hroughout the MAECEL program so far, you have encountered many opportunities to consider how you can make a difference as a professional and as a leader in the field of early childhood education. As Fullan (1993) states, as educators our purpose is “to make a difference in the lives of students regardless of background, to help produce citizens who can live and work productively in increasingly dynamically complex societies” (p. 4). Meaning, you, as an early childhood education professional and leader, have incredible capacity and potential to be a change agent who makes a positive difference in the lives of young children. With this new mindset in mind, please respond to each of the following prompts to share your insights on influencing educational change through action research.

• If you were to implement this study, what would be your next steps? How might implementation support better outcomes for young children and their families?
• Given the conditions discussed in Chapter 7 of the Mills (2014) textbook, discuss how you could support these conditions in an organization from the perspective of your current or future role in early childhood education.
• Share what it means to you to be a change agent in early childhood education and how you can leverage inquiry and research skills to promote quality education for young children.

 

A New Mindset for Leading Change Outline

• The MAECEL program is a strategic plan that intends to equip professional educators and other education stakeholders with skills and companies to cater to the needs of young students.

1. If you were to implement this study, what would be your next steps? How might implementation support better outcomes for young children and their families?

• Teaching professional educators to be leaders is a great strategy to achieve strategic change.
• However, the program only does half the work with the expectation that an individual would implement the remaining by making effort and putting the knowledge earned into practice.

2. Discuss how you could support these conditions in an organization from the perspective of your current or future role in early childhood education.

• The main role of an educator is to impart skills to their students that will enable them to have a positive influence on societies in the future by being productive and solving complex problems.
• This can only be achieved if the educators positively influence their students and teach them how to make a difference.

3. Share what it means to you to be a change agent in early childhood education and how you can leverage inquiry and research skills to promote quality education for young children

• Being a change agent requires individuals to advocate for the change they aspire to see and to offer leadership on the best way to achieve the change.
• Through advocacy, the educator sensitizes colleagues and other stakeholders on the need to adopt innovative teaching methods.

A New Mindset for Leading Change

The MAECEL program is a strategic plan that intends to equip professional educators and other education stakeholders with skills and companies to cater to the needs of young students. This is done using innovative settings that utilize research-based advocacy, use of innovative technology, and adherence to ethical standards during teaching. Ideally, this program aims to create leaders who can go on to revolutionize early childhood education by being creative while at the same time ensuring the quality of education and ethical standards are not compromised. The program makes the teachers holistic and encourages them to be leaders in their respective fields or institutions.

If you were to implement this study, what would be your next steps? How might implementation support better outcomes for young children and their families?

Teaching professional educators to be leaders is a great strategy to achieve strategic change. However, the program only does half the work with the expectation that an individual would implement the remaining by making an effort and putting the knowledge earned into practice. Therefore, the next step should be putting the theoretical aspect of the program into practice. Education is dynamic; hence being able to adapt to change through adopting new teaching methods and incorporating technology in teaching would be a good starting point (Parés, Ospina & Subirats, 2017).

The practical implementation of the skills and competencies learned would lead to better outcomes by ensuring what the young students are relevant for their future studies. Additionally, adopting innovative ways of teaching makes the educator a leader in their field hence enables them to be advocates of the strategic change they aim to achieve. Ultimately, these actions will improve the educational outcomes in early childhood education both directly and indirectly.

Discuss how you could support these conditions in an organization from the perspective of your current or future role in early childhood education.

The main role of an educator is to impart skills to their students that will enable them to have a positive influence on societies in the future by being productive and solving complex problems. This can only be achieved if the educators positively influence their students and teach them how to make a difference. By being innovative in their teaching methods, educators in early childhood education act as role models. Also, they impart skills and competencies that would help the young students cope with complex problems in the future since they would know how to be innovative. 

Therefore, encouraging teachers to adopt innovative teaching methods and availing any resources needed is a good way to support leadership and innovativeness among educators. The teachers would feel supported, and the support would translate to better learning outcomes for the young students and their families. Similarly, teachers who are not yet leaders in their institutions can teach others about innovative teaching methods, collaboration and support their colleagues as a way of ensuring collective success (Parés, Ospina & Subirats, 2017).

Share what it means to you to be a change agent in early childhood education and how you can leverage inquiry and research skills to promote quality education for young children.

Being a change agent requires individuals to advocate for the change they aspire to see and to offer leadership on the best way to achieve the change. Through advocacy, the educator sensitizes colleagues and other stakeholders on the need to adopt innovative teaching methods. Also, they explain why this is the best plan of action and how it would lead to better learning outcomes for the young students and their families. Furthermore, advocacy is one of the pillars of the MAECEL program. Also, by being leaders, they give directions on the best strategy that would lead to ideal results by using innovative learning methods.

In essence, this can only be achieved using evidence-based decision-making. The change agents can use their research skills to determine the best learning methods that fit the young students by analyzing available evidence or data. Similarly, their inquiry skills can be used to seek information on how the changes can be implemented. Generally, this would lead to the implementation of strategic change using real-time evidence hence eliminate guesswork or risky experimenting of learning methods. Therefore, the learning methods adopted would have the best possible outcome (Parés, Ospina & Subirats, 2017).