We are seeing an increasing focus on leadership and leadership development in the early years (EY) sector.
With initiatives such as the National Professional Qualification in Early Years Leadership, as well as leadership coaching funded as part of the Department for Education EY COVID recovery plan, there is an urgent need to understand what works when it comes to developing leaders in the sector.
What kinds of leadership development make the most difference for improving outcomes for the children and families we serve as a sector?
As part of our research on the current realities and potentials of leadership development in the UK EY sector, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, we have examined what we know so far about high-quality leadership development.
Through speaking to 24 diverse UK-based providers of EY leadership development, as well as reviewing the global evidence base on the topic, we have reached the conclusion that it’s simply not possible at the moment to definitively share what works when it comes to leadership development.
The reason for this is simple: as a sector, we are lacking robust evaluations of leadership development and it’s a gap that we urgently need to fill.
The current state of play–Finding our feet
In our global review of leadership development programmes for EY, we found that most of what has been done so far in evaluating leadership development has been focused on exploratory qualitative accounts of leadership development as it unfolds.
Researchers have used interviews with participants and field notes based on workshops to see what happens in the course of leadership development.
Such studies are hugely important in that they provide a rich insight into what leadership means on the ground and how it can be developed through particular initiatives and programmes. It helps us to get under the skin of the potential impact of investing in leadership development.
However, to get to a place of robust understanding around what works in leadership development, we need more than just these kinds of observation.
We need a base of evidence that demonstrates the impact that particular programmes have on leaders’ capacities.
This is achieved through research that involves quantitative pre- and post-intervention measures. But across all the studies we systematically gathered, which focused on EY leadership development, just four mentioned using these kinds of measure.
When we spoke with a diverse range of 24 UK training providers offering leadership development, they echoed our concern around this.
There was agreement that developing more robust evaluation of leadership development is a vital next step, especially as a lot of public investment is going towards new leadership development programmes in EY at the moment.
Moving forward –Potential measures of leadership development
The four studies we found that use quantitative pre- and post-intervention measures all work on the same logic around how leadership development can make a difference in EY.
This model is also highlighted in the working paper on EY leadership development of Professor Anne Douglass (2019) published by the OECD. In this model, leadership development is thought to impact positively on leadership practices, which positively influence organisational climate (sometimes referred to as ‘organisational culture’),as well as the learning environment and interactions among adults and children, and positively influences children’s outcomes (see figure below).
With this model in mind, it becomes easier to identify what might be useful pre- and post-measures of leadership development.
These measures could focus on leaders’ self-report, as well as organisational climate, learning environment quality and interactions and children’s outcomes.
Ideally, evaluations would involve a mix of these measures. For example, Talan et al. (2014) evaluated a 10-month US leadership programme for EY professionals called ‘Taking Charge of Change’ through a US-based on-site external measure of leadership development known as the Programme Administration Scale (PAS), as well as through the ECWES – which is a measure of organisational climate completed by other members of staff in the leader’s setting.
To measure the impact of training and mentoring on EY directors in the US, Ressler et al. (2015) also used the PAS, along with an on-site external measure of the learning environment (the ECERS-R environment rating scale) and a self-report questionnaire for leaders to complete.
While these articles highlight particular measures that can be used in more robust evaluations of leadership development, they are just the tip of the iceberg in understanding what works in leadership development.
We urgently need to do more evaluation of leadership development is currently going on here in the UK.
Next steps – Hurdles to overcome
If we buy into the model above, it seems simple enough to ask that evaluations of leadership development should include the following pre- and post- measures:
- Self-reported measures of leadership. These might be validated questionnaires for leaders that probe their confidence and capacity as a leaders over the duration of a leadership development programme as well as at the beginning and end.
- Measures of organisational climate. These might be surveys completed by those working with the leader in a particular setting. They would comment on the aspects of organisational climate that are important for staff morale and continuous improvement, such as a culture of learning, feedback and growth.
- Measures of the learning environment and child-adult interactions. If leaders are able to improve the organisational climate, there should be – according to the model above (Figure 1) – a positive knock-on effect for the learning environment and the interactions among children and adults. This could be measured through on-site external ratings of the environment.
- Measures of children’s outcomes. The ultimate aim of leadership development is to improve the outcomes for children. This could be measured through children’s achievement and progress against EYFS milestones or more specialist measures.
While this appears to be simple enough, there are some major hurdles that we need to overcome as an EY community.
The first is that many of the tools that exist to measure the points above exist behind a paywall. They are licensed products that many organisations simply cannot afford to use.
The second is that many of the tools have not been developed for use in the UK context.
The Solution
We recommend that to overcome these hurdles, we need to develop open-access measures that are specific to the UK.
These measures need to be created through a collaborative community-based process, but then also carefully validated using scientific methods.
Doing this would represent a monumental step forward in the landscape of leadership development in UK EY, as well as placing us at the cutting edge of EY leadership development worldwide. ❚