Nursery teachers as leaders and managers: A pedagogical and subsidiarity model of leadership

Research in Education, May 2002 by Lunn, Paul, Bishop, Alison

Nursery teachers within primary schools are responsible for a distinctive phase in the education of young pupils. They also work within teams, including at least one other professional member: the nursery nurse. This potential leadership and management role is the area of interest for the research. In particular we focus upon the meaning of both management and leadership for each nursery teacher within her own nursery unit.

Interest in this area of study is a result of the growing literature on school effectiveness and school improvement, in particular those findings which point to the strong correlation between effective schools, the ability of schools to self-improve and effective leadership. HMCI (1999) has noticed that effective schools are schools that are well led. There is a realisation that leadership in effective schools does not reside solely in the head teacher.

Normative management theory views the collegial model as the one most likely to result in an effective school (Campbell, 1985; Mortimore, 1998). Nurseries have been acknowledged as the most effective phase with regard to management and leadership (HMCI, 1999), yet research into approaches and strategies with regard to leadership and management in nursery settings is extremely scarce (Rodd, 1998). There is currently a highly facilitative policy context for developing such approaches and strategies because of the priorities given to Early Years provision by the government. Yet this is an area where, we feel, there needs to be an extremely close articulation between policy, research and practice. In this article we elaborate a theoretical and critical basis for such an articulation, focusing in particular upon shared leadership within nursery units in primary schools. It is this sharedness that is seen as a strength, `the foundation of their work and corporate life is an acceptance of shared values' (HMI, 1977, cited in Preedy, 1993).

We would also acknowledge a complementary interest in the notion of feminine leadership styles (Hall, 1996; Ozga, 1993; Rodd, 1998), which are seen as being characterised by the desire to empower and acknowledge expertise: using `power to empower rather than dominate' (Hall, 1996). Furthermore the characteristics of feminine leadership styles are seen as being more effective in post-industrial society (ibid.) because they are facilitative rather than authoritarian (Kinney, cited in Hall, 1996). We would agree with Grant's prediction that the future of management and leadership is 'female' because the attributes of feminine management and leadership are co-operation, diplomacy, communication and insight (Hall, 1996). Fullan (1992) goes even further to state, `As a group women are more likely to evidence behaviour associated with effective leadership.' This is because `they are predicated on different values' (Ozga, 1993).

We asked an LEA senior adviser, with responsibility for Early Years, to choose six nursery teachers for us to interview. Her selection was based upon our request that she should choose nursery teachers who were typical of a kind (Schofield, 1993), a kind who were leaders/managers, so that we could interview and analyse the phenomenon. She negotiated access for us with the head teachers, and through the head teachers we gained access to nursery teachers willing to take part in the project. All leaders and staff in the nurseries visited were women. All the teachers had worked in Early Years for many years and with the same local education authority, with the result that they were all very familiar with the High/Scope (Hohmann et al., 1979) approach to Early Years education.

The intention was to explore the nursery teachers' understanding of the terms 'leader' and 'manager' and what meaning such terms had for them in how they see their role. The ideas would be examined by interviewing six nursery teachers in six separate primary schools, all within the same local education authority. All six nurseries are situated in a local authority's county primary schools. But they could be some distance apart. The physical situation of the nurseries was interesting, in relation to the main buildings of the primary schools of which they were a part, as in most cases they were housed in a separate building. In one instance the nursery, although part of the primary school, was several miles away.

This isolation gave the units a unique quality. One of the nursery teachers spoke of the nursery unit as a `mini-school'. Sergiovanni (1998) talks about a `community of practice' which, because of the need for a small community of like-minded professionals, is `more likely to emerge... [as a] school within a school'. Another nursery teacher commented, `It's different for me because I'm over here.' A recurring theme when explaining why they as nursery class teachers had greater leadership and management opportunities was because they were physically isolated from the main site of the primary school.

This physical isolation was often curricular too. One nursery teacher said the `working ethos' (of the rest of the primary school) made her feel `like a leper ... [in her] working ethos'. When questioned as to what it was about the working ethos that was different she said that she felt the main school was `setting them [the children] up to fail, because there is no understanding of child development and learning theory'. Concern with targets (or products) rather than processes (of learning) is a real worry of Early Years practitioners. This can be seen in the evidence given by Early Years practitioners in the QCA second report (1999) on the consultation exercise concerning Early Years goals. We would argue, therefore, that the expertise in child development should be acknowledged by the Teacher Training Agency in its work on standards for subject leaders and by OfStEd as a specialism which is crucial to school effectiveness.