At your service 24/7: preschool managers on their tasks and daily work

Abstract

This article focuses on Swedish preschool managers’ views of their tasks and daily work: activities, conditions, challenges and ideas on leadership. Five preschool managers were asked to write diary notes during a couple of weeks at work. Through the analysis process, we were inspired by Yukl’s hierarchical behaviour taxonomy. The taxonomy divides leadership behaviours into four parts, task-oriented, relations-oriented, change-oriented and external. The taxonomy was used in terms of positions the managers navigate between, rather than considering them as being bearers of certain behaviours. Data indicate that these preschool managers mainly use the task-oriented and the relation-oriented position. We noticed that they also activate positions oriented to change and external contacts and network building, but to a significantly lesser extent. They solve all kind of problems and many of their stories are about how they strive to meet the needs of children, parents and staff.

Keywords:

• Preschool managers
• tasks
• daily work
• diaries

Introduction

This article focuses on Swedish preschool managers’ views of their tasks and daily work. In recent decades, Swedish preschools have been incorporated into the educational system. The preschool manager profession was established as recently as 2011, following the adoption of the new Education Act (SFS 2010, 800) which clarified that preschools should only be led by a preschool manager with a suitable education and pedagogical insight. The new Education Act (2010, 800) made it impossible for municipalities to designate the leading role as something other than ‘preschool manager’ (Styf 2012).

The preschool manager’s role is characterised by a significant degree of self-determination, while managers are also civil servants in their local authority (Ringarp and Nihlfors 2017). Preschool managers are held responsible for the preschool’s working methods, learning environments, cooperation between the preschool and the children’s parents and for providing children with opportunities to influence the educational setting. The preschool managers must also make decisions regarding internal organisation and guarantee the quality of education (Skolverket, 2016). While the task is considerable, the responsible authority must create an environment that supports the preschool managers’ leadership. Approximately 4,800 preschool managers, each with responsibility for two preschools, are employed in the Swedish educational system. The preschools differ in size, both in terms of the amount of children and members of staff. The great majority – 93% - of all preschool managers are women (Skolverket, 2017).

Preschool managers conduct their work in an educational system strongly influenced by global neoliberal tendencies, based on models from the private sector, holding ideals of competition, efficiency and freedom of choice (Imsen, Blossing, and Moos 2017). Such influences have paved the way for governance technologies in term of control systems and inspections, through which individuals’ performances become manifest and possible to assess and rank (Ball 2003).

This study aims to gain knowledge about preschool managers’ views of their tasks and daily work, by means of analysing journals written by the preschool managers. The study focuses on the following questions:

• Which activities do the preschool managers highlight when relating/retelling a day at work?

• What conditions and challenges do the preschool managers face?

• What ideas on leadership do the preschool managers implement?

Management and leadership in educational settings

Because of the lack of research on management and leadership, both in the wider field of early childhood education (Wise and Wright 2012) and in the field of Swedish preschools (Törnsén and Ärlestig 2014), we will consider research on management and leadership in other educational settings that is relevant to our study. However, we are aware that comparisons with other countries and settings might be problematic, since the tasks and work conditions are likely to differ. We start with a broader discussion on educational leadership and management and then examine studies that focus on Sweden.

