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37695 results in Cambridge Textbooks

Page 1466 of 1885

  • Chapter 1 - Understanding self

  • from Part 1 - Thinking About People and Places
  • Nadine Louise McCrea, University of New England, Australia
  • Book:
    Leading and Managing Early Childhood Settings
    Published online:
    12 August 2019
    Print publication:
    13 February 2015, pp 9-29

  • Summary

    Socrates advised us ‘know thyself’ and he claimed the unexamined life is not worth living … Unexamined lives may well be valuable and worth living, but an education that does not invite such examination may not be worthy of the label education.

    Nel Noddings (2006, p. 10)

    Broad concepts

    In this chapter, your journey along the professional leading-managing path encompasses concepts about the self, including both your personal life and your professional life. You are encouraged to think about the following Steps:

  • Is ‘knowing oneself’ relevant?

  • Who am I personally?

  • Who am I professionally?

  • What is leading with managing?

    • From this first chapter onwards, you will traverse the professional path filled with diverse ideas that are linked with professional experiences, research findings and professional associations. These sources represent multiple professional fields and academic disciplines, including early childhood education, philosophy, feminism, sociology, anthropology, psychology, ethics, human ecology, social justice and equity.

    Step 1: Is ‘knowing oneself’ relevant?

    The notion of knowing and understanding oneself may be related to asking oneself such questions as:

  • Who am I?

  • Who is my family?

  • Where do I come from?

  • What is my background?

  • When (in what times) did I grow up?

  • How did I live?

  • Who am I now?

  • What roles do I have in society?

  • How did I get to this point?

  • How comfortable am I with myself right now?

    • Additionally, it will be helpful if you incorporate a qualifier question – ‘Why?’ – for each of the above questions, as suggested by Noddings (2006, p. 10). For example, revisiting the ‘Who am I?’ with a ‘Why?’ forms the deeper question: ‘Why am I who I am?’ Carefully revisiting past childhood and earlier adulthood experiences can help reveal our present thoughts, values and attitudes, dispositions and habits of mind and indeed result in greater self-awareness. Such a trip back in time may help us understand the impact of the past on our current daily adult lives. This kind of self-study, or memory work, is not about self-interest or self-promotion, nor is it about selfishness (Noddings, 2006). Rather, the purpose of better knowing oneself relates to living and working authentically with others. In fact, Amanda Sinclair (2007) suggested ‘going back’ because ‘leadership has a childhood’.

  • Chapter 3 - Contemplating workplaces

  • from Part 1 - Thinking About People and Places
  • Nadine Louise McCrea, University of New England, Australia
  • Book:
    Leading and Managing Early Childhood Settings
    Published online:
    12 August 2019
    Print publication:
    13 February 2015, pp 56-80

  • Summary

    Leadership is by people with people and their organizations. It is possible that this human-centered perspective works to distance humans from the natural world … Is it one of humans over, with or of Nature? … Nature-centered leaders encourage others to reflect on these relationships.

    Spencer Stober, Tracey Brown & Sean Cullen (2013, p. 2)

    Broad concepts

    Here your journey along a professional leading-managing path has reached a point for stopping to explore early childhood settings and significant organisations beyond them. You will be thinking about the following Steps:

  • How diverse are early childhood settings?

  • What are some beyond-the-fence contexts surrounding early childhood settings?

  • What constitutes an organisation?

    • Diverse settings

    There is a wide variety of early childhood settings across Australia and internationally. We begin from a contemporary frame of these places and spaces, with some relevant historical perspectives included (Ailwood, 2007a). This ‘present-and-past’ approach to workplaces may assist professionals when they consider which aspects of settings to protect and what features and practices to change. One consideration about settings relates to their ‘naming’ (refer back to this concept in Chapter 2). The past-present time dimensions are a relevant leadership and management issue here because the same name can have different meanings and nomenclature across contexts and over decades. Thus, staff, parents, community members and even governments may be confused or misled by the names and labels used for early childhood settings.

