
TCHR3004 Leadership and Advocacy in Early Childhood Report 1
Task Description
For this assessment, you are required to write a report of 1500 words. The report can include tables, charts, figures, and/or graphs to illustrate your findings where necessary.
Write a report that responds to the following three tasks.
1. Identify and explain the key principles of a (one) leadership style that you aspire to follow and give some examples of how you aim to enact this leadership style on your immersion or professional experience placement.
2. Demonstrate your knowledge of the theoretical underpinnings of this leadership style.
3. Critically review how this leadership style influences management in an early childhood setting in relation to children, families and staff.
The report must include:
1. A brief introduction of no more than 100 words outlining the purpose and content if the report.
2. A body of no more than 1320 words and broken into sections with short, appropriate headings (based upon the 3 tasks listed above).
3. A conclusion of no more than 80 words, highlighting the key findings.
4. A reference list that includes all sources of information used.
Rationale
As an early childhood educator, it is important you have an understanding about leadership and your role as a leader.
Referencing
APA 7th referencing format is required in Faculty of Education assessment tasks – link to SCU Libguide here: APA 7 Referencing.
Solution
Introduction
Advocacy and leadership are fundamental things in early childhood and the initial level of development. It helps to direct the children towards the right path with the involvement of the families, educators and other staff. Advocacy in early childhood ensures that a child will have care and quality education. The inclusion of transformational leadership for early childhood care will focus on the overall cognitive development and also raise a voice for the child's rights that will support the holistic development of a child.
The assessment will cover areas such as significant principles of transformational leadership, theoretical underpinnings, and the impacts of transformational leadership on childhood.
Discussion
1. Key principles of transformational leadership style
One of the significant leadership styles that I aspire to follow is the transformational leadership style. These leaders possess various qualities that help ensure desired outcomes in many settings. One key quality of these leaders is their ability to provide a clear vision for the future which provides necessary inspiration and motivation to the followers. Moreover, these leaders also lead by example demonstrating integrity and genuineness (Lo et al., 2020). This helps transformational leaders to earn the respect and trust of their followers. Moreover, emotional intelligence is also high among these leaders which allows them to empathise and understand the emotional needs of the team members. This is necessary for managing relationships and creating a supportive work environment.
Key principles
James MacGregor defined the concept of transformational leadership in the 1970s. However, Bernard Bass developed the transformational leadership Theory based on four principles.
The first principle of this theory is intellectual stimulation in which leaders encourage their followers to challenge the status quo. This emphasises innovative ways of thinking and explores new experiences (Purba & Sudibjo, 2020). High emphasis on opportunities rather than focusing on outcomes enables transformational leaders to remove the “fear factor” which is necessary to bring innovation.
Individual consideration
Transformational leaders are considered to transmit a sense of large culture where followers become able to understand overall organisational goals. In this regard, ideas are not dictated rather they are connected to the professional development of everyone along with fostering positive relationships (Purwanto, 2020). This includes maintaining open communication, recognising unique contributions and providing mentorship to others. This also helps transformational leaders to create admiration, respect and trust among others for university assignment help.
Inspirational motivation
Transformational leaders focus on communicating a vision that is worthy and appealing. In this regard, followers are provided with a strong sense of purpose along with setting high expectations and standards for achievement (Purba & Sudibjo, 2020). The leaders model the standards for everyone to create the same sense of passion and “mission mindset”.
Idealised influence
Transformational leaders are known for their ability to act as role models for their employees. This includes ethical modelling and demonstration of socially desirable behaviour to exhibit enthusiasm about strategies (Purwanto, 2020). The foundation of this influence is respect and trust. The focus is not only on meeting organisational goals but also on ensuring the development of every individual.
Enacting the leadership style
During my professional experience placement in an early childhood setting, I will consider incorporating this leadership style by focusing on the creation of a vision.
I will ensure that this vision is aligned with the organisational mission. Apart from that, I will continuously focus on supporting the development of my team members so that they can grow both professionally and personally. In this regard, I will also lead by example by demonstrating skills of emotional intelligence, ethical behaviour, focus on innovation, and many more. The needs of every child may be different so identification of creative methods is necessary to engage them. Thus, I will focus on creating an environment where everyone can stay encouraged to identify creative solutions for every problem.
