”Fra kollegafellesskap til ledelseshierarki? De pedagogiske lederne i barnehagens ledelsesprosess”.

The overall purpose of the study is to contribute knowledge about the extent to which early childhood educators at daycare centres ("barnehage") take part in the general management of their daycare centre. An early childhood educator will usually be linked to a base with between nine and 18 children and two-three employees in addition to the early childhood educator. The head of the institution (manager) has the highest position in the hierarchy and is responsible for both pedagogical, administrative and personnel management of all the employees at the daycare centre. Therefore, it is relevant to examine whether early childhood educators could contribute more to overall management. The study is based on two main issues: To what extent are early childhood educators involved in overall management in cooperation with the head of the institution? How much freedom do early childhood educators have to manage their own base.

Overall, the results show that early childhood educators are typically involved in the process of defining the overall goals of the institution, and they take part in planning work to achieve these goals. They also take part in recruitment and in overall pedagogical planning. However, early childhood educators primarily describe and perceive their management role in relation to their responsibility for ensuring that their respective bases function professionally and in terms of staffing. On the other hand, there is not much to indicate that heads of institutions involve early childhood educators in the overall management of daycare centres. Child carers are placed in a hierarchical structure a long way from the overall management of the centre. On the other hand they have a lot of management responsibility for their base.

The early childhood educators say that they have been delegated a great deal of responsibility and authority from the head of their centre for the day-to-day management of their base. This includes responsibility for administrating daily work so that the day runs smoothly and there is space for pedagogical work. Therefore, organising the core activities at the daycare centre is very much the responsibility of the early childhood educators This also includes the overall pedagogical management of daily work where, within a specific framework, they are responsible for planning and organising pedagogical work, including developing children’s social skills, their motor skills, and their language skills.

The empirical data was collected in 2008 through interviews with 18 early childhood educators at ten different daycare centres. The interviews were conducted on the basis of semi-structured interview guides with questions about the daily work of early childhood educators as managers of a base. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed through several reviews and systematic encoding of the content based on four different management functions; pedagogical management, administration, personnel and management of external surroundings. Under these four management functions, analyses were completed of the extent to which there are examples of early childhood educators being delegated independent management responsibility, and whether early childhood educators take part in, and share responsibility for, decision processes that apply for the whole daycare centre

Børhaug, K. & Lotsberg, D. (2014): ”Fra kollegafellesskap til ledelseshierarki? De pedagogiske lederne i barnehagens ledelsesprosess”. Tidsskrift for Nordisk barnehageforskning, 7(13), 1-17.