Professional learning communities: Enhancing collaborative leadership in Singapore early childhood settings

Abstract

Leadership in early childhood education has been promoted as a collaborative process in which all teachers, rather than just the positional leader, are involved. Collaborative leadership practices are not well understood within the marketised Singapore early childhood education context. Beyond mandatory leadership training, little is known about how leaders are supported to strengthen their leadership practices and involve others in leadership activities. School-based literature suggests that learning through professional learning communities expands the collective capacity of organisations; however, literature on professional learning communities in early childhood education is limited. This article reports on the findings of an interpretive case study examining the current understandings and leadership practices of principals in the Singapore early childhood education context, and investigating how participation in professional learning communities can support the development of collaborative leadership practices. The participants in two professional learning communities established as part of this study were six principals from an anchor-operator childcare provider and five principals from private childcare centres in Singapore. Two teachers working with each of the respective principals were also involved in focus group interviews to ascertain if there were changes in their principals' leadership practices. Data was collected from professional learning community meetings, online reflections, pre-and post-professional learning community interviews with the principals, and follow-up focus group discussions with the teachers. The key findings indicate that praxis as a result of participation in a professional learning community led to some shifts in principals' thinking about collaborative

Principal leadership practices, professional learning communities, and teacher commitment in Hong Kong kindergartens: A multilevel SEM analysis

“…Against the fragmented nature of ECE principals’ work (Hujala et al, 2016), the investigation on leadership practices provided an overall picture of what principals could do to improve kindergartens rather than discussions on merely a part of the roles or certain leadership styles. Indeed, recent studies suggested that in the course of enhancing professionalism among ECE principals, principals’ leadership practices also evolved (Vijayadevar et al, 2019). Building on the studies demonstrating the impacts of leadership practices on children’s whole-child development as teacher perceived (Keung et al, 2020) and the findings of the current study on teacher commitment, we encourage future studies to continue to explore how leadership practices promote teacher and student outcomes in kindergartens, so as to understand the possibilities and limitations of leadership practices in the ECE context.…”

“…While the effects on teacher commitment were found distinctive, the PLC components included in this study were highly correlated with each other. The high correlations reflected that each dimension of the professional-learning-community triplex was also bound to each other as a whole, even though the development of PLCs in the ECE context might still be at an early stage (Cherrington and Thornton, 2015; He and Ho, 2017; Vijayadevar et al, 2019). It also indicated that PLC dimensions needed to be examined together during the investigation of PLC implementation in different contexts.…”

“…Indeed, the promotion of distributed pedagogical leadership enhanced teachers’ commitment to lead pedagogical improvement, which was scant among kindergarten teachers (Heikka et al, 2019). In the same vein, the implementation of PLCs in Singapore kindergartens also resulted in changes in principals’ conceptions of collaborative leadership practice and their leadership approaches, which promoted teachers’ sharing (Vijayadevar et al, 2019). Therefore, clarification of how PLCs emerged in kindergartens also shed lights on a pedagogical leadership structure which can be established in kindergartens through principals’ effort.…”

Rettleiarrolla i kollegarettleiing som profesjonelt læringsfellesskap i barnehagen

“…Det sosiale rommet blir påverka av kulturen i barnehagen og blant deltakarane; kva det er lov å seie og ikkje i fellesskapet, og handlingsmønster i kulturen som treng refleksjon for å hentast fram. Verdien av det sosiale i profesjonelle laeringsfellesskap kjem til uttrykk gjennom felles merksemd og engasjement, endring av tenking i møte med ulike perspektiv og utvikling av kollektiv kunnskap (Keung et al, 2019;Vijayadevar et al, 2019).…”

Leadership emergence and development: Organizations shaping leading in early childhood education

“…Current leadership development initiatives mostly target positional leaders (Ryder et al, 2011; Stamopoulos, 2015; Talan et al, 2014); however, the conceptual frame is beginning to broaden. For example, Rodd (2012) and Vijayadevar et al (2019) highlight the importance of developing people who do not formally occupy leadership positions in ECE. They believe all educators within the profession should be encouraged to engage in the discourse on leading and to access opportunities that build and develop leadership.…”