Flipping the script: Children’s experiences of leadership in an early childhood centre

This paper argues that children’s perspectives are a critical omission in current considerations of leadership in early childhood educational settings. After a brief outline of themes in the existing distributed and pedagogical leadership literature, data is drawn from my PhD research to analyse leadership in an early childhood centre in Aotearoa New Zealand. Two specific leadership stories are then shared, first from the teachers’ perspective, then flipping the script to tell the same stories from the viewpoint of the children’s experiences. The differences suggest that focusing on leadership without simultaneously exploring children’s experiences results in only part of the leadership story being told, threatening the validity and usefulness of current ideas about effective leadership in early childhood settings.