Leadership might be defined and executed in various ways, and ‘arises through the interaction between individual strategies and the social and cultural contexts within which they are set. Therefore leadership can be seen as a systematic rather than an individualistic construct…’ (McDowall Clark 2012, 399). In line with this argumentation, Heikka and Hujala (2013) argue that ‘we must stop thinking about leadership as one person’s work’ (578). Showunmi, Atewologun and Bebbington (2016) claim that there has been a shift in research on leadership, from focusing on aspects of ‘who’, with the purpose of distinguishing between personality characteristics of leaders and non-leaders, to a direct interest in relational dimensions. According to Showunmi et al. approaches such as distributed leadership and transformational leadership point to the significance of engagement and the leader’s impact on his or her followers. They state that there is no universal definition of the concept of ‘distributed leadership’, which has hampered studies on both the conceptualisation and the application of distributed leadership. However, Harris (2013) suggests that the concept might be understood as mobilising leadership expertise at all levels in school, as a source for change and development that is strengthened by interdependent cooperation. Tian, Risky and Collin (2016) note this leadership approach has been thoroughly discussed in the field of educational leadership since the mid-1990s. At first, distributed leadership occurred as a tool for allowing leaders to share their many tasks; it was later used in discussions on the leadership influence of others. Similar to the concept of distributed leadership, there is also no acknowledged definition of ‘transformational leadership’. However, Berkovich and Eyal (2017) suggest that it has some significant aspects such as being built upon an emotional base, clarifying a compelling vision, embodying an ethical model and causing teachers to act beyond formal role expectations. In line with this understanding, McCarley, Peters, and Decman (2016) highlight the need for a positive social climate and argue that a school leader performing transformational leadership is responsible for creating a social climate that is conducive to change. Certainly, a person performing transformational leadership focuses on making decisions, but makes significant efforts to create collaboration in identifying the aims of the institution, while simultaneously striving to get the entire school community to work towards the stated goals.

By focusing on the emotional labour involved in interactions between leaders of educational settings and key stakeholders, Maxwell and Riley (2017), argue that school heads must continually meet numerous expectations and demands, which must be acknowledged as emotionally demanding. Alameen, Male, and Palaiologou (2015) state that pedagogical leadership in the preschools they studied was affected by aspects such as the leader’s relationships with the school community, including parents, learners and teachers. Furthermore, the more these relationships were viewed as ‘synergistic, the more the school was considered to be effective with children’s learning and development…’ (136). School heads might face challenges related to a heavy work load and the responsibilities inherent in their tasks; but as Preston (2013) asserts, they also see themselves as making a contribution to the organisation and appreciate the opportunity to gain professional development for both themselves and the staff.

In recent decades, governments around the world have sought reforms for effective education, targeted at improving students’ outcomes; this implies demands on school heads to translate reform demands into school practices (Ganon-Shilon and Schechter 2017). In order to find the so-called ‘best’ approach to improve schools, inspections carried out by disinterested parties have often been regarded as a promising means for controlling and promoting school quality (Ehren et al. 2016, 205). This neoliberal government philosophy has led to the focus of the profession of school head being transformed from professional responsibility based on ethical attitudes and critical self reflection to accountability, which has positioned school heads in a narrowly administrative role (Cranston 2013). This trend is also manifest in the Swedish educational system, in which ‘reforms have been implemented with strong regulative and social technology elements, such as detailed regulations, national competence aims, more assessment, tests, and control of students’ learning’ (Imsen, Blossing, and Moos 2017, 580). These are aspects schools cannot neglect, and position principals ‘in a tension between professional responsibility and accountability’ (Hult, Lundström, and Edström 2016, 295). Leaders in educational settings have to handle tensions between the discourse on performance and competition between educational settings and the discourse on soft values such as social inclusion and equality (Lundahl et al. 2013).

In the Swedish context, Wilhelmson and Döös (2016) claim that the dominant notion of managers’ leadership is that a managerial position should be held by one single person. They state that the Education Act (SFS 2010, 800) holds the idea of school heads and preschool managers being super heroes who will answer for the educational setting as a whole. Drawing from empirical data, Wilhelmson and Döös found that a consequence of the traditional leadership ideal is that preschool managers who want to share responsibilities have to hide their forms of collaboration and adjust to taken for granted norms on how managers’ functions should be organised. Based on research showing that leadership might be successfully organised in a more collaborative way, Wilhelmson and Döös stress the importance of acknowledging alternative types of leadership among managers, such as co-leadership grounded on other principles than the thought of a single manager delegating tasks. Such alternative understandings of leadership imply a challenge to traditional hierarchical organisation models and to the notion of leaders in school as super school heads and managers handling demands and expectations from various actors, such as the state and local authorities, staff, media, children and their parents.