2. Theoretical underpinnings
Burn’s Transformational Leadership Theory
Burn's Transformational Theory coined by James Macgregor Burns, appears to be significant as it proposes a cognitive concept over transformational leadership. According to this theory, transformational leadership influences followers to draw crucial attention towards growth and development (Jati, 2020). This theory can align the leadership approaches making more strengthened and encouraging ethical behaviours. The key elements of the theories are Chraishma, Inspiration, Intellectual stimulation, and Individual consideration. In the context of children educators, leaders sometimes are role models for the children making them more encouraged to follow other paths. They are to inspire the children lacking enough confidence to communicate with educators.
Tichy and Devanna’s Transformational Leadership Theory
Noel Tichy and Mary Anne Devanna have conjugatedly introduced a theory named Tichy and Devanna’s Transformational Leadership theory. In this theory, leaders are suggested to improve their ability to transportation through ethics, morality and analytical skills (Mitchell et al., 2021)). Change development appears to be a recognised approaches in childhood development. The areas are to be identified where the changes are to occur. A new vision is to be created where the educator is to proceed a critical analysis with a compelling and clear vision. It will fulfil the responsibility of a teacher in the development progress.
Bass's Transformational Leadership Theory
On account of several crucial reasons, the transformational leadership theory proposed by Bass is considered to be highly important. Proper implementation of this theory has an important role in shifting the concentration to transformation from a transactional leadership approach. Furthermore, it also has been perceived that to measure the performance of different professionals like early childhood educators, effective application of this theory seems to be extremely important (Weller et al., 2020). In order to motivate and inspire children and foster an optimistic learning environment, incorporating Bass' transformational leadership theory seems to be highly important for early childhood educators.
3. Influence of the transformational leadership style in an early childhood setting
The influence of transformational leadership in early childhood settings can be quite profound therefore, it positively impacts both educators and also young children.
Key
Aspects of this efficient leadership in early childhood settings are inspiration and motivation, individual support, innovation and change, building a positive culture, role modelling, and many more. In early childhood settings transformational leadership has consequences in higher levels of educator’s strong commitment, better implementation of educational programs, events and activities enhanced and optimised child development processes (Rinfret, et al., 2020). Transformational leaders inspire their teams and other staff to foster a shared vision for early childhood education therefore, this can lead them to a collaborative and creative culture where all educators feel motivated and valued to align with their expectations and contribute to optimise educational outcomes.
This leadership style also highlights personal connection that allows leaders to identify the individual demands and strengths of educators. In addition, early childhood settings such as support can take them to personal and professional growth and impactful development, better job satisfaction and higher level of engagement. Early childhood education requires adapting and developing the rapidly changing demands of children and families. On the other hand, transformational leaders encourage and support attractive innovation, promoting new teaching mechanisms and practices that meet with contemporary educational standards and child development theories.
Inspiration and vision
The transformational leadership style in childhood facilitates the formation of a compelling vision for the development of characters and education from the very initial stage of development (Duncan, 2024). Adopting this particular leadership style would help the family members, staff and educators to work towards reaching the common objectives that have been set out for the overall development of a child. It will provide different types of teaching methods that will motivate and engage the children more in the learning procedure. The optimistic and energetic situation of the learning environment will motivate and inspire the children the learn different types of skills from the very early ages of development.
Encouraging creativity and innovation
In early childhood settings, fostering creativity, and innovation is also important for encouraging an engaging and dynamic learning environment (Lee, 2021). On the other hand, transformational leaders proactively provide experimentation with all the latest teaching methods, tools and techniques, and also approaches to increase the learning experiences of children. On the other hand, they also help educators in attempting creative frameworks tailored to the different requirements of all young learners, like integrating those kinds of learning which is play-based, interactive storytelling, as well as using digital tools in the appropriate ways. This specific flexibility, also openness to alter permits for various personalised experiences of learning, advantaging both the children and the educators.
