Abstract
In states that fund public prekindergarten and kindergarten in elementary schools, principals are central to ensuring these programs support children’s learning and development. Yet few studies explore how principals position these programs within their instructional leadership and what they perceive should be done by district leaders to support their efforts to lead these programs. This case study investigated these issues with a sample of elementary school principals (N = 14) working in Texas. Using a modified conceptual lens that categorizes four essential dimensions of instructional leadership for prekindergarten and kindergarten, we found that principals possessed insight into many of these leadership practices but often did not enact these visions due to the academic performance pressures of the upper grades. Furthermore, principals wanted additional support from their district and state administrators to lead their prekindergarten and kindergarten programs better. Such findings illuminate several opportunities to strengthen principals’ instructional leadership of prekindergarten and kindergarten.
Keywords
High-quality early childhood education (ECE) programs in the United States positively impact the learning and development of young children, particularly those from low-income backgrounds (Connors et al., 2021; Horm et al., 2022; McCoy et al., 2017). Forty-four states and the District of Columbia now fund some form of public prekindergarten (Pre-K) for 3- and 4-year-olds, and all states and the District of Columbia at least partially fund some kindergarten (K) programs for 5-year-old students (Education Commission of the States [ECS], 2023). Policymakers in many states, including Texas, locate state-funded Pre-K programs primarily in public elementary schools so that they are staffed by state-certified teachers (Friedman-Krauss et al., 2021). Some scholars question the effectiveness of state Pre-K programs (Farran & Lipsey, 2016) and whether state Pre-K programs should solely be implemented within the elementary school structure (Witte, 2011). Witte, for instance, contends that programs like Pre-K should be choice-based. If there “was to be any government-subsidized early education at all . . . parents would be able to choose from a wide variety of approaches,” which is an issue we did not examine in this study (2011, p. 132). Despite these challenges, ECE advocates continue to promote the inclusion of Pre-K programs in elementary schools as a pathway to not only to improve student learning but also to ensure that Pre-K and K become an integral part of school (Brown & Gasko, 2012; García et al., 2021; Graue et al., 2016).
Principals are vital to ensuring the success of Pre-K and K programs within elementary schools (e.g., Leithwood et al., 2020). For example, through analyzing data from six studies that included more than 22,000 principals in four states and two urban school districts, Grissom et al. (2021) found that principals’ contribution to student achievement on standardized assessments, which typically begin in the third grade, was “nearly as large as the average effects of teachers identified in similar studies. Principals’ effects, however, are larger in scope because they are averaged over all students in a school, rather than a classroom” (p. xiv). Such impact is the result of principals’ instructional leadership practices. These practices include framing the goals for Pre-K and K, as well as the entire elementary school, supporting Pre-K and K teachers with incorporating these goals into their instruction, and creating the conditions for Pre-K and K teachers to prepare children for school success (Hallinger, 2005; Kauerz et al., 2021).
While there is a growing interest in organizing and developing principals to be leaders of Pre-K and K programs in their schools (Kirby et al., 2021; Nicholson et al., 2022), very few elementary principals across the United States studied ECE and/or child development as part of their licensure programs (Douglass, 2019; Lieberman, 2017); for example, only Illinois includes early childhood education as part of its leadership standards and principal certification exam (Talan & Magid, 2021). Furthermore, the National Policy Board for Educational Administration’s (NPBEA, 2018) preparation program standards do not mention early childhood. This absence of elementary principals’ perspective on their leadership of Pre-K and K in the research literature has essential equity implications because how children start their learning careers in elementary school affects not only their future performance on academic measures in later grades but also their success as adults (Collie et al., 2019; Guhn et al., 2016; Jones et al., 2015).
Few studies have examined how elementary school leaders position their Pre-K and K programs within their leadership and what principals with such programs may need to be more effective in their roles (Brown, 2024; Drake et al., 2023; Little, 2020). In this article, we add to this empirical conversation by examining findings from a qualitative case study (Yin, 2018) that investigated the following research questions: How did a sample of principals in Texas position Pre-K and K within their instructional leadership practices? What support do they identify as needing to effectively lead their Pre-K and K programs? To do so, we employed a conceptual lens that combined Hitt and Tucker’s (2016) five dimensions of instructional leadership with Kauerz et al.’s (2021) six essential competencies for principals to lead ECE. This generated four dimensions of instructional leadership in Pre-K and K programs. Studying these questions through this conceptual lens in the Texas context is significant because Texas serves more Pre-K students in elementary schools than any other state; the majority of students in public Pre-K and K classroom are from a low-income households, not White, and are increasingly likely to be linguistically diverse; and the school principals that oversee these programs receive no early childhood training as part of their licensure preparation (Friedman-Krauss et al., 2021; Talan & Magid 2021; Texas Education Agency, 2022). Thus, analyzing how these principals made sense of their role in leading their Pre-K and K programs provides insight into how state and local education agencies can support principals in strengthening their instructional leadership of Pre-K and K.
