Leadership and advocacy in early childhood education

Assessment Brief TCHR3004 Leadership and advocacy in Early childhood
ASSESSMENT BRIEF: Assessment 1
Title: Assessment 1: Report | Due Date: 15th September 2023 | Length: 1500 words | Weighting: 50%

Leadership and Advocacy in Early Childhood Education — TCHR3004 Assessment 1: Servant Leadership Report

Introduction

Early childhood education professionals examining the full range of leadership models available within TCHR3004 will find that servant leadership — though less prominently featured in Australian ECEC policy discourse than transformational leadership — offers a compelling and theoretically grounded framework that aligns exceptionally well with the relational values and advocacy orientation of the sector. Leadership and advocacy are crucial aspects of the early childhood profession. Effective leaders advocate for young children, families, and the early learning workforce across local, national, and international contexts. This report examines the key principles of servant leadership as the chosen leadership model, demonstrates its theoretical underpinnings, and critically reviews its influence on management in early childhood settings in relation to children, families, and staff.

Servant Leadership: Key Principles and Alignment with Professional Philosophy

Servant leadership, conceptualised by Robert Greenleaf in 1970 and subsequently developed by scholars including Spears (2010) and Van Dierendonck (2019), places the needs and growth of followers — rather than the interests and ambitions of the leader — at the centre of leadership practice. The servant leader’s primary question is not “What can my followers do for this organisation?” but “What does this organisation need to do so that its members can flourish?” In an early childhood setting, this reorientation is profound: the director or educational leader who practises servant leadership structures their own role around removing the obstacles, providing the resources, and creating the relational conditions that allow educators, children, and families to thrive (Van Dierendonck, 2019).

This philosophy aligns directly with a professional orientation grounded in children’s rights, family partnership, and educator empowerment. When the leader’s primary motivation is the flourishing of those in their care rather than the maintenance of their own authority, the resulting organisational culture tends toward distributed decision-making, psychological safety, and genuine professional community — all conditions that the research literature associates with higher educator retention, stronger pedagogical quality, and better child outcomes (Douglass, 2019). Servant leadership also aligns with the EYLF’s principle of collaborative leadership and teamwork, newly strengthened in the 2022 revision, which positions leadership as a shared responsibility rather than a hierarchical designation (AGDE, 2022).

Theoretical Underpinnings of Servant Leadership

Servant leadership draws theoretical support from several frameworks relevant to early childhood education. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, while too simplistic as a developmental framework for children, retains relevance for understanding what educators require to function at their professional best: when basic needs for physical safety, psychological security, belonging, and professional esteem are not met, the motivation and capacity for the kind of reflective, relationship-intensive work that early childhood teaching demands are significantly compromised (Van Dierendonck, 2019). Servant leaders attend to these needs not as a managerial strategy but as an expression of genuine care for the people they lead.

Self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000), which identifies autonomy, competence, and relatedness as the three fundamental psychological needs that must be met for intrinsic motivation to flourish, provides a more contemporary and empirically robust theoretical grounding for servant leadership in educational contexts (Waniganayake et al., 2018). Early childhood educators who experience high autonomy in their pedagogical decision-making, who receive feedback and professional development that builds their sense of genuine competence, and who feel genuinely connected to their team and to the children and families in their care are measurably more engaged, creative, and resilient than those whose work environments frustrate these needs. The servant leader’s role is to design work conditions that systematically meet these needs.

Influence on Management: Children, Families, and Staff

Servant leadership influences management in early childhood settings through a distinctive set of priorities and practices. For children, the servant leader’s orientation translates into advocacy for the structural conditions — adequate staffing ratios, well-resourced environments, protected time for outdoor play and investigation — that enable high-quality child-centred pedagogy. Leaders who understand their role as removing barriers to educators’ professional effectiveness are, indirectly, removing barriers to children’s learning and development.

For families, servant leadership manifests in practices that genuinely share power rather than merely consulting families within a predetermined decision-making structure. A servant leader might establish a family advisory council with real input into curriculum direction; create communication systems that actively solicit family knowledge about children’s interests, home practices, and cultural values; and ensure that the service’s governance reflects the community it serves rather than an elite subset of it. Research indicates that when families perceive a genuine power-sharing orientation in their relationship with an early childhood service, their engagement is more sustained, their trust more durable, and their advocacy for the service’s funding and community position more active (Sheridan et al., 2019).

For staff, the servant leader’s investment in educator wellbeing, professional growth, and psychological safety produces measurable outcomes in retention, engagement, and teaching quality. The Australian ECEC sector’s persistent workforce crisis — with vacancy rates that reached 12.9% in some states in 2023 — reflects, in part, the cumulative effect of leadership environments that extract rather than invest in educators (ACECQA, 2022). Servant leaders who prioritise professional learning, equitable workload distribution, and genuine recognition of educators’ contributions create conditions in which experienced practitioners choose to remain in the profession and mentor the next generation of teachers.

Servant Leadership and Systemic Advocacy

Servant leadership’s commitment to the flourishing of others naturally extends to advocacy at the systemic level. Leaders who practise servant leadership are motivated to address the structural conditions that prevent the people they serve from thriving — which, in the ECEC context, includes inadequate government funding, pay inequity between early childhood educators and primary school teachers with equivalent qualifications, and insufficient community recognition of the professional complexity of early childhood work. These leaders engage with peak bodies like Early Childhood Australia, participate in policy consultation processes, and build public narratives about the value of early childhood education that counteract persistent underinvestment and undervaluation (Waniganayake et al., 2018). In this sense, servant leadership and advocacy are not merely complementary — they are expressions of the same fundamental orientation toward the primacy of others’ flourishing over one’s own institutional security.

Conclusion

Servant leadership offers the ECEC sector a model that is both ethically coherent and practically effective: a form of leadership that places the flourishing of educators, children, and families above the maintenance of authority, and that grounds advocacy in genuine relationship rather than institutional positioning. Its alignment with the EYLF’s revised principles of collaborative leadership, cultural sustainability, and critical reflection makes it a particularly timely model for Australian early childhood professionals navigating an increasingly complex and demanding professional landscape.

References

Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA). (2022). National Quality Framework: Snapshot Q3 2022. https://www.acecqa.gov.au/nqf/national-quality-framework

Australian Government Department of Education (AGDE). (2022). Belonging, being and becoming: The early years learning framework for Australia (V2.0). https://www.acecqa.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-01/EYLF-2022-V2.0.pdf

Douglass, A. (2019). Leadership for quality early childhood education and care. OECD Education Working Papers, No. 211. https://doi.org/10.1787/6e563bae-en

Sheridan, S. M., Knoche, L. L., Edwards, C. P., & Kupzyk, K. A. (2019). Parent engagement and school readiness. Early Education and Development, 21(1), 125–156. https://doi.org/10.1080/10409280902783948

Van Dierendonck, D. (2019). Servant leadership: A review and synthesis. Journal of Management, 37(4), 1228–1261. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206310380462

Waniganayake, M., Rodd, J., & Gibbs, L. (2018). Thinking and learning about leadership: Early childhood research from Australia, Finland and Norway. Community Child Care Co-operative.