Management and Leadership Responsibilities Within Early Childhood Educational Paper Example

Introduction

Management and leadership are important aspects of good childcare set up. The two aspects are related in some aspects, but they require different skills and engagements. An excellent manager will always look forward to being good quality leaders while a good leader requires administration qualities to be efficient. Leaders work toward a certain vision and are responsible for sharing the information to others to establish strategies for realizing the vision (French-Lee & Dooley, 2015). Early childhood care settings require resources and much support to achieve their goals. It is the responsibilities of the leadership to motivate and negotiate for the resources for the full realization of their vision. In many instances, the resources in the childhood education are restrained, but it is the duty of the management to ensure the available resources are well organized and are applied for the required purpose to produce the best results.

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Early childhood leadership setting is a complex, dynamic and varies from situation and culture to culture, which sometimes makes it difficult to prescribe the characteristics and the behavior of the effective leadership (French-Lee & Dooley, 2015). Hence, it is important for leaders in the childhood setting to possess context literacy. Different context would require different sets of skills and attributes to influence a particular environment. As guided by the NAEYC Code of Ethical Conducts, effective leadership is responsible for creating a positive organizational culture that value openness and trust where people can feel free to ask questions, can debate and contribute each other's ongoing learning inquiry.

On the other hand, management responsibilities of an early childhood education administrator call for setting up systems to carry out the organization mission. The management is responsible for managing and applying legal and fiscal issues arising from the institution. This includes setting up programs that provide safe and stimulating environments where children can thrive. It is the responsibility of the management to motivate teachers and staffs who nature the learning abilities of preschool and kindergarten children.

The role instructional leadership within early childhood educational setting

Instructional leadership is important in early childhood educational settings in facilitating, improving and promoting learning progress for the children. The effectiveness of learning and the smooth running of the program all depend on the instructional leadership (Delaney & Neuman, 2016). They are responsible for:

Setting goals and expectations for teaching and learning: they give life to the curriculum. The instructional leader will establish an organizational conducive organizational culture and create a professional learning community. Acknowledging leadership as a collaborative endeavor is a key aspect of instructional leadership (Delaney & Neuman, 2016). It involves enhancing the capacity of the teachers by developing trust relationships whereby various team work together and offer support to one another with the aim of improving the outcome of the children.

The early childhood education setups recognize important considerations when setting goals and expectations for teaching and learning. Young learners are always receptive to a variety of experiences. What is exempted or included from the curriculum have a positive or negative effect on how children learn, develop and understand the world.

Leading the development of the curriculum: it is important for the instructional leaders to support the team members, build their capacity and empower them, to promote rich, meaningful and leisure experiences for the learners (Delaney & Neuman, 2016). They can support the educators to implement a standard leaning framework to promote each child development. The foundations of the programs are based on children knowledge, ideas, culture, and abilities.

Instructional leaders play an important role in mentoring, guiding and supporting teachers. To initiate some improvement, the instructional leader may reflect on the strategies needed to improve the curriculum and educational program in the service. The most effective instructional leader is the one that initiates the collaboration among educators, learners, and families to set up ambitious goals for the curriculum and focusing on the importance of the educational program.

How director competencies and program model reflect educational standards

The competency of the directors and the models used in the early childhood education settings are crucial in ensuring the quality standard of the childhood education as set out by the NAEYC Code of Ethical Conducts. However, the family childcare owners, leadership and administrators play an instrumental role in helping care and education professionals that deal with young children in improving their competencies and providing safe environments in which professionals can demonstrate their professionalism and skills (Brown, Cheddie, Horry & Monk, 2017). The competencies of the directors are an important factor in the quality of the learning experiences for the young ones in the settings they supervise. Directors are responsible for selecting the quality model and instructional content and activities for professional learning within their program.

Additionally, directors are responsible for workforce hiring practices. To achieve higher educational standards, they must ensure they seek and hire educators with appropriate and necessary skills and competencies to work with the settings they are responsible (Brown et al., 2017). Credentialing systems for the educators are some of the important tools that are used to assess the qualification and competency of a candidate. Hence, the quality of the leadership is directly proportional to the quality of early learning for children. There is a strong relationship with the program quality and the specialized training for the directors in center-based early learning programs.