Elementary School Leaders Leading Pre-K and K Programs
Investigating how principals position their Pre-K and K programs with their leadership practices and the support they would like to receive to lead more effectively is tied to multiple strands of literature. First is the literature documenting the expansion of these programs as well as the extension of Pre-K and K into full-day programs, which is a relatively recent phenomenon (e.g., Brewer et al., 2011). Moreover, a growing body of research demonstrates these programs’ positive effects on children’s academic and social development (e.g., Amadon et al., 2022). Yet researchers continue to document that principals receive little training about how to lead these programs, and those who prepare and train principals have limited professional experience and knowledge about these early childhood programs (e.g., Nicholson et al., 2018). As part of this research, we unpacked these strands of literature in more detail.
Pre-K and K Programs in Elementary School
Almost 60% of public elementary schools have some form of Pre-K program in their buildings (Little, 2020). Yet the number of children attending Pre-K programs in public schools across the United States is limited. For example, 33 states offer public Pre-K for 3-year-olds, but only about 5% attend state-funded Pre-K. Forty-four states provide public PreK for 4-year-olds, but only 29% attend state-funded Pre-K. As for kindergarten, 44 states and the District of Columbia require local school districts to offer either full- or half-day K, and about 86% of all 5-year-olds attend these programs. Furthermore, at least 16 states and the District of Columbia require districts to offer full-day kindergarten (ECS, 2023; National Center for Education Statistics, 2023).
High-quality Pre-K and K programs can increase students’ school readiness and later social, behavioral, and academic outcomes, particularly for students from historically underserved, marginalized groups (Anderson & Phillips, 2017; Barnett et al., 2018; Campbell et al., 2002; Gray-Lobe et al., 2023; Horm et al., 2022; Pianta et al., 2020). For example, Ansari et al. (2021) found that low-income and language-diverse students enrolled in a county-based Pre-K program performed significantly better on academic achievement and executive function measures than their peers who did not attend Pre-K. Villarreal and Lee (2022) also found that students attending Pre-K in San Antonio, Texas, increased their reading and math scores on the third-grade State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readings (STAAR) exams.
Furthermore, how children at age 5 enter and progress through their K year in elementary school affects their short- and long-term success in and out of school (Amadon et al., 2022; Burchinal et al., 2020; Pace et al., 2019; Quirk et al., 2017). Children who are perceived to be trailing their peers in cognitive and social measures when they enter kindergarten are less likely to succeed in grade school, more likely to drop out of high school, and likely to earn less as adults (Dağli & Jones, 2013; Halle et al., 2012; Vergunst et al., 2019).
Principals Leading Pre-K and K Programs
Research shows that attending Pre-K and K impacts children’s academic and social development; however, only a few studies examined the role of elementary school principals in leading these programs (Douglass, 2019; Little, 2020). Much of the literature examines how elementary school leaders are aligning preschool programs, such as Pre-K, with the ECE grade levels located in elementary schools while incorporating them into their leadership practices (Cohen-Vogel et al., 2020; Stein & Coburn, 2023); the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC, 2020) defines the ECE grade levels in elementary school as K through third grade. This work takes on an early childhood perspective (Takanishi, 2016) that seeks to align elementary school classrooms with child-centered practices to maintain the academic and social gains children have made by attending preschool (Brown, 2013; Cohen-Vogel et al., 2020; Little, 2023).
When examining alignment and leadership, researchers have found that how principals view Pre-K programs and their role within their school affects their inclusion and alignment with the other grade levels (Brown & Gasko, 2012; Cohen-Vogel et al., 2021; Garrity et al., 2022; Graue et al., 2016). Little (2020), for instance, examined how principals and other education stakeholders viewed school-based and childcare-center-based Pre-K in central North Carolina (NC). Little found that principals varied in their views of whether Pre-K was “a justified part of their formal scope of responsibility” (p. 7) and their engagement with these programs. Within the NC context and in states like Georgia, part of the challenge for elementary school leaders is that some Pre-K programs that feed into their elementary schools are in preschool centers rather than elementary schools. As Cohen-Vogel et al. (2020) found when studying rural communities in NC, not having Pre-K programs housed within elementary schools creates misalignment issues for elementary school principals because they know “very little about Pre-K and student experiences there” and make little effort “to connect their kindergarten teachers with Pre-K teachers” (p. 40).
In traditional public schools, Stein and Coburn (2023) determined that principals framed their role in leading their Pre-K in relation to how these programs are prioritized both administratively (e.g., which department within the district oversees the early years) and programmatically (e.g., having professional development [PD] in ECE for principals), meaning that how districts govern their programs appears to impact how principals prioritize and lead their programs. Little (2023) noted that future challenges for school leaders in creating an aligned Pre-K–3 is bridging these two sectors of education by improving relationships, communication, and policies, which requires “visionary and sustained leadership” by school leaders who are trained to accomplish these goals (p. 15). Still, in states like Texas, where students’ academic achievement on state-mandated assessments can affect school personnel and can lead to a state takeover, Brown and Gasko (2012) found that principals across four rural school districts in Texas not only became more aware of the learning experiences children were having in Pre-K but were also seeking to ensure children were on a trajectory so that they would succeed in the later elementary grades.
