Building Leaders From Within

An Open, Networked Approach to Early Childhood Educator Leadership Capacity Development

Abstract

Early childhood education has been identified as a key federal and provincial government priority in Canada with over 8.4 billion dollars being invested over 2021-2026 (Ministry of Education and Child Care, 2018). Included in this significant investment are a variety of funding vehicles aimed at reducing childcare costs to $10/day or less; the development of an operational funding model, wage grid, pension and benefits; the identification of career progression pathways and continuing education requirements, and the creation of new childcare spaces. With only 20% of families having access to a licensed childcare space in BC and the province having only one half of the needed number of early childhood educators (ECE), it is critical that this has been identified as a key area of importance both provincially and nationally. 

Across Canada, ECE is dominated by female workers (96%) and includes a disproportionate number of visible minority workers (21%). Of the 302,000 child care workers in Canada, one third are immigrant or non-national workers (Charters & Findlay, 2021). This is a challenging sector; it is demanding, emotional work with a high rate of employee attrition and burn-out, all within a competitive environment for employees, particularly in rural and remote areas (Authors, 2025). This project aims to address the critical need for leadership capacity in British Columbia's rapidly expanding early learning and child care sector. Leveraging diverse partnerships and multiple networks, we worked with thought leaders, practitioners, providers, government, and academics to better understand the existing leadership modalities, the key leadership priorities, and the areas needed for innovation to lead and manage quality early childhood programs in British Columbia, Canada. This led to the creation of eight open educational resources (OERs), three courses and a micro credential. Work is still underway to build an undergraduate certificate. To best understand how ECE’s could use the OERs, we initiated a design-based participatory action research study to investigate how education in Early Childhood Education Leadership (ECE-L) can be expanded through the use of these resources. It is the intention that this research project will contribute to a networked "playbook" of implementation ideas for the ECE-L OERs to facilitate wider use and adoption across BC and beyond. This research study shares the OERs created and reports on initial data from one research site, a school district based early learning program.