Would the Leaders in Early Childhood education and care Please Step Forward?

The field of early childhood education and care (ECEC) has evolved over the past century and this in itself is testimony to leadership of some form. Despite considerable research into leadership in many contexts, until recently there has been limited investigation into leadership within and for the ECEC field in Australia. This paper reports on a research project conducted with a range of ECEC personnel investigating their understanding of the notion of leadership and how they see it being enacted in the birth to five field. It discusses a theoretical interpretation of a broad range of issues identified by participants informed by symbolic interactionism and viewed through the lens of feminist theory.