  • Chapter 2 - Exploring communication

  • from Part 1 - Thinking About People and Places
  • Nadine Louise McCrea, University of New England, Australia
  • Book:
    Leading and Managing Early Childhood Settings
    Published online:
    12 August 2019
    Print publication:
    13 February 2015, pp 30-55

  • Summary

    As stated by the eminent cognitive neuroscientist Michel Gazzaniga: ‘Everything in life is memory, save for the thin edge of the present.’ Memory allows us to recall birthdays, holidays and other significant events that may have taken place hours, days, months, or even many years ago. Our memories are personal and ‘internal’, yet without memory we wouldn’t be able to undertake ‘external’ acts – such as holding a conversation, recognising our friends’ faces, remembering appointments, acting on new ideas, succeeding at work, or even learning to walk.

    Jonathan K Foster (2009, p. 2)

    Broad concepts

    Here your journey along a professional leading-managing path encompasses concepts about communicating authentically, both within early childhood settings and beyond them. You will explore what communication involves, professional ways of communicating and much more. You are encouraged to think about the following Steps:

  • Why is communicating with others essential?

  • How and why are our words so powerful?

  • What does professional communication encompass?

    • Step 1: Why is communicating with others essential?

    Language is central to people’s humanity. Each of us has a language – our mother tongue that was learned informally from infancy while sitting on the knees of family members. Of course, many infants learn more than one mother tongue simultaneously. Additionally, many of today’s infants are enrolled in early childhood settings, where they also learn some of their first or second language on the knees of staff. Communication is so deeply intertwined with both our interacting and relating that the three can hardly be separated. This aspect of our humanness is so fundamental, especially in this fast-paced world. Thus, it is essential that early childhood staff consider how to wisely support young children and their burgeoning communications.

  • Chapter 6 - A professional role – a pedagogy creator

  • from Part 2 - Thinking About Practices as Roles
  • Nadine Louise McCrea, University of New England, Australia
  • Book:
    Leading and Managing Early Childhood Settings
    Published online:
    12 August 2019
    Print publication:
    13 February 2015, pp 120-145

  • Summary

    We recognise that we are both co-products and co-producers of this moment and that the best we can do is offer glimpses.

    Richard Edwards & Robin Usher (2008, p. 14)

    Broad concepts

    In this chapter, your professional path widens to a well-marked and maintained four-lane highway, with side paths that are firmly gravelled and well-trodden by foot and bicycle traffic. The size and condition of this travel route represents the centrality or key purpose of early childhood settings. As young children are the centre point, everything that contributes to their well-being and authentic learning is pivotal. All other aspects of these settings as presented throughout this book exist as contributors to young children’s living and learning. Young children are the central purpose of all ECE work. In this chapter, you will be thinking about the following Steps:

  • What are the leading and managing facets of a pedagogy creator role?

  • Which responsibilities help frame children’s learning?

  • Who is involved in children’s learning?

    • Step 1: What are the leading and managing facets of a pedagogy creator role?

    Being an effective and authentic pedagogy creator involves engaging with many people, various educational places and diverse curricular models and practices. Both positional and situational leader-managers are usually active participants in all aspects of early childhood pedagogy. Generally, pedagogy relates to children’s educational experiences beginning with adults’ philosophical ideas, moving to other learning steps and teaching processes, and finally to the everyday interactions and experiences within early childhood settings.

  • Chapter 7 - A professional role – a rights advocate

  • from Part 2 - Thinking About Practices as Roles
  • Nadine Louise McCrea, University of New England, Australia
  • Book:
    Leading and Managing Early Childhood Settings
    Published online:
    12 August 2019
    Print publication:
    13 February 2015, pp 146-162

  • Summary

    A non-violent revolution is not a program of seizure of power. It is a program of transformation of relationships, ending in a peaceful transfer of power.

