Socially Just Productions of Leadership for Early Childhood: Conceptual Anchors, Pedagogies for Transformation and Provocations From the Field

• In Event: Stories of/in Equity and Social Justice in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

Increased public attention in children’s first five years has reignited concerns about the lack of a formal pipeline for supporting leadership development within the field of early childhood. Expanded conceptualizations are needed to recast productions of leadership using social justice discourse and critical theories as conceptual anchors leading to more equitable, inclusive and diversified understandings. Contextualized narratives provide windows into the work—content explored, pedagogies employed and reverberations rippling into the community—of one graduate program working to insert more equitable discourses of leadership into the field. Voices, of diverse women and men, all full time working professionals representing every sector of early childhood, relay the complexities, tensions and promise in “becoming” leaders for social justice in early childhood.

Author

• Julie M. Nicholson, Mills College