The Limits of Policy as a Mediating Cultural Tool in Leadership for Quality Improvement

Having laid out our theorization of learning-rich leadership for quality improvement in early childhood education in Chaps. 4 , 5 , and 6 , in this chapter we return to questions raised in Chaps. 1 and 2 about the place of leadership policy in learning-rich leadership for quality improvement in early childhood services. The role of policy as mediator of leadership practice forms part of the backdrop to our theory of learning-rich leadership because we argue that policy implementation is a process that requires Educational Leaders to foster staff learning for improving overall service quality, as well as initiating and sustaining practice change. Here we explore how Educational Leaders in the project populated policies with both new and inherited meanings and how these meanings mediated their leadership activity.