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1
Chapter
The Changing Landscape of 
Leadership in Early Childhood 
Education in China
Dora Ho, Mo Wang and Pan He
Abstract
This chapter aims to offer a theoretical discussion on the changing landscape 
of leadership and explores the emerging practice of teacher leadership in ECE 
in China. In 2010, the central government of China introduced several waves of 
policies relating to teacher professional development to improve and promote the 
quality of ECE. The global discourses mainly developed in the West have indicated 
that school leadership plays an important role in promoting teachers’ professional 
development and the quality of education. These discourses have influenced the 
agenda for educational reform in China as reflected in the recent strategies formu-
lated for the development of school leadership in ECE. Historically, ECE teachers 
have been viewed as babysitters rather than as educators, and preschool principals 
have been considered policy implementers and school managers rather than school 
leaders of innovation and change. This chapter discusses the changing landscape of 
school leadership in China’s ECE and how it is influenced by a hierarchical culture. 
It is argued that the practices of school leadership have been largely centralised in 
the hands of preschool principals, alongside of which there has been an emergence 
of teacher leadership co-exercised with principalship in home-school networks and 
teaching research groups.