While the NAEYC accreditation does not prescribe a specific curriculum, the directors are responsible for choosing a curriculum that addresses all aspect of child development (Brown et al., 2017). The model of learning should ensure that young learners are given a chance to explore and develop while their educators have the prospect to work out with specific children on particular skills

Competencies ensure that clear expectations are set, and staffs are guided to assume and reinforce their behaviors according to to the organization's mission, culture, and goals. A shared language is enhanced to ensure high quality and reliable performance is delivered hence the quality of the educational standard.

Values of the NAEYC Code of Ethical Conduct as it relates to defining the role and characteristics of the program administrators

Administrators of programs for young learners are responsible for overseeing all program operations, demonstrating leadership roles in the programs and represent the field to the community. They are responsible for sustaining the relations with a number of clients. They have a strong connection with the children, families, governing boards, sponsoring agency and many more stakeholders that seek to see the welfare of the children development (Christenson et al., 2017). Throughout their work, they are faced with unique responsibilities and challenges. As they manage, they also lead, and they are called to exercise professional knowledge and skills with all stakeholders. Administrators are responsible for the primary role of executing the program mission as well as the development of the policies and procedures that support the mission.

As set out by the NAEYC code of ethical conduct, the core values to the program administrator should ensure they recognize many responsibilities to all stakeholders, but their primary role is to facilitate the well-being of the children above their obligations to other matters.

Additionally, program administrators are called upon to understand the importance of maintaining a humane and fulfill the work environment for educators and volunteers (Christenson et al., 2017). The commitment to the professional development of the staff is important to enhance the quality standard of the programs

Two professional development initiative

The compliance program is one of the professional development initiatives that would be launched by an administrator (Boscardin & Lashley, 2018). Ideally, this initiative would align with the ethical conduct standards in because it would encourage educating individuals on the right ethical standards that need to be incorporated in different fields such as in the workplace and the learning institutions. Also, launching a compliance program would imply reporting any potential violations that would occur when some of the educators or students act contrary to ethics expectations. Through this initiative, the violations would be reported confidently and anonymously.

Another initiative that would be launched by an administrator is capacity building program (Marsh & Farrell, 2015). Idyllically, the program would be relevant in enhancing individuals' core skills including the right leadership skills, management as well as evaluation skills to promote performance effectiveness. Moreover, the initiative would align with ethical code standards because its focus would be to assist educators and students in identifying their ethical potentials where they would gain insights, knowledge, and abilities, which are necessary for solving problems and implementing changes. Technical supporting activities would be facilitated to ensure that the capacity building programs are successful through coaching and proper training.

Qualities for potential candidates for early childhood education

Potential candidates who desire to enter in childhood education should be passionate. Ideally, the candidate should be focused when helping children so that they can meet their normally accepted academic value. Another quality that the candidate should possess is creativity (Christenson et al., 2017). For educators to reach for children with apparently multifaceted subjects, creativity is required because it allows children to relate lessons to their present's stage of the development. Educators should be able to introduce teaching techniques which will help the children to be focused and engaged during the lessons. Moreover, communication skills are also very important qualities to consider. An early childhood educator must be someone who can communicate with the children at their level which will help to boost children's kindergarten readiness. The candidates should be able to understand every child. This is because children come from different environments or different backgrounds which lead to different learning style to ensure that every child leaves the classroom having achieved the learning objectives. Educators should be patient and humorous so that the children can be engaged, be focused in the day's lessons and remain motivated to learn.

References

Boscardin, M. L., & Lashley, C. (2018). Expanding the leadership framework to support socially just special education policy, preparation, and standards. In Handbook of leadership and administration for special education (pp. 53-73). Routledge.

Brown, C. S., Cheddie, T. N., Horry, L. F., & Monk, J. E. (2017). Training to Be an Early Childhood Professional: Teacher Candidates' Perceptions about Their Education and Training. Journal of Education and Training Studies, 5(6), 177-186.

Christenson, L. A., Daniels, J., Cruzado-Guerrero, J., Schroth, S. T., Dudiak, M., & Watson-Thompson, O. (2017). Providing early childhood education teacher candidates diverse clinical understand...