Organizational culture in leading pedagogical work in Finnish early childhood education: A discourse analysis

Finnish early childhood education has undergone many changes over the past decade. These changes have strengthened the position of Early Childhood Education (ECE) within the education system. ECE teachers are now responsible for planning the activities for groups of children, implementation of activities with a goal-oriented and systematic approach and evaluating and developing the activities. ECE teachers are responsible for leading the pedagogical activities of the multiprofessional team; however the leadership role of teachers remains unclear. This study examines how organizational culture is constructed in discourses on leading pedagogical work in Finnish ECE. The theoretical framework is based on the concepts of pedagogical leadership, distributed pedagogical leadership, teacher leadership, and organizational culture. The data consist of interviews with 11 ECE teachers. We analysed the data using discourse analysis as a method. We identified four discourses in the data: the discourse of varied clarity, the discourse of balancing act, the discourse of competition, and the discourse of varied support. Considering this study, there are varying organizational cultural prerequisites for leading a team’s pedagogical activities in Finnish ECE. The results can help to understand the phenomenon of teacher leadership. The results can also help centre directors develop the organization’s culture so that it better supports teachers in their leadership task.