Change Management In Early Childhood Education

Change is a necessary and important part of improving an early childhood education and care service (Early Childhood Resource Hub, n.d.). For change to happen in a child care setting requires child care educators to respond to the needs of children and their families, staff problems, and environment factors, such as building constraints. In addition, it occurs in services as a response to wider issues, for instance, legislative changes or crises (Tansey, 2010). Changing constantly can be detrimental not only to educators, but also to children and their families. For instance, children might find it hard to adapt to the environment if the child care service constantly change its daily routine. However, well planned change is beneficial for child

Therefore, reviewing the practices and procedures regularly can help child care services to make sure these are reflecting on current service needs (Owens, 2007). Firstly, this essay will explain the meaning of organisational change and change management in early childhood education and care services. After that, it will talk about the important role of the leader in the change management process. Lastly, it will identify and discuss strategies that need to be promoted to make sure the process changes positively and effectively.

According to Chirantan Basu (2017), organisational change is about reviewing and changing the management structures and business processes. With increasing pressure to provide high quality child care services, organisational change has become increasingly important. Organisational change not only can help child care services to become more competitive, but also can help them to maintain a higher quality of education and

One of the role of the leader is being aware and understand that all child care professionals will respond to change in a different way. For example, some educators might see change as a positive opportunity for the service to make enhancements. In contrast, some educators might feel threatened, stressed or anxious and they might refuse to change because of the uncertain situation (Tansey, 2010). Considering how change influence the people in an organisation is one of the key element in a successful organisational change (Rick, 2014). Therefore, to successfully implement the organisational change, leader must be very sensitive to individual reactions to impending change. If there are educators that resist to change, leader must deal with the resistance to change carefully. For instance, leader might deal with it by allowing child care professionals to express their feelings and thoughts about change (Early Childhood Resource Hub, n.d.). To deal with educators who feel stressed or anxious about change, leader can provide adequate support for them. For instance, the change requirements of the Early Years Learning Framework might cause the educators to feel stressed. This is because they might think that the change of the framework reflects on their ability. In this case, leader can provide training for the educators to improve their skill and knowledge in order to meet the current requirement.