While there are several similarities between the roles of school principal and preschool manager, there are generally more levels of management between preschool managers and the relevant authorities. As a rule, there are more levels between the preschool managers and responsible authorities in the school organisation compared to school heads. Nihlfors, Jervik, and Johansson (2015) report that compared to school heads, preschool managers feel they have less support regarding administration, children with special needs and allocation of resources, and that the preschool is not ascribed equal value, or taken as seriously, as the school. It is possible that the local authorities do ascribe unequal status to different stages of education (Ringarp and Nihlfors 2017). Preschool managers have been described as occupying an ‘in-between position’, which requires meeting the expectations of politicians, the children’s parents and the preschool staff. This might lead to the supposition that preschool managers have to deal with dual loyalties. Despite these significant challenges in their work, the preschool managers in Håkansson’s (2016) study were satisfied with the quality of work, in terms of both what was achieved and their governance through the process. Lunneblad and Garvis (2017) show that while preschool managers might see distributed leadership as the ideal approach to be adopted with the staff, they simultaneously recognise that their leadership includes the roles of coach, organiser and boss. Sometimes, these roles complement each other to some extent, but they can also be contradictory when the preschool managers try to perform ‘a distributed leadership approach but also trying to be the boss for the overall “business” within the preschool’ (4). To sum up, studies on management and leadership in educational settings deal to a large extent with discussing measures and leadership approaches that achieve high quality and school improvement. Few would object to researchers’ seeking to contribute to providing the best education for all children. Nonetheless, these tendencies put increased pressure on individuals and organisations to perform in an effective way, which is specifically interesting in relation to educational settings like the Swedish preschool, which have only aspirational goals and in which the children’s learning outcomes are not measured.

Theoretical strands

Swedish preschool managers’ tasks and daily work need to be understood in relation to current trends in educational policy. During the last decades, the governance of the public sector in Sweden has undergone fundamental changes, affected by the pursuit of increased efficiency by adopting methods used in the private sector. The idea of competition as a trigger for improving schools made the Swedish school system go from being one of the most regulated to instead being one of the most deregulated with both internal and external marketisation. The external aspect deals with the freedom for parents to choose which preschool or school to enroll their child in, while the internal aspect relates to the market that has developed as a result of individually set salaries, and the possibility for preschool teachers to choose between having a public or private local authority. Still, the discourse of competition, excellence and performance works simultaneously with the discourse of equality and social inclusion that traditionally has had a prominent position in Swedish education policy (Lundahl et al. 2013). This neoliberal transformation is part of an international tendency in education, implying that the professionals are part of a sort of power struggle with other actors concerning the mandate for articulating what is ‘good’ education (Ball 2008, 216). In times of competition and accountability, the performance of individual and organisational functions serve as means of showing efficiency and quality, which actualises the concept of fabrications, defined by Ball (2006) as ‘selections among various possible representations – or versions – of the organisation or person’ (696).

In accordance with theories on education policy, we regard policy as an ongoing process and therefore reject the notion that it is something implemented in a linear way. Braun et al. (2011) reason about policy enactment in the sense of ‘creative processes of interpretation and translation, that is, the recontextualization – through reading, writing and talking – of the abstractions of policy ideas into contextualized practices’ (586). In line with this argument, we acknowledge preschool managers as both subjects and agents of policy, and that as subjects they are shaped ‘in a network of social practices which are infused with power relations’ (Braun et al. 2011, 611).

Methodological approach

Qualitative studies give opportunities for wider descriptions of a research object and can take into consideration the informants’ own thoughts and ideas concerning the topic of research. This approach also helps the researcher to observe new ways of understanding the focus phenomenon (Alvesson and Deetz 2000). With the aim of gaining knowledge about how preschool managers execute their task, a group of preschool managers were asked to write journals of their experiences at work over a period of two weeks. The participating managers were, at the time, involved in a continuing professional development course or had completed the course in the previous year. Five of these managers accepted the invitation to be involved in the study. The empirical data consist of journals written by these five preschool managers, of whom four work in municipal preschools and one in an independent preschool. Their work experience as managers in preschool varies from 11 months to 15 years. The participating managers were all women between the ages 36 and 56; all of them have passed an exam to be a teacher in primary school or preschool and have experience in these professions. They were not given any further instructions regarding the tasks upon which they should reflect. This was an active choice because we were curious about which tasks they would choose to implement and reflect upon. Some of the managers provided short notes concerning different situations during their working days, while others gave detailed descriptions and reflections. An obvious limitation with the methodological approach is that we cannot know if the activities, tasks and situations reported in the preschool managers’ journals reflect ordinary weeks in their work. Nor do we know the preschool managers’ motives in selecting the specific activities, tasks and situations that they report on in their journals.