As for kindergarten, few studies in recent years have examined the issues principals face in leading these programs in the United States. Much of this empirical work centers on how kindergarten has changed and what this means for kindergarteners and their teachers (Bassok et al., 2016; Brown et al., 2019; Engel et al., 2021). As Costantino-Lane (2019) found, kindergarten teachers now emphasize “literacy and numeracy, and paper and pencil tasks” in place of “learning through language and hands-on activities” (p. 585). These changes appear to result from what Hatch (2002) termed “accountability shovedown,” where the pressure to perform in the testing grades, which often starts in Grade 3, has been shoved down into Pre-K and K. In terms of the impact of these changes in kindergarten on elementary school principals, Brown (2024), through interviewing 12 principals across Texas and West Virginia, found that the principals in that study wanted to ensure all children are successful as they enter school. However, they struggled with envisioning how to support K teachers with engaging in early childhood-based instructional practices and finding the time to lead these programs because of the pressure to ensure teachers in the testing grades attended to district and state policymakers’ demands for increased academic achievement.
Principals’ Training in ECE
Researchers contend that principals require training in leading Pre-K and K programs in elementary schools for two reasons. First, how principals instructionally lead ECE programs such as Pre-K and K matters. For example, Goddard et al. (2019) examined student achievement data from Michigan’s standardized assessment across 95 high-poverty, rural elementary schools in Michigan. They found that instructional leadership “was positively and significantly related to teachers’ reports of differentiated instructional practices regardless of school demographics and prior student achievement” (p. 197). Essentially, principals create the organizational capacity and work environment to improve teachers’ practices and increase students’ achievement within schools (Grissom et al., 2021; Hitt & Tucker, 2016). Second, only some principals have studied or been required to study ECE and/or child development as part of their licensure programs (Cunningham et al., 2023; Douglass, 2019). For example, Little et al. (2022) synthesized findings from 16 peer-reviewed empirical articles to examine principals’ leadership of Pre-K programs. A central finding of their analysis was that many principals lacked training in how to lead ECE programs and that there is little evidence their leadership has a direct and positive impact on children (p. 196). Furthermore, Drake et al. (2023) recently conducted a sequential mixed-methods study in North Carolina that examined the relationship between principals’ background and their reported early education leadership practices. Like previous studies (e.g., Douglass, 2019), Drake et al. found that the principals had little experience or training in ECE. Through their interviews of 27 principals, they found that many made sense of “their early grades leadership largely in the context of their prior teaching experiences” (p. 15).
The lack of principal experience and training is disconcerting because “elementary school principals play a critical role in determining the quality of care and education that young children receive and are responsible for ensuring appropriate and integrated instruction across grade levels” (Garrity et al., 2022, p. 423). Yet Talan and Magid (2021) found that only nine U.S. states require principals to take courses on child development or early learning to obtain licensure, and only Illinois requires any field experience in a Pre-K classroom for licensure. This matters because, as Cunningham et al. (2023) found in their recent survey of 150 principals in one midwestern state, those principals in their study who had ECE certification were “more knowledgeable about development in early childhood” (p. 68).
Additionally, only some higher education faculty specializing in education leadership have formal training in early education (Nicholson et al., 2018). Nevertheless, the 2015 revision of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Every Student Succeeds Act, states that Title II dollars (subgrants provided by the U.S. Department of Education to state education agencies [SEAs] to increase student achievement and improve the quality and effectiveness of educators and administrators, especially for low-income and minority students) can be used to support the development of principals’ understanding of instruction in the early grades (Bornfreund, 2015; Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, 2020). Moreover, Nicholson et al. (2018) and Shue et al. (2012) found that principals and education leadership faculty appear to believe that training in how children learn/develop and in early education should be a part of licensure. These education stakeholders, including principals themselves, recognize that it is important for principals to understand how young children learn and how to lead early educators, including Pre-K and kindergarten teachers (Kim & Jin, 2020; Little, 2020), in supporting their instruction of children as they begin their academic careers in elementary school (McCormick et al., 2020).
In sum, much of the literature surrounding the Pre-K and K programs in elementary schools focuses on how either Pre-K policy is enacted (e.g., Brown, 2011), how principals make sense of their role in either leading (e.g., Cohen-Vogel et al., 2020) or integrating Pre-K programs (e.g., Brown & Gasko, 2012) into their leadership practices (Little et al., 2022). Absent from this work is an investigation into how principals with long-established Pre-K and K programs within their elementary schools position such ECE programs within their instructional leadership or the supports they identify as needing to effectively lead Pre-K and K. Thus, examining how principals establish and convey an instructional vision that helps them facilitate as well as build Pre-K and K teacher capacity to engage in high-quality learning experiences for the students continually offers the chance to consider how state and local education agencies and university-based leadership programs can better support elementary school administrators in leading Pre-K and K programs.
