As if communities mattered:Re-imagining leadership education

in early childhood development

Jessica BallSchool of Child and Youth Care

Early Childhood Development Intercultural Partnerships ProgramUniversity of Victoria

Canada

What are we doing?

• What are we promoting?• What are we not promoting?• When does leadership education

strengthen local capacities?• When does leadership education

erode local capacities?• Does the way we embody and teach

leadership resonate with students

or with local community leaders?

The leadership values, concepts, & models of leadership we export in graduate programs in ECCD may be destructive of long-held understandings of what ‘leading’ means & how leaders are made & supported in local contexts.

What’s the matter with Western experts spreading around proven leadership skills?

Spawning a generation of western-trained professionals who are dismissive of the knowledge & practical strengths of leaders within communities and families.

Reproducing patronizing practice approaches

Fueling the hegemony of ‘northern’ & Euro-western approaches Endangering diversity of cultural knowledge Pushing out knowledge & practices that are fitting for local

circumstances Disrupting local community governance Inspiring brain drain

Driving local cultural knowledge underground Perpetuating the shame & dependencies associated with

colonialism

Create conditions for local leaders & knowledge about leadership to come into focus

Overwhelming communities, practitioners, policy makers and students in the majority world with the gloss, theoretical sophistication, and ‘hard evidence’ of what is known by international faculty & scholars about leadership, while suppressing local wisdom, knowledge & demonstrations of leadership competence.

Create cultural safety for incorporating suppressed, secret, dispersed, and unarticulated knowledges residing within communities in leadership education

Create conditions for local leaders & knowledge about leadership to come into focus

Re-distribute what we invest in consolidating and promoting our own knowledge technologies for export

Shift a greater share for communities to gather their own knowledge resources to prepare for collaborative, co-constructive participation in leadership education curricula, program quality assessment, program evaluation, and child development research.

Enormous investments in creating the latest and greatest

training modules to transmit western knowledge

Why not ask them….first?

Leadership examples, wisdom, advice & feedback need to come, at least in part, from dialogue with members of communities to be supported by emerging leaders.

Starting with local knowledge, collaborate to understand, consolidate, and explore practical applications and policy implications of diverse knowledge sources.

Co-scription within an open space

Hybrid models of leadership

So, are we doing Frierian adult education again?

Maybe….maybe not

What do local needs, goals, & opportunities indicate?

Global support networks & change in local communities may indicate the usefulness of hybrid approaches to leadership.

Code switching

Emerging leaders could work dialectically

Learning leadership that works locally

Learning leadership that works globally

Alternating as needed, like learning to code-switch from one language or dialect to another

or not….

If not, what to do??

Go native or go home

Strengthening local capacity means building on what is appropriate & useful in local settings.

…not seeking our own reflections.

Promising, Challenging Initiatives

• First Nations Partnerships Programs, Canada• Early Childhood Development Virtual University, Africa• BRAC M.A. Program in ECD Leadership, Bangladesh

First Nations Partnerships Program

What of us is in here?

First Nations Partnerships Program10 partnerships between U Victoria & groups of First Nations in western Canada 20 years, 152 Indigenous graduates in ECCDAll 20 university-accredited courses combined:•University generated curricula, representing ‘mainstream’ research, theory, & practice approaches•Community-generated curriculum, embodying local & cultural knowledge, values, & practice approaches

“Being in this program is like having the best of both worlds. We love to learn from our Elders about our own culture and how we can use it to help the children of our community, and we love to learn from our textbooks what researchers have found out. It’s like combining two worlds as one.” Lois Andrews, Lil’wat Nation

Co-constructing leadership concepts

Indigenous community Elders co-taught in every course

Community-based delivery meant that Elders & other community members could guide, advise, & role model for students

Indigenous community administrators were assertive about what they wanted from the partnering institution because they were fed up with mainstream institutions not knowing how to behave as true partners.

“This partnership was a true partnership and I can’t think of a better way between a First Nation and a university.”

Brian Opekokew, Administrator, Onion Lake First Nation

Promising, Challenging Initiatives

BRAC University M.A. Program in ECD in BangladeshEarly Childhood Development Virtual University, U Victoria

Challenges: • Recruiting grassroots, community-based, emerging

leaders• Lead time & funds for local partners to source &

consolidate local knowledge on course themes• Time, funds, & local mentorship for students to ‘intern’

with local leaders, develop skills in working with community, & deriving lessons from local texts BEFORE being immersed in Western teaching & texts.

Partnership: An ethic of reciprocity

North-South partnerships typically involve a mainstream institution or donor providing the “content expertise” & the “beneficiary” partner providing the “logistics” (e.g., classroom space, computer hardware, recruiting students, buying courseware from North America)

An ethic of reciprocity implies knowledge exchange/reciprocal learning

Rogoff’s: Apprenticeship model, Communities of learners

Wenger’s: Communities of practice

An ethic of reciprocity

• In what directions do emerging leaders in ECCD want go?

• Where do emerging & in-country/ community leaders see gaps in capacity, and avenues for leadership development?

• How can leadership initiatives draw upon local sources of wisdom about leadership & locally defined goals for pushing leadership development to pursue ECCD agendas that are meaningful with local contexts?

For further reflection on this & other topics in ECCD, please visit www.ecdip.org