During the research process, the ethical recommendations of the Swedish Research Council were followed. The preschool managers were informed about the purpose of the study and the ethical considerations during a course meeting. A letter with the same information for interested participants was handed out, and they were asked to report their interest in participating by filling in the informed consent form and returning it to us before the end of the course meeting, or by sending the form to one of us within two weeks via email or prepaid envelope.

Qualitative research does not strive to show an absolute ‘truth’ about the field under investigation. Therefore, the results of our study can not be validated in terms of generalisation and signification in a statistical sense. We relate to Larsson’s (2009) argument that qualitative research produces concepts, interpretations and descriptions of processes and patterns which enable the reader to note aspects in a phenomenon that he or she hasn’t reflected upon before. The reader might use a certain interpretation created by the researcher to understand another case by the means of this interpretation. This kind of situated generalisation is therefore about recognising the configuration of the result in other situations. Yet, in line with Alvesson and Deetz (2000), we have tried to be clear in our attempt to communicate our results, guided by the theories we were inspired by, and to question whether the data provided adequate answers to our research questions, and if the method for data collection was relevant for the field.

Analysis tools

Throughout the analysis process, we have been inspired by Yukl’s (2012) hierarchical behaviour taxonomy. This taxonomy was developed to review research on leadership in order to discuss research based knowledge about effective leadership. However, we emphasise that we reject the use of taxonomies in order to impede or restrain behaviours that are seen as unwanted and inappropriate for the model. Furthermore, we want to clarify that in accordance with our understanding of management and managers as being constructed in everyday practice and affected by the conditions of the specific context, we use the taxonomy to reason in terms of positions between which the managers navigate; we do not consider them as bearing certain behaviours.

The taxonomy divides leadership behaviours into four parts: task-oriented, relations-oriented, change-oriented and external oriented. These meta-categories each have a different primary object, but they all involve determinants of performance. The primary objective of task-oriented behaviour is to carry out work efficiently. Relation-oriented behaviour concerns work to achieve quality in human resources and relations in the organisation. Change-oriented behaviour focuses on promoting innovation, collective learning and orientation to the external environment. External leadership behaviour relates to acquiring needed information and resources, and promoting and defending the interests of the organisation. We find these leadership behaviours interesting since they highlight a wide range of a manager’s tasks and responsibilities (Table 1).

Table 1. Hierarchical taxonomy of leadership behaviour.

Task-oriented	Clarifying
	Planning
	Monitoring operations
	Problem solving
Relation-oriented	Supporting
	Developing
	Recognising
	Empowering
Change-oriented	Advocating change
	Envisioning change
	Encouraging innovation
	Facilitating collective learning
External	Networking
	External monitoring
	Representing

Results

Data from the managers’ journals were organised under headings related to the Yukl taxonomy. Citations from the managers’ journals are used in order to clarify their reasoning. To maintain their anonymity, we assigned the managers the fictional names Anna, Sara, Sofia, Lena and Eva.

Preschool managers in task-oriented positions

According to the managers’ journals, they spent a lot of time solving a variety of problems. Some problems were quick to fix, while others required both time and energy. Managing a set of assignments ranging from very easy to difficult can sometimes be complicated, according to reports from Lena. The most crucial and important issues do not always require a lot of time:

A lot of issues come up every day and I have to make quick decisions almost every time. But sometimes I need to know that this is an issue where I must have time to reflect and also discuss with others. (Lena)

Anna writes that the school head called her one day and informed her of a conversation in an open Facebook group for residents of the municipality in question. The conversation focused on a decision the preschool staff had made concerning a forthcoming Christmas party. The parent who initiated the conversation did not agree with the decision. Several parents engaged in the question, but after 140 comments, the conversation was locked by the administrator of the Facebook group because it had degenerated into an argument. None of the parents ever contacted Anna or any of the preschool teachers personally, asking for a personal meeting or a phone call, to discuss the decision. In addition to having seen the discussion on Facebook, Anna needed to handle the same question by email:

I answered 25 emails from angry parents who asked me who I am to make such awful decisions…. (Anna)

Anna reported that she confronted the parent who posted the original Facebook comment, thereby initiating an open, public discussion. The parent grew irritated and asserted she could not be responsible for other people’s comments. “I had the urge to say, ‘Yes, you can’, but I didn’t say so, of course” (Anna). Other preschool managers faced similar problems regarding emails from parents. Mary wrote in her journal that she had to talk to some teachers concerning an email from some parents questioning the actual decision on their need of childcare hours. This email led Mary to have three meetings with teachers and parents in order to solve the problem.

According to the data, it is not unusual that the preschool manager is interrupted when working at the office. Something happens and preschool teachers, children or parents need help from the manager immediately. Eva, who manages a privately run preschool, reported that she combined the roles of preschool manager and preschool teacher. It seems as though Eva regarded these roles as sometimes hard to separate, both for herself and for her colleagues:

Office hours were interrupted when a teacher came in and wanted to talk to me about something that happened in the children’s group. I accompanied her and together we discussed the conflict that arose. Afterwards, everyone was satisfied. (Eva)

Sometimes, Eva had to make a decision as preschool manager in situations when she was working as a preschool teacher and it was impossible to leave the children and go to her office. Eva gave another example of a situation that may illustrate the blurred roles. When she was in her office, two children came in and asked her what she was doing. A colleague opened the door and asked Eva if it was OK with her that the children were there:

Actually, maybe I should not have let them come in and ‘steal my time’, but I think it is great they want to help me and therefore I allow them to be there. (Eva)

Eva did so even though it was harder to concentrate on the manager tasks while simultaneously looking after children. She also wrote that the time she had for planning for her work as preschool teacher was often used for tasks that she had to handle in her role as manager. This week she used her planning time to supervise teaching students.

The managers stated that in order to be able to deal with all the issues that arose during a workday, they needed to start working before arriving at their office and they also needed to continue working from home in the evenings and even at night. Anna, for example, described an evening at home: she sits on her sofa with one eye on the TV while preparing material for the next day, which happens to be a training day for the staff. She writes a weekly letter to the parents and reads the United Nations’ information about children’s rights. She reported that she often sleeps badly, suffers from aches and pains, and the tiredness affects her memory. Work-related thoughts intrude when she has trouble sleeping as she manages to find the solution for the budget and plan for an urgent meeting with the union the next day. It is clear that these preschool managers’ workdays are much longer than the eight hours for which they are paid.

The managers stated that they continually monitor the progress and quality of the preschool. They did not report exactly how they do so, but according to their journals they spent a lot of time on administration and organisation around recruitment. This is all about planning and organising to create learning environments suitable for all children and preschool teachers which also involves many staff meetings with teachers, parents and others connected to the preschool.

The managers stressed the importance of spending time and taking the processes of recruiting new staff seriously because of the current lack of educated teachers. Sofia wrote she had worked a lot with grouping children that would attend preschool the following semester in appropriate preschools in the school area, planning for the reception of new children and introducing new staff:

In addition, I am responsible for the construction of a new kindergarten for 108 children. There were many meetings about it before the planning application. (Sofia)

The journals further record engagement in different kinds of meetings. Lena recently met three preschool teachers who had applied for a vacant post. She had offered one of them a job after meeting her for a second interview. Lena emphasised the importance of hiring the right person because it is the teachers who determine the quality of each preschool. This process was described as stressful since it was, at the time, a workers’ market and the employers had to present the preschool as a good workplace and hope it became a first choice. The labour market situation, combined with the difficulty in recruiting qualified personnel, put high demands on the preschool managers, who had to ensure they hired new employees who were dedicated to both their work and the school in the long run. The process involved introducing the new teachers to their new work place and this study shows how some of the preschool managers handled this task:

I worried about how the new teacher would fit in with the work team and how the other teachers will meet the new member, if anyone thinks she/he gets too high a salary. (Lena)

Salaries are a point of contention; someone may feel unfairly treated if a newly hired preschool teacher obtains a higher salary than the established teachers. Anna wrote that she had only one applicant for five vacancies. When Anna interviewed this person, she told Anna that she did not want to work full days or be responsible for opening the preschool early in the morning. Anna felt insecure when the applicant made demands during the interview. Anna stated that during the interview her phone blinked constantly, which made her lose focus on the discussion. To Anna, recruitment is stressful because her workplace is in urgent need of additional staff.