Conceptual Framework
We employed the lens of sensemaking to investigate how a sample of principals in Texas positioned Pre-K and K within their instructional leadership practices and discussed the support they need to lead these ECE programs effectively (Coburn, 2005; Lipsky, 1980). Principals’ sensemaking of their instructional leadership and the support they need to lead Pre-K and K programs effectively is “generally understood to be the cognitive act of taking in information, framing it, and using it to determine actions and behaviors in a way that manages meaning for individuals” (Evans, 2007, p. 161). This continuous interactive and dynamic process is one in which principals cognitively and emotionally make meaning of the world around them through their prior knowledge and experiences leading Pre-K and K, their social relations with their school staff and others, the school context in which they operate, and their future goals (Coburn, 2005; Reid, 2021; Rigby, 2015; Spillane et al., 2002). Thus, principals’ mental models of instructional leadership “act as filters” through which they make decisions about how to organize their schools, how to respond to district and state administrators’ demands, what Pre-K and K children should be taught, and how they should be taught, and how they will determine success in each of these aspects of schooling (Bertrand & Marsh, 2015, p. 866).
Making Sense of Leading Pre-K and K
Because a principal’s instructional leadership practices “may have profound effects on the success” of students in Pre-K and K (Little et al., 2022, p. 196), organizations like the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP) through their Pre-K-3 Leadership initiative (https://www.naesp.org/prek3-leadership) and other publications (Kirby et al., 2021; Nicholson et al., 2022) have outlined essential competencies school leaders must possess and strategies they are to implement to lead ECE programs (like Pre-K and K) effectively. Kauerz et al. (2021) outline six essential competencies for principals to lead ECE; these include (a) understanding how children develop and learn; (b) creating and sustaining partnerships with families and their communities; (c) embracing and enacting a cohesive vision of learning from Pre-K through third grade; (d) achieving and sustaining equitable outcomes; (e) shared leadership with educators and building their professional capacity; and (f) building a culture of continuous improvement that attend to the needs of their immediate environment, which includes the students, their families, and the teachers that principals lead.
To analyze these sampled principals’ sensemaking of their instructional leadership, which concentrates on “principals’ practices directly related to teaching and learning” (Wu et al., 2020, p. 319), we combined Hitt and Tucker’s (2016) five dimensions of instructional leadership with Kauerz et al.’s (2021) six essential competencies for principals to lead ECE (see Figure 1). By doing so, we identified four dimensions of instructional leadership in ECE programs: (a) establishing, conveying, and enacting a vision of leading that aligns ECE programs, such as Pre-K/K, with the entire school; (b) facilitating a high-quality learning experience for students rooted in practices that reflect how children learn and develop; (c) building professional capacity to ensure the school achieves equitable outcomes; and (d) creating a culture of continuous improvement that attends to the needs of their immediate environment, which includes the students, their families, and the teachers that principals lead. Principals who embody this vision of instructional leadership understand the Pre-K and K curricula are not structured around distinct content areas. Instead, curricula are designed for children to “actively explore their environment, experiment with ideas and materials, and engage in a variety of interactions” with their classmates and their teacher(s) (Nicholson et al., 2022, p. 85). To do this effectively, principals must, as documented by others (Brown & Gasko, 2012), understand how children learn and develop, which can vary depending on children’s sociocultural backgrounds (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018). Principals also must know that Pre-K and K teachers’ acts of instruction and assessment differ between early and later years (Butler, 2021). To make sense and act on these dimensions of leading instructionally Pre-K and K programs requires principals to engage in a complex set of leadership practices that guide and support their teachers and other personnel in implementing a shared vision of instructional practices that foster young children’s growth on multiple levels (Brown & McKenzie, 2023; Kirby et al., 2021). This includes balancing complex and often competing influences outside school, such as policymakers’ demands for improved academic performance (Brown, 2024; Reid, 2021; Rigby, 2014). It also necessitates principals to structure such organizational procedures like scheduling and budgeting so that they are aligned across elementary schools to allow Pre-K and K teachers to collaborate and work together to provide young children with developmentally and culturally appropriate learning experiences (Hitt & Tucker, 2016; NAEYC, 2020). Thus, examining how the principals in our case study make sense of instructional leadership from an ECE perspective and the support they need to lead Pre-K and K programs effectively provides an opportunity to consider how SEAs and local education agencies (LEAs) and university-based leadership programs can better support elementary school administrators in this process of leading Pre-K and K.
Instructional leadership from an ECE perspective.
Methods
As Yin (2018) articulated, case studies investigate contemporary phenomena within their real-life context and often seek to answer how and why questions about the case itself. Our case study examines a sample of elementary school principals in Texas (N = 4) who oversee Pre-K and K programs within their schools. Specifically, in this article, we answer two research questions: How did a sample of principals in Texas position Pre-K and K within their instructional leadership practices? What support do they identify as needing to effectively lead their Pre-K and K programs? Our case study of this contemporary phenomenon is bounded by the fact these principals oversee Pre-K and K programs within their elementary schools in Texas (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016; Yin, 2018). We chose school principals because they are the primary leaders of their schools, which makes them responsible for establishing and conveying the mission of and vision for instructional leadership within that learning community, and because only about half of schools in Texas have assistant principals (Hoover, 2021).
Context
In Texas, public schools educate over 5 million kindergarten through Grade 12 (K–12) students each year. Established in 1985, Texas has one of the nation’s oldest elementary school-based Pre-K programs. Texas has more students enrolled in public school Pre-K than any other state; in 2020, approximately 231,965 children in Texas participated in Pre-K programs (Friedman-Krauss et al., 2021). Furthermore, state policymakers require all school districts to offer full-day kindergarten (Cohen-Vogel et al., 2022; ECS, 2023).
