How do graduate leaders in England discursively construct their leadership roles in early childhood education?

The professionalisation of the workforce in Early Childhood Education (ECE) is aligned with policy aspirations in England and internationally to raise the quality of provision, reduce inequalities in children’s outomes, and improve standards. This paper aims to consider how policy discourses of leadership are interpreted by Graduate Leaders, and the discursive conceptualisation and enactment of their roles in practice. The analysis adopts a reflexive re-viewing of interviews with Graduate Leaders in a range of ECE settings in the context of continued crises in the workforce in England. The interviews were conducted in Phase 1 of the Australia-England project Learning-rich leadership for quality improvement in early childhood education, funded by the Australian Research Council (DP180100281). The project aimed to develop a new theorisation of ECE leadership, and to understand the ongoing effects of policy on leadership practices for quality improvement. The analysis identified four main roles: team player, pedagogical leader, responsible agent, and change agent. Evidence of the impact of policy took the form of attributes related to accountability and compliance, whereas constructions related to learning and quality were characterised by attributes linked to established discourses of work in ECE. The conclusion highlights the tension between policy discourses of leadership, and the discursive resources that informed how leaders were constructing their roles.