Preschool managers in relation-oriented positions

The preschool managers’ stories are largely about how they strive to meet the needs of children, parents and staff and try to contribute to their wellbeing. For example, according to their journals they brought coffee, cookies, cakes and fruit to parent meetings, planned meetings and teacher training days. They reported that they do those things to create a good work environment and to help people feel comfortable.

Having regular meetings with individual staff members about their work is an important duty and a lot of time goes into planning and carrying out meetings. Some meetings focus on evaluation and development of the work place; these are of particular importance for the managers. Lena wrote that from her perspective, these talks are a significant part of her work; however, she almost always feels dissatisfied after such meetings. It is a stressful hour in which important things are discussed:

In 60 minutes you must deal with so much; be encouraging, listen to their experiences, reflect together…I must concentrate and also take notes to remember the most important things. (Lena)

During this period, Lena reported that she had some staff dialogues she had to follow up. For her, these dialogues are an important part of her duty but she did not think they live up to their intended purpose:

When I am unhappy with a meeting, I might think later that I have not done enough to help the teachers focus on what works well. Then there is a risk that the teachers leave the meeting with burdens on their shoulders and a feeling of having too much to grasp, things that perhaps feel overwhelming for them. (Lena)

According to our study, it is undeniable that preschool managers consider themselves responsible for a great many tasks. Some managers mentioned they buy Christmas gifts and create personalised Christmas cards to send to colleagues. According to Lena, this takes a lot of her time; however, she feels it is important that her staff feel they are appreciated and that she values them. Furthermore, her journals showed that she was engaged in planning larger parties:

I have worked with the planning and preparation of two large Christmas parties for children and parents. These celebrations are perhaps the greatest tradition and feast at our school, all children dance folk dances in traditional costumes…and all the parents come to watch, and everyone must have juice and coffee and bags of sweets…I am the organiser of these festivities. (Lena)

According to data from our study, it is evident that the leaders feel their responsibility can include virtually anything. Eva wrote she needed to step in for colleagues who called in sick. She said it was an active choice because it saved the budget for substitute teachers. However, she knew that other responsibilities would take a back seat because of this. Sofia reported that she had recently searched for some customised furniture, and at the same time, she grouped children into preschool classes and introduced new staff members. In a similar manner, Mary’s journal showed a variety of chores such as calling for a substitute teacher, writing Christmas cards, meeting with a nutritionist, talking to staff who had not received vacation extensions, talking to a parent concerning the length of a child’s stay at preschool, following up on the budget with the comptroller, and visiting a group in order to observe the toddlers’ play.

The journals further indicate that sometimes the preschool managers handle tasks and situations that should be managed by the staff in order to shelter them from potential unpleasant situations. Eva wrote that a preschool teacher asked her to phone a child’s parents because the child had a fever. But the last time the preschool teacher asked them to pick up the child the parents grew very upset, and now she does not dare call them; instead, she asked Eva if Eva could do it. Even though Eva did not want the parents to feel that her word carried more weight than a colleague’s, she could understand the preschool teacher’s concern. Eva made the call and this time the parent was very accommodating and promised to pick the child up as soon as possible.

Conclusion and discussion

The first research question dealt with which activities the preschool managers highlight when relating/retelling a day at work. According to their journals, the managers take their responsibility for the preschools they manage seriously. They reported that they want to do a good job and to be competent leaders who are capable of handling all sorts of issues. The results show the wide variety of tasks the leaders have to deal with during a workday: recruiting staff, taking care of children while carrying out administrative tasks at the office, meeting demands from parents, leading the preschool teachers’ professional development and preparing for parent meetings, including buying refreshments. Moreover, the results show a significant lack of examples of how the managers implement distributed leadership, which according to Harris (2013) would imply that the managers mobilise leadership expertise among the preschool teachers. Rather, it seems the managers place considerable demands on themselves to carry out many tasks on their own. This might have to do with the fact that in comparison with school heads, there are more organisational levels between the preschool teachers and responsible authorities (Ringarp and Nihlfors 2017), which in turn might lead to less support for preschool managers regarding, for example, administration, allocation of resources and children with special needs (Nihlfors, Jervik, and Johansson 2015).