    Mohandas K. Gandhi (2007, p. 40)

    Broad concepts

    In this chapter, your professional path moves on to what some would consider the edges of an early childhood education roadway, or maybe even a sidetrack. Being an advocate may be viewed as taking on a trailblazer mantle; this is a person who marks out a route through what is seen as wilderness. Such a trail could involve sharp hairpin turns as the contour of the land is followed. Clearing a trail and going around these bends may reward you with new vistas of the ECE profession and field. This trailblazer metaphor can be applied across ECE, where it relates to the intrigue of politics and forces of power at all layers of government and in the corporate world. Here, you will be thinking about the following Steps:

  • What are the leading and managing facets of a rights advocate role?

  • Which responsibilities link with professional vision and moral higher ground?

    • Step 1: What are the leading and managing facets of a rights advocate role?

    This leader-manager role relates to and focuses on advocating within early childhood settings and often beyond them. We will investigate examples of positional leaders as well as situational or distributing leaders attending to both human and Earth rights (link back to rights and fairness in other chapters). In this chapter advocacy is acknowledged as one challenging component of a professional journey through the ECE field.

  • Foreword

  • Nadine Louise McCrea, University of New England, Australia
  • Book:
    Leading and Managing Early Childhood Settings
    Published online:
    12 August 2019
    Print publication:
    13 February 2015, pp vii-ix

  • Summary

    Like the author I am approaching retirement, so I have also been reflecting deeply on my own professional journey and how the field of early childhood education has changed since I landed my first teaching position in 1968. In my teaching and writing, I use the overarching term ‘early childhood administrator’ to describe both the leadership and management functions of directors of center-based programs. I was delighted to see how Nadine has embraced the unifying role descriptor leader-manager throughout this book. In my thinking, leadership functions relate to the broad view of helping an organization clarify and affirm values, set goals, articulate a vision, and chart a course of action to achieve that vision. Management functions relate to the actual orchestration of tasks and the setting up of systems to carry out the organizational mission (Bloom, 2014; Talan & Bloom 2011). In the day-to-day world of early childhood administrators, leadership and management functions are really two sides of the same coin.

    How appropriate then that this book begins with an opportunity for the reader to dive deep into an exploration of core values and to gain an understanding of how background and dispositions impact one’s effectiveness as a leader-manager. The capacity to reflect and engage in candid introspection is at the heart of achieving self-awareness. Having a better understanding of oneself is the first step to having a better relationship with others, because self-awareness provides a window to expand our understanding about other points of view and perspectives. The goal of this kind of reflection is not merely to see who we are and better understand ourselves today, but to envision what we might become tomorrow (Bloom, 2007). As one who is stepping down the ladder and nearing retirement, I can attest that it is a lifelong process – a journey of self-discovery,meaningmaking, and identity shaping.

  • Part 1 - Thinking About People and Places

  • Nadine Louise McCrea, University of New England, Australia
  • Book:
    Leading and Managing Early Childhood Settings
    Published online:
    12 August 2019
    Print publication:
    13 February 2015, pp 7-8

  • Summary

    This section of the book includes three chapters that focus on people in early childhood settings, their interactions with others and the places where they work. In Chapter 1, you will explore concepts to help deepen your understanding of self. This part of your journey includes asking yourself: ‘Who am I?’ This self-exploration includes a look at leading with managing. In Chapter 2, we explore our language, the powerfulness of words, and communicating for meaning. In Chapter 3, you will contemplate workplaces and the importance of settings and spaces within and beyond early childhood settings.

  • Chapter 5 - A professional role – a policy designer

  • from Part 2 - Thinking About Practices as Roles
  • Nadine Louise McCrea, University of New England, Australia
  • Book:
    Leading and Managing Early Childhood Settings
    Published online:
    12 August 2019
    Print publication:
    13 February 2015, pp 102-119

  • Summary

    Policy … moves beyond the dictionary definition and is construed as a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional social and political phenomenon which includes a cycle of strategies bound by time, resources, players and performances with dynamic and often contested political sites.

