Early Childhood Leaders’ Conceptualisation and Understanding of Leadership in Community Centres: The Case of South Africa

This chapter conceptualises leadership in early childhood care and education (ECEC) centres in South Africa. The report emanates from the Project in Early Childhood Policy Analysis (PECPA) research project conducted in ECEC community centres in the rural communities of Gauteng Province (RSA). Because of the minimal research conducted on centre managers’ conceptualisation of leadership in rural South African ECEC centres, the study aims to highlight the challenges, understanding, and practices of ECEC centre leaders. Five principals were purposively selected from five rural community settings in this qualitative case study. The school-based management theory and leadership principle, termed centre-based management, underpinned the chapter. The research lends itself to an exploratory qualitative data collection method through face-to-face semi-structured interviews to explore the phenomenon under study. Findings reveal that principals’ conceptualisation and understanding of leadership practices focus on administrative duties that exclude distributive leadership. The conceptualisation of leadership is limited to performing managerial duties such as practitioner recruitment, fundraising, and centre resource development. The conclusion is that ECEC leadership and sustainable development of community centres urgently require well-trained, informed, visionary, experienced, and critical-thinking leaders.