Part 2: Effective Leadership in Early Childhood Settings
For Part 2 of your Competency Assessment, you will analyze capabilities, practices, and understandings of effective leaders in early childhood settings in order to develop a Leadership Assessment and your professional philosophy of early childhood leadership.
To complete Part 2 of the Competency Assessment:
• Carefully review the resources for Topic 2: What is an Effective Early Childhood Leader? These include:
o Guide to Great Leadership in Early Childhood Education https://www.himama.com/blog/leadership-in-early-childhood-education/
o Family Engagement: Make it About Empowerment https://lindakekelis.medium.com/family-engagement-make-it-about-empowerment-a9764bcf20f4
And the media segments:
o Talking about Ethical Leadership
o The Characteristics of Effective Early Childhood Leaders and Advocates
• Take time to note and reflect on the wide variety of leadership characteristics, capabilities, practices, and understandings discussed in the resources and how each fosters effective leadership in early childhood settings. Also, consider leaders you respect, have known, and/or with whom you’ve worked and which of their characteristics, capabilities, practices, and understandings fostered their excellence as effective leaders in early childhood settings, and also what they were lacking.
Then develop an early childhood leadership assessment and philosophy of effective leadership in early childhood settings by completing the following chart:
• Choose eight characteristics, capabilities, practices, and/or understandings of effective leaders in early childhood settings to list in the assessment chart below.
• Add two leadership characteristics, capabilities, practices, and/or understandings of your own to the assessment chart.
• Share the Assessment you have created with a leader/director of an early childhood program/setting. Ask him/her to take the assessment and also discuss her thoughts, insights, and questions with you about the assessment and effective leaders in early childhood settings. Summarize the director’s thinking about effective leadership. (2 paragraphs)
• Analyze what you have learned from the resources, your experience developing the assessment, and your discussion with the early childhood leader in order to create your philosophy of effective leadership in early childhood settings. (2-3 paragraphs). Be sure to cite your sources.
Assessment of Effective Leaders in Early Childhood Settings:
Characteristics, Capabilities, Practices, and Understandings
Characteristic, Capability, Practice, or Understanding Proficient Currently in the Process of Learning Needs Attention Source of the Characteristic
(8 from resources; 2 original)
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Director/Leader Reflections:
Summarize the director’s thinking about what he/she learned from the Assessment and his/her thoughts about effective leadership in early childhood settings. (2 paragraphs)