Leadership Skills in the Early Years by O'Sullivan June;

Author:O'Sullivan, June;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Activities to complete at a staff team meeting or training session

Activities are provided to be used at a staff team meeting or training session to provoke discussion and get staff to think about how they would respond and what skills, knowledge and understanding they would use and why.

Activity 1

According to Championing Children (2006) the key to achieving successful outcomes in very complex children’s services is to provide an environment which provides clarity about what must be achieved, both internally and to service users, and maintains a focus on those things.

You have recently been appointed Children’s Centre Manager. You are completing an audit of the services you run and observing the community crèche which is run twice a week. It is mainly used by a group of young parents and this is the only chance their children get to come to a nursery facility. You have observed that the outreach worker leading the session is very good at communicating with the parents but the learning experiences for the children are very poor. This goes against your pedagogical ethos and you need to take action.

How will you do this without causing offence as it has taken a lot of effort to start communication across the multi-disciplinary team? Communication of the children’s centre agenda was an issue as there was much confusion to begin with, especially over line management, funding of posts and clashes of organisational philosophies.

Supporting individuals who feel they are faced with contradictions between the demands of their parent organisation or profession and those of the team has been a challenge. This got in the way of practice a lot to begin with.

How will you respond?

How will you support your staff to respond?

What pedagogical principles will you use and why?

What thinking might you do afterwards to reduce the chances of a reoccurrence of this problem?

Activity 2

Last week you had a big cleaning day at the nursery. The children took their chairs and toys outside and scrubbed them down with soapy water and brushes. Today a dad came in to complain that he does not pay fees for his children to do your cleaning.

How will you respond?

How will you support your staff to respond?

What pedagogical principles will you use and why? For example, would your response be influenced by Montessori’s ideas about real jobs and responsibility?

What thinking might you do afterwards to reduce the chances of a reoccurrence of this problem?

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