Early Childhood Education Leadership in Times of Crises: International Studies During the COVID -19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the whole world including early childhood education (ECE). The Executive Committee of OMEP (2020) reminds the importance of continuing high quality ECE despite the pandemic. Leadership is crucial to ensure the wellbeing of ECE community and quality pedagogics (Cumming & Wong, 2019). The pandemic has led to changing leadership demands for questioning taken-for-granted assumptions, adopting new vocabularies and embracing adaptivity (Crevani et al., 2021). The pandemic has changed leadership conditions, created stress and needed coping strategies to master the situation.
Our study examines the ECEC leaders' experiences of stress, their coping strategies and centres’ resources during the COVID-19 crisis with the help of Lazarus stress model (Lazarus & Launier, 1978). The aim is to understand the leader's role in a crisis and provide information to make leaders more prepared to lead rapid changes and support their centres in becoming more resilient to face the challenges of post covid time and future crises. We employ comparative research design, and the data are ECEC leaders’ interviews from Finland (N=23), Germany (N=35) and Israel (N=19). Stresses, resources and coping strategies are compared and analysed regarding similarities and differences and consequences for the support of ECEC leaders in the unexpected situation. Results show that unexpected future and COVID-19 regulations have caused stress but also created new coping strategies and innovations in the middle of the pandemic.