The second research question addressed the conditions and challenges that preschool managers face. The results confirm the view that preschool managers hold an ‘in-between-position’ when facing various expectations from different parties (Håkansson, 2016), as well as the view that such conditions are emotionally demanding to managers and leaders in educational settings (Maxwell and Riley 2017). McCarley, Peters, and Decman (2016) stress the task of managers in educational settings to support a positive social climate. Indeed, the preschool managers seem to put much effort into meeting the expectations and demands of all parties, trying to keep parents, children and preschool teachers satisfied. Yet, the satisfaction that Preston (2013) discusses that comes with being able to contribute to the organisation and to the staff’s professional learning, is not expressed in the preschool managers’ journals. Extrapolating from their journals, it seems they do not regard themselves as managing to support and lead the preschool teachers’ learning sufficiently, which to some extent causes them dissatisfaction.

Furthermore, according to the journals, we consider collaboration with parents to be an important challenge for the preschool managers. Being accessible to parents not only during working hours, but on the Internet during evenings and weekends, contributes to the blurred line between work and leisure time that became evident in the preschool managers’ reports.

The last question addressed which ideas on leadership the preschool managers put into practice. Results confirm Maxwell and Riley’s (2017) statement that managers in educational settings place high demands on themselves. The preschool managers’ reports indicate that they not only conduct their work in a manner that corresponds to the task, as expressed in the Education Act (SFS 2010:800) and the curriculum (Skolverket, 2016), they also put considerable effort into creating a pleasant work environment for the preschool teachers, trying to make them feel appreciated by using an affectionate approach. Some of the preschool managers had previously worked as preschool teachers. A couple of them work in both professions simultaneously; they are well aware of the work conditions that the preschool teachers face. The preschool managers have limited means to show appreciation to the staff using financial awards. One alternative might be to put effort into sending them Christmas cards, and preparing refreshments for parent meetings, thereby confirming their efforts. It is clear the preschool managers regard their own ability to handle varying tasks as a virtue. The journals do not provide evidence that they try to perform in accordance with the principles of distributed leadership.

Overall, our results show that the preschool managers mainly report on tasks that reflect task- and relation-oriented leadership. However, this does not necessarily mean that these managers handle few work tasks that are change- or external-oriented in Yukl’s (2012) taxonomy. As mentioned in the description of the methodology, it is impossible to prove whether the activities and situation reported in the journals reflect ordinary days at work. Research has clarified the demands on educational leaders to translate reforms into school practices (Ganon-Shilon and Schechter 2017) and those imposed by external inspections as a means to control and promote quality in educational settings (e.g. Ehren et al. 2016; Hult, Lundström, and Edström 2016; Imsen, Blossing, and Moos 2017). It is striking, however, that few journals relate explicitly to these aspects. Indeed, the journals show that the preschool managers are anxious to execute their work tasks in accordance with their defined areas of responsibility, and that they are subjected to prominent performance pressure, not least from parents. This in turn exemplifies Ball’s (2008) argument about various actors’ efforts to articulate what is ‘good’ education (216). Moreover, the descriptions of meetings with preschool managers and staff show that the preschool managers put effort into working with evaluation and development at the local preschool. Still, the preschool managers positioning of task- and relation-orientated work is more manifest in their journals, which might be understood in relation to the strong loyalty to the staff shown in the journals. Yukl argues that in order to improve theories of leadership, additional knowledge is required, such as when, how well and why these behaviours are shown, but also which leaders use them and in what context. As already emphasised, we discuss the preschool managers’ actions in terms of positions rather than behaviours. Yet, in line with Yukl (2012), we call for more knowledge on how interpretation and understanding of the task, together with local conditions, create various positions which preschool managers are able to navigate between.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.