Although school districts in Texas are not required to offer Pre-K for 3-year-olds, districts with 15 or more eligible children can do so, and state policymakers fund Pre-K for 3-year-olds as a half-day program. However, districts with 15 or more eligible 4-year-old children must offer Pre-K as a full-day program. Policymakers deem children eligible for both programs if they meet at least one of the following criteria: They receive free or reduced-price lunch; they are homeless or in foster care; they have an active military parent or a parent injured/killed on active duty; they are unable to speak or comprehend English; and/or they have a parent eligible for the Star of Texas Award, which is given to state employees who are seriously injured or killed in the line of duty (Texas Education Code Chapter 29, Subchapter E, 2007).
As for financing these programs, Pre-K for 4-year-olds and kindergarten, like their 1st- through 12th-grade counterparts, are funded by the Foundation School Program. Regarding Pre-K, although the Texas legislature passed House Bill 3 in 2019, which mandated schools to provide Pre-K for qualifying 4-year-olds on a full-day basis, the state allocated only half the rate of that allotted for K based on average daily attendance. The state requires individual school districts to use other funding sources such as state grant funding, federal funding, local district funding, or, in some cases, tuition from nonqualifying students to fully fund the mandated full-day Pre-K programs (Texas Education Agency, 2024). Additionally, in Texas, the mandated teacher-to-student ratio is 1 teacher to 22 students, which includes Pre-K and K.
Lastly, state-mandated assessments of public school students’ academic achievement begin in Pre-K; every school district must assess their Pre-K through Grade 1 students’ emergent literacy skills three times a year using a state-approved standardized assessment measure. District personnel use students’ scores on these tests to evaluate teacher and school administrator effectiveness. Students who perform poorly across the school year are typically provided various literacy interventions to support their growth and development. As students enter third grade, they begin taking the STAAR exam, which state policymakers attached high stakes to for students, teachers, and schools. Students’ STAAR scores in Grades 5 and 8 are employed by school staff to determine grade promotion. In high school, a series of end-of-course exams determine high school completion. A statewide ranking system determines whether students in schools and districts have attained an acceptable level of progress in academic achievement. If not, a series of mandated interventions and sanctions are triggered, which can lead to the closure or reconstitution of schools and the replacement of district administrators.
Data Collection
Participants
This study’s 14 elementary school principals represent urban, suburban, and rural schools in Texas that vary in performance rankings given by the Texas Education Agency (see Table 1). Ten of the 14 principals were selected for participation through a partnership with district administrators in a large urban school district (LUD) for a more extensive study that examined how school principals made sense of and were addressing the impact of COVID-19 on their special education, early literacy, and Pre-K and K programs. The district provided access to 25 principals who oversaw schools with differing experience levels and led schools with different state-assigned accountability ratings. Only 10 of the 25 elementary school principals completed both sets of interviews. The remaining four principals were a convenience sample selected from a cohort of principals enrolled in courses to attain their superintendent’s license at a university within Texas. We included these principals to confirm the interpretations of the non-LUD principals as well as to increase the dependability of our findings (Hays & Singh, 2011). All 14 of these leaders completed their principal training and certification requirements in Texas, which does not require child development or ECE training.
The Principals
Note. LUD = large urban district; RurD = rural district; SubD = suburban district; Pre-K = prekindergarten; ECSE = early childhood special education.
Interviews
To obtain evidence about principals’ instructional leadership for Pre-K and K, we conducted two semistructured interviews with each of the LUD principals and one interview with the non-LUD principals as part of this case study (Yin, 2018). Given the limitations imposed on researchers by school districts because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we interviewed each principal individually via Zoom. The interviews took place during the 2021–2022 school year. Interviews were semistructured and lasted approximately 35 to 60 minutes (Thomas, 2021)—see Appendix A for excerpts from the interview protocol.
In addition to the interview data, we collected artifacts describing each district’s early education priorities for analysis (e.g., district websites and curriculum guides), and we recorded our thoughts, hunches, and insights in analytic memos following each interview and during data analysis (Maxwell, 2013). We employed these documents to support and confirm the findings presented in this article.
Data Analysis
We analyzed the data using traditional qualitative methods (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016; Miles et al., 2020). The lead author first coded the data deductively utilizing a set of a priori codes based on our literature review, theoretical orientation, which included the four dimensions of instructionally leading Pre-K and K programs (Hitt & Tucker, 2016; Kauerz et al., 2021), and research questions, and a set of inductive codes emerged through the research process to reduce data to the central ideas guiding this study (Miles et al., 2020, p. 74). For example, some of our a priori codes were based in Kauerz et al.’s (2021) six competencies that foster a strong Pre-K through Grade 3 learning environment; see Table 2 for examples of the codes, their definitions and how we marked some of these principals’ statements using Kauerz et al.’s (2021) competencies (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
Examples of the A Priori Codes Derived From Kauerz et al.’s (2021) Six Competencies That Foster a Strong Pre-K to 3rd- Grade Learning Environment
Next, the lead author went through a second analysis cycle to read the coded data “again and again . . . comparing each element . . . with all the other elements” (Thomas, 2021, p. 225). Through this constant-comparative method, the lead author generated a potential set of categories that reflected the principals’ sensemaking of instructionally leading their Pre-K and K programs and what they contended should be done to assist them in leading these programs more effectively (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). The lead author then shared this initial set of categories with the research team, who read the categories against the data in search of contradictory evidence and refined them through further analysis. This initial set of categories was then transformed into three categories addressing the two primary research questions: how principals positioned PreK and K within their instructional leadership and the support they identified as needing to instructionally lead their Pre-K and K programs.