    Ann Farrell (2001, p. 241)

    Broad concepts

    In this chapter, your professional journey takes you to the challenging hills of this leading-managing path. While considering policy from the heights of agreed values, you may look up for further inspiration. You may look back down, viewing gaps across the profession as a valley. You may even look forward along the horizon for creative insights, meaningful aspirations, future dreams and ethical visions. There are professional rewards to be gained from this kind of investigation. As you read this chapter, you will be thinking about the following Steps:

  • What are the leading and managing facets of a policy designer role?

  • What policies are needed and why?

  • How are policies created and cared for?

    • Policy designer

    A policy designer is actively engaged in an early childhood setting and usually collaborates with others. Rather than referring to this role as a policy ‘writer’ or ‘author’, ‘developer’ or ‘documenter’, the noun ‘designer’ implies that those involved are more creative and original, rather than just being functional or mechanical. This ought to mean that any resulting policies have been more carefully conceived and thus professionally sketched. Designing policy involves encountering values, ideas and ideals alongside everyday practices. Design also involves thinking about and responding to lots of questions. Investigating the policy designer role encompasses both positional and situational leader-managers. There will also be times when this leading-managing project of policy work is centred with others as a collective within early childhood services. However, in essence, for policy work to be suitably relevant and educationally effective, this development must be undertaken with:

  • Due attention to authentic relationships among contributors

  • Serious consideration that policy topics and themes are in-context, sensitive and meaningful

  • An eye looking for continuous transformation of ideas and society.

  • Part 2 - Thinking About Practices as Roles

  • Nadine Louise McCrea, University of New England, Australia
  • Book:
    Leading and Managing Early Childhood Settings
    Published online:
    12 August 2019
    Print publication:
    13 February 2015, pp 81-82

  • Summary

    Building on your understandings of people and places, you will now spend time exploring four professional roles: team stakeholder, policy designer, pedagogy creator and rights advocate. Each chapter includes a broad outline of one role before encouraging you to scrutinise and reflect deeply on it. You might wonder, why these four roles and not others? These focal roles reveal much about how early childhood settings function and how both positional and situational leading-managing happens.

    It is important to remember that the ‘team’ of staff are vital participants and contributors to everyday life in early childhood settings. Without staff there would not be settings for children to attend and families to interact with. Designing ‘policy’ initially involves the integration of people’s philosophical or theoretical views and their workplace positions. Furthermore, creating a ‘pedagogical’ scene for young children is really the essence of early childhood settings. Finally, ‘advocating’ for all kinds of human rights reflects serious and beyond-the-fence professionalism.

  • Chapter 4 - A professional role – a team stakeholder

  • from Part 2 - Thinking About Practices as Roles
  • Nadine Louise McCrea, University of New England, Australia
  • Book:
    Leading and Managing Early Childhood Settings
    Published online:
    12 August 2019
    Print publication:
    13 February 2015, pp 83-101

  • Summary

    Compassion means ‘cumt passio’, suffering-with … In compassion, the distance between you and the other is crossed … In compassion the other and the world are realized as your very self.

    S. Rao (comp./ed.) (2002, p. 95)

    Broad concepts

    Here your journey along a professional leading-managing path encompasses concepts about being a team stakeholder or a person focused on staff and staffing. You will be thinking about the following Steps:

  • What are the leading and managing facets of a team stakeholder role?

  • Which staffing responsibilities are key?

  • Where do rights and rules fit into staff sharing and workplace give-and-take?

    • Team and stakeholder

    This chapter begins with an exploration of what we mean by ‘team’ and ‘stakeholder’. Pausing here on your professional pathway gives you a little time to think about: ‘How would I explain or define being a “team stakeholder”?’ A team is a collection of people, but it is also much more. For example, forming and being a team implies interactions, relationships and shared commitments. There are sports teams, community service teams (usually called committees), and there are education teams. Within early childhood settings the collection of all staff is often referred to as a ‘team’. Teams and their teamwork do not just happen; they have to be worked at. It takes time for people to share, engage and solidify their ideas and relationships. Teams also grow and change over time, as the surrounding world alters and as staff members come and go from a workplace. Some people are called ‘team players’, especially when they collaborate and willingly contribute to the common good.

Page 1466 of 1885