Early childhood, early childhood - how do your leaders grow?  

With strong relationships, a community of practice, and distributed leadership all in a row

Raewyne Bary & Karen Laird from Massey Childcare centre discuss their centre's unique approach to leadership development. 

As a healthy and sustainable garden requires the selection of appropriate plants for the environment, well prepared soil, appropriate placement for sun and rain, and protection from the wind, so too do budding ece leaders.  The skills, environments and practices needed to grow a healthy garden can be compared to the growing of leaders.

We believe everybody is capable of leadership roles either informally or formally. Like gardening, our environment needs to be well prepared to nurture, protect and promote the growth of budding leaders. There are some basic tenets that ensure optimal outcomes for all the teachers in the environment:

• a learning community where everyone feels valued and respected for who they are and what they know and do, and a culture that allows them to take risks without reproach.
• support for the teachers to be critically reflective and encouragement and promotion of teacher responsibility.

What are the traits of educational leadership? We see all of our community as potential leaders. We have rigorous employment procedures to ensure we employ the ‘right' people, just as you need the right plants for the right environments. We look for specific traits that show whether teachers are potential leaders. Van Manen (1991) proffers the following qualities needed for good pedagogy:

• a deep sense of responsibility,
• moral intuitiveness,
• self-critical openness,
• thoughtful maturity,
• an interpretive intelligence,
• a passion for knowing and learning the mysteries of the world,
• a moral fibre to stand up for something,
• active hope in the face of prevailing crises,
• and not the least, humour and vitality (Van Manen, p.8 1991).
• We feel strongly that these are also the qualities or traits of educational leadership potential. Teachers presenting at the selection process with some or all of these traits would be seen as strong healthy seedlings ready to be planted in the right soil, ready to grow and blossom.

How do we grow these in educational leaders? Our distributed leadership approach is underpinned by the community of practice ideas, especially the ideas of shared context, trust and cohesion. This ideology supports teachers to take responsibility and use their strengths to their full potential. The emphasis and expectation is that everyone takes responsibility for being a participant in the learning community. Team members are expected to share knowledge and practice, supported and mentored by managers and each other. We provide shelter, protection and support for these budding teachers to enable them to grow strong and healthy. However just like the little seeding in the garden, a certain amount of intrinsic motivation is necessary as teachers take responsibility for their own growth and development.

We would like to think we have prepared our soil to ensure optimal growth for all. The emphasis for us is on building leadership capacity for teacher-leaders, especially in educational leadership. As in gardening there is protection from strong winds and heavy rain, when seedlings are buffeted by the elements they are sheltered from harm by the others in the planting and the stronger, taller and mature plants.  Thus the role of the formal or designated leader is not lost. Several different styles of formal leadership underpin distributed leadership, including top-down initiatives from strong leaders (Bary, et al., 2007). These formal leaders "orchestrate and nurture the space for distributed leadership to occur and create the ‘shelter conditions' for the leadership of collaborative learning" (Harris, 2004, p. 15). "Formal leaders, whether there is one or more than one, still need to lead the structural, political, pedagogical and relationships-oriented aspects of life in educational settings. Essentially, they build organizational capacity and culture so that teacher leaders are able to take action" (Bary, et al., 2007, p.40).

Work in a garden is not without challenge; bugs, weeds, and weather all play their part in the development of healthy plants. The same applies for the development of educational leaders; it is not all about skipping off into the sunset s, it is about challenges, giving challenge and being challenged. It is about the development of the best outcomes for the children, families and teachers in our community. The teachers need to have a voice in their environment and feel safe enough to challenge, question and think outside the square. Having teachers in the environment who take risks and challenge ideas means opportunities for new ideas and new ways of being can flourish (Massey Child Care Centre, 2004). Fostering and developing a culture where everyone shares, and is working towards the same goals and aspirations, is central to an effective nurturing leadership environment (Bary, et al., 2007).

To get the best out of our teacher leaders we need to select the right seedlings (good employment procedures), prepare the soil (strong community of practice philosophy), provide shelter a (mentoring and or coaching by experienced educational leaders) ensure growth and sustainability (ongoing professional development), and then we can stand back and watch our garden grow.