‘Diplomatically bossy’: Discursive constructions of ‘good’ leadership in early childhood told through educators’ memories

This article puts forward a discursive analysis of early childhood leadership in Australia, offering new ways of understanding the work of early childhood leaders and adding to the methodological tools used to consider work in early childhood education and care. While an emerging body of work recognises the complexities of early childhood leadership, there is little empirical work that identifies how early childhood leaders draw on discourses to understand their roles. This article reports on a study that problematises discursive understandings of ‘good’ early childhood leadership in collective-biography workshops with seven participants. A poststructural feminist inquiry, informed by Foucauldian theory, enabled complex and nuanced readings of early childhood leaders’ accounts. Discourses – or ways of thinking, speaking and doing – were identified and scrutinised through Foucauldian-informed discourse analysis. The findings were conceptualised through ironic categories that hold together discursive tensions and contradictions. Ironic categories, such as ‘diplomatically bossy’, provoke and stimulate new ways of thinking about what it means to be a ‘good’ early childhood leader. The findings add to the emerging conversation and new methodological approaches that address complexity, diversity and contingency in understandings of early childhood leadership.