Teacher Leadership in Early Childhood Education (Pilot Study in Ekaterinburg, Russia)

The article discusses collaborative leadership in early childhood education, which is aimed at fostering development of children and facilitating their learning of skills in a way that is sensitive to their personal aptitudes. Educational institutions must ensure continuous and comprehensive learning within which children will be brought up in moral, social, and cultural values. Educational organizations where instructors’ teamwork is supported demonstrate improved efficiency and better conditions for professional and personal development of their staff. We conducted interviews with teachers of municipal institutions of early childhood education (n = 30) in Ekaterinburg, Russia. The majority of interviewed teachers expressed their unwillingness to assume leadership roles. According to the interviewees, a leader in the educational environment should possess such qualities as organizational abilities, social skills, confidence, proactivity, energy, and creativity. Our analysis has revealed certain structural tensions that impede the realization of teachers’ leadership potential: on the one hand, the teachers recognize the importance of professional leadership, but on the other hand, they lack means and mechanisms for development of their own leadership competences. Another contradiction exists between the new requirements for children’s development formulated in the Russian federal standard and the reproduction of traditional patterns of educational relations that prevail in most educational institutions.