Early Educators as Entrepreneurial Leaders: Transforming Leadership in Early Childhood Education

• In Event: 52.084 - Roundtable Session 20
  In Roundtable Session: 52.084-9 - Early Childhood Teachers: Leadership, Collaboration, and Self-Efficacy

Abstract

This paper critically examines the literature on leadership for change from across disciplines, and presents a new way of thinking about entrepreneurial leadership in the ECE context. It presents a study of an entrepreneurial leadership development program for early educators. Findings reveal common themes about how early educators develop as entrepreneurial leaders, and what supports are needed to strengthen their capacity to implement change and innovation to improve ECE. Because entrepreneurial leadership pathways are relatively new to the ECE field, this study contributes to an important new body of research on leadership development in the field. The paper concludes with implications for further developing the leadership infrastructure to support early educators as drivers of improvement and innovation.

Author

• Anne Douglass, University of Massachusetts - Boston