The Research Context: Leadership Policy in Early Childhood Education in England and Australia

This chapter describes the policy contexts in which our research into learning-rich leadership in early childhood education was conducted. Here we trace the origins of the project within the emerging focus on educational (rather than managerial) leadership evident in global early childhood education policy flows since the early 2000s and touch briefly on some of the accompanying research on educational leadership in early childhood education. An understanding of these policy trends is essential in problematizing the demands being placed on educational leaders, particularly the formulations of quality that were central to our research.