Limitations and Trustworthiness
Qualitative case studies employ a “small, nonrandom, purposeful sample” because researchers seek “to understand the particular in-depth” (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016, p. 257) with an emphasis on complexity (Thomas, 2021). We, therefore, focused on interview data from 14 principals in one state to understand their conceptions of their Pre-K and K programs and the teachers they work with daily. Principals from different states where programs like Pre-K and full-day K are not as well-established as they are in Texas or are located outside of elementary school as well as collecting other data sources might have produced different results (Stake, 1995; Yin, 2018). Nevertheless, sample size does not define case study methodology (Thomas, 2021; Yin, 2018), as others have demonstrated in research with small numbers of school leaders (e.g., Carraway & Young, 2015).
We used several typical qualitative strategies to enhance trustworthiness (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016; Stake, 1995): member checking, triangulation, peer debriefing, and reflexivity (Hays & Singh, 2011; Holmes, 2020). We conducted member checks by sharing a draft of this article with the 14 principals, and we received many positive comments about the piece. For example, Principal Rodríguez replied, “This is great. I would love to share the findings of this research with my network.”
Finally, we were mindful of our perspectives, positions of power, sociocultural identities and histories, and biases we brought to this work (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016; Milner, 2007). At one point, we were a classroom teacher in a particular context, and some of us have served as school administrators. We have each struggled as professionals to make sense of how to position ECE within the more extensive system of K–12 education while also recognizing the complexity of school administrators’ management of competing interests. As the study progressed, we reflected on our positioning within the survey by self-assessing our “views and positions” toward and within our work so that we might question how our positionality might influence or may have influenced “the design, execution, and interpretation” of our findings “directly or indirectly” (Holmes, 2020, p. 2).
Findings
Our purpose in this case study is to examine how these principals positioned Pre-K and K within their instructional leadership practices and identify the support they felt they needed to lead their Pre-K and K programs effectively. To do so, we analyzed our data through what we identified to be four dimensions of instructionally leading Pre-K and K programs (Hitt & Tucker, 2016; Kauerz et al., 2021). As a result, we first explore whether these principals sought to establish and convey an instructional vision (Dimension 1) that helps them facilitate and build Pre-K and K teacher capacity (Dimension 3) to engage in high-quality learning experiences for the students (Dimension 2) that continually attends to the needs within and outside the school community (Dimension 4). Through this analysis, we found the political context within Texas made it difficult for these principals to enact their visions of leading these programs, which is why they wanted the support of district and state administrators to move beyond such challenges and lead these programs more effectively.
Principals’ Positioning Pre-K and K Within Their Instructional Leadership
It’s Their Responsibility to Be Instructional Leaders of Pre-K and K
When examining how these principals established and conveyed an instructional vision of leading and aligning Pre-K and K within their elementary schools, all 14 principals in this case study consistently described engaging in these activities as their responsibility. Their descriptions framed this responsibility through a lens that positioned children’s learning as a developmental process (Kauerz et al., 2021). Principal Lopez stated, “The goal of the Pre-K and K is to build a foundation so that the students can function in first grade.” Principal Gunn commented, “Pre-K and K should be welcoming and establishing a strong foundation.” Principal Griner also noted, The focus in Pre-K and K is to ensure that the students have a strong foundation on which to build so that when they get to third, fourth, and fifth grade, they are reading for comprehension. The early grades are like the foundation to a house; if you don’t have a strong foundation, then you can’t build on top of that, and so the same emphasis must be put on early childhood education as it’s put on secondary education.
Across these statements, the principals framed Pre-K and K programs as foundational for building children’s success in school. For Principal Lopez, a strong foundation was necessary for first-grade success. Principal Griner extended this into the testing grades when students need to be able to comprehend what they are reading. For all principals, as Principal Walsh said, the early years “are super important for success in school.” Thus, they viewed Pre-K and K as providing children with the foundational skills and knowledge required to succeed in the later grades.
Structuring High-Quality Learning Experiences Through Developmentally Appropriate Practices
When examining how these leaders sought to facilitate as well as build Pre-K and K teacher capacity to engage in high-quality learning experiences for the students, they often described this process by first explaining their conceptions of how early-year classrooms should be structured to foster such student success. Principal De León stated that Pre-K and K classrooms should be places with “functional chaos—lots of opportunities for creative play and imagination. Students being allowed to explore and learn.” Principal Salinas also spoke of “learning through play and fostering their creativity and self-expression so that they have the foundational experiences needed to learn academics.” Principal Isbell said that the early years assimilate students into school, helping them to start learning about school. Building the social and emotional pieces is huge. At the foundation, children need to learn to work with peers and build the stamina needed for a full school day. Then, of course, they start to develop their different academic skills, like working with numbers and letters.
