The Orientation Project is a research and development project that has been conducted in Finland, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan since 2008, and is concerned with Early Childhood Education (ECE)... [ view full abstract ]
The Orientation Project is a research and development project that has been conducted in Finland, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan since 2008, and is concerned with Early Childhood Education (ECE) (http://blogs.helsinki.fi/orientate/). The main purpose of the project is to discover what actually occurs in early childhood education. The method used is observation of the children in daycare centers, accompanied by questionnaires for the teachers. In Finland, there were also self-evaluation questionnaires for the directors of the daycare centers that took part in the project. An SPSS-program was used to analyze the answers, and a factor analysis to group the scaled responses of the directors. Six clusters of answers were observed from the directors: high-quality pedagogy, the leader as developer, weak pedagogical leadership, organizational structures, roles and division of labor, and leadership challenges.
The research showed that those directors who responded, had a strong vision of pedagogy. They were willing to develop early childhood education and infrastructures such as shifts in personnel and meeting procedures, and were well organized in their daycare centers. I compared the observation of the children to these responses of the teachers and to the clusters of the directors using a statistical method. The result was very evident: If a director considered him/herself as a good pedagogical leader, the atmosphere among the personnel was enthusiastic and the children were involved in the activities. Thus, it really matters, if the director is a good pedagogical leader.
Keywords: early childhood education, orientation project, pedagogical leadership
