Project Theory and Methods

This chapter opens by providing a broad outline of the background theory that informed the design of the Learning-rich leadership for quality improvement in early childhood education project: cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT). We explain what kind of theory CHAT is and describe the concepts we adopted from CHAT to assist in developing our focal theory about the relationship between leadership and change in early childhood services. The bulk of the chapter, however, is taken up with an illustration of how we mobilized CHAT concepts as part of our data analysis.