Enactments of distributed pedagogical leadership between early childhood centre directors and deputy directors in Norway

Abstract

This qualitative explorative case study aims to investigate Norwegian early childhood education and care directors` and deputy directors` enactments of distributed pedagogical leadership to get a deeper understanding of the relational dynamics between them. In order to achieve the aim, an interpretative approach was used to collect data from individual interviews with six participants. In addition, we collected the participants job-descriptions. Distributed leadership frameworks that involve multiple persons enacting pedagogical leadership in interdependent ways, inform the study. The findings of this study illustrate those enactments of distributed pedagogical leadership between ECEC directors and deputy directors occur both by leading together where they enact the same leadership task and where they work separately with tasks, they have divided between them. Additionally, shared authority, dialogue on pedagogical development, support and division of tasks show various forms of distributed pedagogical leadership enactments. The study highlights some implications for further attention to take benefit from distributed pedagogical leadership. This is important as distributive leadership is seen to increase the capacity of pedagogical leadership through collaboration to deal with challenges and high workload resulting from new requirements and changes.