The teacher educator's role in students learning to lead

Abstract

Effective leadership is essential to the well-being of organizations and the individuals within it. Leadership theories can help us understand both our organizations and ourselves, but they must be considered within context. These contexts include early childhood services and the study of these is informed by the discipline of educational leadership. With comparatively few studying the specific area of early childhood leadership, it behooves us to glean evidenced understandings from the rich and fascinating literature within the broader leadership field and then to research its application in our own field. This paper briefly overviews these areas and proposes that we should enhance the study of leadership in teacher education programs so that our graduates can learn to be wise contributors to the well-being of their early childhood work places. The underpinnings for this commitment are the beliefs that leadership is learned and, therefore, is teachable. Even still, we must consider whether within our crowded teacher education courses, that this discipline deserves space. So we begin by considering the place for leadership in early childhood teacher education programs.