Grappling With Instructional Leadership Through Job-Embedded Professional Development: A Study of Community-Based Early Childhood Education Administrators

• In Event: Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: Issues in Early Education and Child Development

Abstract

Little research examines the capacity of ECE administrators to engage in ambitious job-embedded professional development (PD) as well as to engage conceptual frameworks that derive from K-12 reform. The present study reports findings from an evaluation of an i3-funded PD initiative involving four urban ECE centers. The study addresses two questions: first, how do ECE administrators grapple with ambitious conceptions of instructional leadership introduced within a job-embedded PD program, and second, how do understandings of leadership evolve in the first year? Results indicate that while the leaders grasp the theorized implications of inclusive leadership, they resist sharing in joint inquiry with teachers. Governing metaphors like being a “family” may constrain the co-construction of professional identity among leaders and teachers.

Authors

• Samuel Paul Whalen, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Heather L. Horsley, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Steven E. Tozer, University of Illinois at Chicago