These principals appeared to “recognize that long-term achievement is built on a solid foundation of high-quality experiences in early learning and the early grades” (Kauerz et al., 2021, p. 11).
In outlining their understandings of developmentally appropriate practice in the early years (NAEYC, 2020), principals referred to skills that children needed to acquire along the trajectory of learning from Pre-K to the first grade. Principal Morales said that Pre-K for 3-year-olds supported “the social development of the children to become the learners we want in Pre-K—knowing the routines, knowing the school, using their brains to know what’s coming and what’s expected.” In Pre-K for 4-year-old students, Principal Earle said, You’re to create a rich language environment—lots of speaking, listening interactions, lots of hands-on learning, children learning through play, but we also want to build some of those Pre-K social skills like what does it look like to walk in a line, how do we play games and take turns. How do we use our words to solve problems and so using all of those through a language rich play environment with lots of stories, lots of songs and lots of body movement. You know, those are really some of our ultimate goals is to find ways to create that hands-on learning rich experience to really prepare our kiddos for what school is all about.
For Principal Griner, “Pre-K’s focus” was “on socialization and on SEL skills.” Concerning kindergarten, however, Principal Black said, “We’re trying to grow each student at their own level, with a focus on reading and writing. . . . They should grow a grade level so they’re ready for first grade—that’s the goal.” Principal Earle said, “There’s much less learning through true play in kinder. It has more structure, fewer choices, and more teacher control.” These statements indicate a shift in K from socializing the child for school to teaching academic skills that the child needs to thrive in elementary school’s upper grades (Brown, 2015).
Thus, as Principal Russo pointed out, “Kindergarten is now the new first grade. First grade is the new second grade, and all of that.” Principal De León agreed that this accountability shove down (Hatch, 2002) is impacting ECE: “The early years, unfortunately, become more academic to get students ready for the testing; we see a little bit of play kinder, but [in] first grade, it kind of all disappears.” Thus, while these principals hoped to facilitate high-quality learning experiences for students rooted in practices that reflect how children learn and develop in Pre-K and K, this was not always achievable. This is disconcerting because researchers have found that teachers who engage in child-centered instructional practices that reflect the developmental needs of the children in their classrooms not only improve students’ academic performance in such content areas as literacy and mathematics but also their desire to learn (Lerkkanen et al., 2012, 2016; Pyle & DeLuca, 2017).
Policy Forces Shaping Principal’s Instructional Leadership of Pre-K and K
Testing in the later grades not only appeared to narrow these 14 principals’ enacted conceptions of teaching and learning in their Pre-K and K programs to what was required for students to succeed on these mandated measures, but it also created two additional challenges in how these principals instructionally led these programs. First, they identified that such pressure on academic performance led district administrators to frame Pre-K and K as the only early childhood grades within their districts, which differs from the traditional framing of ECE that spans from birth to third grade (NAEYC, 2020). Thus, Principal Russo said that “in our district, administrators used to define early childhood as Pre-K to second grade, and now, it’s Pre-K and K.” Principal Walsh also stated that “there’s a definite difference between the Pre-K and K and first/second. First and second follow the same instructional and assessment model that fifth follows, and the Pre-Ks and K got a different report card, different assessments, and that sort of thing.” For both principals, the early childhood years in their school districts ended in kindergarten.
Secondly, this systemic structuring of ECE as only Pre-K and K appeared to create contradictions in how these principals made sense of Pre-K and K and how they positioned these programs within their vision of instructionally leading them in relation to all the grade levels within their schools. Principal Isbell, for example, said, “In my heart of hearts, I want to prioritize the early grades more, but the reality is that my time gets spent in upper grades where the testing is.” At the same time, expectations associated with testing in the later grades contributed to the principals’ understanding of the importance of the early years in their students’ learning and development. Principal De León stated, “We have to make sure that we’re pouring time, energy and resources into early childhood to give the fifth, fourth, and third graders the strong foundation they need.” Still, Principal Young reported that there was “more of a microscope on third, fourth, and fifth.” Such statements reveal a contradiction between these principals wanting to prioritize Pre-K and K within their instructional leadership and acquiescing to prioritization of the testing grades while at the same time recognizing that such actions undermine the potential of Pre-K and K on students’ later academic achievement. Even so, it appears that how principals are evaluated as school leaders trumped all these issues in their decision-making (Grissom et al. 2017; Rivera-McCutchen, 2021). For instance, Principal Morales stated, “The demands of state accountability and the demands of the district don’t allow us to focus on the lower grades. Even my district supervisor told me, ‘Worry about third through fifth, and you’ll be okay.’” Principal Lopez confirmed Principal Morales’s supervisor’s recommendation: The district grades me with a scorecard. The STAAR rating is right at the top of that scorecard, not if you run strong Pre-K and K programs. So right now, it’s 5 weeks before the test, and I am not in any Pre-K and K classrooms as much as I want to because I love those little ones, but I have to be in the testing grades making sure those kids are getting ready for the test—that’s reality, that’s how I and my campus are judged.
