Reimagining Early Childhood Educator Leadership: Disrupting Hierarchies in Ontario’s Full-Day Kindergarten

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Developing Reflective Leadership Practices: Mentoring, Feedback, and Well-Being

Abstract

This conceptual paper examines the systemic exclusion of Registered Early Childhood Educators (RECEs) from leadership development, career mobility, and decision-making in Ontario’s Full-Day Kindergarten (FDK), positioning them at the margins of educational leadership. Grounded in critical theory, it explores how systemic barriers to leadership, rooted in the historical marginalization of RECEs, constitute epistemic injustice (Fricker, 2007). Drawing on global discourse, provincial policy, and school system frameworks, this paper argues that limited opportunities for RECE growth and representation reflect classism and elitism and perpetuate the “schoolification” of FDK. Mentoring and pedagogical leadership are identified as critical pathways to advancing RECE agency, equity, and justice.

Author

• samia javed, University of Western Ontario