Distributed pedagogical leadership and transformative change

Leading in an early childhood education (ECE) centre is complex. Successful leadership is influenced by how leaders make decisions. This article illustrates how a contextual examination of the factors influencing leadership in an Australian ECE centre led to a research project focused on the centre director enacting distributed pedagogical leadership (DPL). DPL was facilitated through provocations, engaging educators in sharing and responding to practice, and resulted in the re-development of the centre philosophy. It also redefined the director's role in leadership. Motivation for change came from the director's passion for engaging with educators to think more deeply about practice and to increase willingness to share their pedagogical expertise. Critical participatory action research (CPAR) and the theory of practice architectures (TPA) guided the project. Two findings revealed firstly, the importance of DPL in transformative change and secondly, how provocations were tailored to support the development of educator pedagogical leadership, with the goal of re-developing the centre philosophy.