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Exploring pedagogical leadership in the early childhood context of Singapore
Abstract
This dissertation presents a qualitative study exploring pedagogical leadership in the early childhood context of Singapore. The preschool landscape comprises diverse operators running child care centres and kindergartens that offer varied care and educational services for children from birth to six. This has resulted in different levels of quality and standards in preschool education. Positive child outcomes are found to be strongly linked to high quality early childhood programmes (Ang, 2012), and effective leadership is one of the key drivers for programme quality. As such, the assumption of this study is that effective preschool leaders tend to establish high quality programmes for the children under their care. The philosophical underpinnings of this research come from the interpretivist tradition, also known as social constructivism. This worldview posits that social realities are constructed by humans who make sense of the world through their life experiences (Bishop, 2007). The interpretation of social realities translates into social constructs, which through shared experiences and interactions, a co-construction of multiple realities and common understanding is formed (Patton, 2002). This paradigm enables the researcher to reach a shared understanding of pedagogical leadership through the multiple perspectives of the participants – the principal, teacher, children and children’s parents sampled in the study. Using a case study approach, this research investigates how pedagogical leadership is enacted through the roles and practices of a child care centre principal. Based on the criterion of purposeful sampling, an exemplary child care centre with a government accreditation, SPARK Commendation award, was chosen for this study. Data collection includes artefacts, classroom observations, questionnaires, interviews and survey. Analytic induction, coding and qualitative content analysis were used for data analysis. Through detailed descriptions, the narrative account provides insights to how an effective pedagogical leader has advanced programme and centre quality. The findings illustrate the roles and practices of this leader and shed light on how she had led her centre to achieve a SPARK Commendation award, and provide a high quality programme. This case study also provides recommendations on leadership development and capability building in the early years, and hopes to inform policymaking.
Date Issued
2017
Call Number
LB2806 Wu
Date Submitted
2017