Keeping a long-term effect on learning outcomes
It has been discerned that early childhood educators having sufficient agility as transformational leaders have sufficient potential to benefit children from social and academic perspectives. Such educators have an important role in establishing a positive scenario that can motivate and support the children in amending their social skills and enthusiasm to learn new lessons (Yulianti et al., 2021). Furthermore, it also has been found that the transformational leadership approach of childhood educators also develops the required foundation for persisting learning. This characteristic trait of those educators helps boost the confidence and love of the adhering tutees to learn new things.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that transformational leadership in particular early childhood settings plays an important role in shaping an appropriate environment that also nurtures both children and educators. By providing an open vision, also empowering teachers, encouraging collaboration, as well as fostering creativity and innovation, these particular transformational leaders assemble a positive developing-oriented culture. Moreover, their focus on individual consideration, professional development, and emotional support confirms that teachers are engaged, encouraged, equipped and motivated to contribute great-quality care and education. In addition, the result is a creative, responsive and dynamic learning environment that positively advantages children, encouraging their emotional, social and cognitive development.
References
Duncan, J. S. (2024). Childhood Trauma, Attachment, and Adult Leadership Styles (Doctoral dissertation, Walden University). Retrieved from: https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=17206&context=dissertations
Jati, D. P. (2020, September). Evaluation of the Transformational Leadership Model. In Proceeding of International Conference Sustainable Competitive Advantage (Vol. 1, No. 1). Retrieved from: https://www.jp.feb.unsoed.ac.id/index.php/sca-1/article/viewFile/1947/1820
Lee, H. (2021). Changes in workplace practices during the COVID-19 pandemic: the roles of emotion, psychological safety and organisation support. Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People and Performance, 8(1), 97-128. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Helena-Lee-10/publication/349292228_Changes_in_workplace_practices_during_the_COVID-19_pandemic_the_roles_of_emotion_psychological_safety_and_organisation_support/links/613c0c6501846e4
5ef3e3c8f/Changes-in-workplace-practices-during-the-COVID-19-pandemic-the-roles-of-emotion-psychological-safety-and-organisation-support.pdf
Lo, P., Allard, B., Anghelescu, H. G., Xin, Y., Chiu, D. K., & Stark, A. J. (2020). Transformational leadership practice in the world’s leading academic libraries. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 52(4), 972-999. Retrieved from: https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1157&context=slisfrp
Mitchell, D. E., Chiang, W. C., Wang, K. Y., & Andrews, B. E. (2021). Investigating the effect of transformational leadership in mutual fund accounting and administration. Journal of Management Science and Business Intelligence, 6(2), 12-21. Retrieved from: http://www.ibii-us.org/Journals/JMSBI/V6N2/Publish/V6N2_3.pdf
Purba, K., & Sudibjo, K. (2020). The effects analysis of transformational leadership, work motivation and compensation on employee performance in PT. Sago Nauli.
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Purwanto, A. (2020). The effect of transformational leadership dimensions on job satisfaction and organizational commitment: case studies in private university Lecturers. Solid State Technology. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mochammad-Fahlevi/publication/344456586_The_Effect_of_Transformational_Leadership_Dimensions_on_Job_Satisfaction
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Rinfret, N., Laplante, J., Lagacé, M. C., Deschamps, C., & Privé, C. (2020). Impacts of leadership styles in health and social services: A case from Quebec exploring relationships between emotional intelligence and transformational leadership. International Journal of Healthcare Management, 13(sup1), 329-339. Retrieved from: https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/115120147/20479700.2018.154815320240521-1-z3oh1d-libre.pdf?1716331278=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DImpacts_of_leadership_styles_in_health_a.pdf&Expires=1725521661&
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Weller, I., Süß, J., Evanschitzky, H., & von Wangenheim, F. (2020). Transformational leadership, high-performance work system consensus, and customer satisfaction. Journal of Management, 46(8), 1469-1497. Retrieved from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0149206318817605
Yulianti, K., Denessen, E., Droop, M., & Veerman, G. J. (2021). Transformational leadership for parental involvement: How teachers perceive the school leadership practices to promote parental involvement in children’s education. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 20(2), 277-292. Retrieved from: https://repository.ubn.ru.nl/bitstream/handle/2066/219512/219512.pdf