic research can lead to social change. The first…

This paper reports on an Australian initiative "Developing and Sustaining Pedagogical Leadership in Early Childhood Education and Care Professionals," where academics and professionals shared knowledge, experience and research about transdisciplinary practice. The project aimed to develop an understanding of the strategies and skills…

Constant changes in a modern world and scientific knowledge from the growing field of Positive Psychology appear to make a previously unheeded contribution to preschool teacher competences. The aim of this study was to explore preschool teachers' opinions concerning the need for positive psychology knowledge and its implementation. A nine-item…

Early years professionals wrote about changes in their settings as part of their MA studies, and reflected on the use of theories of leadership in implementing these changes. This article describes a documentary analysis of the scripts produced. Initially basing the study in current knowledge of leadership and change in Early Years settings, the…

This paper aims to explore democratic values in higher education pedagogies, as related to an Early Childhood Studies (ECS) degree course in an English university. It seeks to find out what constitutes a multi-disciplinary course from both student and tutor perspectives. It is contextualised by the concepts of participation embedded in the idea of…

This qualitative study explores how working with infants changed pre-service early childhood students' thinking about important aspects of early childhood education. Through a qualitative analysis of four pre-service early childhood students' weekly dialogue journals during a required, one-semester infant practicum, the authors discovered how the…

Thirty years or more of striving for a coherent theme in the educational system from preschool to gymnasium might now be at an end. Millions of Swedish kronor have been spent on projects concerning cooperation between pre- and primary school. The curricula for preschool and the gymnasium are similar in structure, and they are connected with each…

Built on a sociocultural framework of policy analysis and Wertsch's concept of mediation, the present study examines how early childhood teacher education has changed as a result of interactions between reform policy and the action of teacher educators. Ten teacher educators participated in the study, along with eight early childhood leaders, 15…