These principals clearly understood how they were judged as leaders of their schools, and because that judgment was primarily based on how their students in third, fourth, and fifth grade performed on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR), they focused their instructional leadership efforts on those grade levels. As Falabella (2021) has said, “Testing is a powerful governance technology” (p. 133). In this case study, Texas’s accountability policies shaped the nature and intensity of these principals’ ability to implement their conceptions of instructional leadership that align Pre-K and K with the entire school (Brown, 2024; Brown & Gasko, 2012).
The Support Principals Need to Lead Pre-K and K Programs Instructionally
Reprioritizing Pre-K and K Within Their Instructional Leadership Duties
Although the 14 principals felt that they had to focus their instructional leadership efforts on the testing grades so that they would be deemed as influential school leaders, many wanted their district administrators to provide them with the time required in their day-to-day practices to redirect their efforts toward working with and supporting their Pre-K and K programs so that they could create a culture of continuous improvement that spans across their elementary programs. Principal Black, for example, said, The time we’re given doesn’t match the kind of expectations on me for Pre-K and K. The kind of change needed takes years, and we’re always trying to roll every new initiative out into a year, which is a lot of stress—that stress doesn’t help. So how can we enact change in a way that honors people’s time? Particularly when teachers feel like there is no time to do all these things you want to do.
Principal Black’s statement reflects a typical concern in the leadership literature about reform (e.g., Koyama, 2014). Still, it also highlights the complexity of engaging in effective leadership practices with their Pre-K and K programs, such as those advocated by the NAESP (Kauerz et al., 2021). Principal Russo also spoke of this need: If we want to see best practices in Pre-K and K, like integrated units that are pulled throughout day, and not dumped into a theme bucket, like bats, bats everywhere, but really intentionality focusing in on what content needs to be pulled through so that students learn the core content, you need time and there is no time. There isn’t the time to do that.
To create a culture of continuous improvement, it takes time for school leaders and teachers to work together to think about what it would mean to immerse children in content, such as reading, through real-world experiences that spread across the day. Still, this principal, like many throughout our study, argued that there was no time to do so, and thus, they wanted support from district leaders to reprioritize Pre-K and K within their leadership practices.
As Principal Morales stated, this shortness of time to address the complexity of Pre-K and K was due to accountability issues, which contributed to principals focusing on “the testing grades [so that] the ECE grades are often forgotten.” Principal Russo commented, “A lot of resources and time and energy and effort are allocated towards Grades 3, 4, and 5 because they’re tested.” Principal Russo then pondered, “What would happen if we put a reading specialist and a math specialist in the ECE years?” This last point by Principal Russo underscores how the focus of the testing grades directs both their time and school and district resources to the testing grades. As such, these principals stated they would like more resources to support the early years of schooling so that children are on the trajectory of success they described in the first theme, which might include, as Principal Russo pointed out, putting reading and math specialists in Pre-K and K. It appears these supports could assist school leaders in enacting a cohesive vision across all grade levels that builds professional capacity and facilitates high-quality learning experiences for students rooted in practices that reflect how children learn and develop.
Assisting Principals in Supporting Their Pre-K and K Teachers
There was a consistent concern for the 10 LUD principals that district administrators did not support their Pre-K and K programs, which hindered their ability to build Pre-K and K teacher capacity to engage in high-quality learning experiences for the students as the lack of support also made it difficult for principals to create a culture of continuous improvement within the early elementary grades that attends to the needs within and outside the school community. For example, at the time of the present study, the district had just overhauled the entire ECE staff with individuals with no experience within the district, and the district only employs three ECE specialists who oversee more than 80 elementary school campuses. As a result, Principal Isbell had “a new Pre-K teacher this year, and they’ve gotten no support from district folks.” “Honestly,” Principal Isbell added, “we don’t reach out a lot for district support because it’s like there’s not something there that [is] actually going to supplement what we currently have.” Principal Walsh remarked, “It would be helpful for Pre-K and K teachers if there were a clear . . . leadership and support structure at the district level.” Researchers have documented the challenges that early educators may face in receiving support from school and district leaders (e.g., Stein & Coburn, 2023), and the principals in the urban district in the present study recognized this issue. They advocated for more help from district leaders in supporting ECE teachers.
The non-LUD principals, like Principal Salinas, expressed hopes that their district would rethink their point of emphasis with Pre-K and K teachers. Principal Salinas stated, “They are driven by the mandated curriculum, and instead, back off a bit and let the teachers foster their creativity and empathy.” Principal Wayne wanted more support mentoring Pre-K and K teachers: “I need support from my district leaders to coach my teachers. I don’t have enough time to be the singular coach for all my teachers because I have all these job responsibilities.” Combined, these principals appeared to desire support from their district to create a culture of continuous improvement that attends to the needs of their immediate environment, which includes the students, their families, and the teachers that principals lead.
Making Pre-K a Universal Program
Beyond district support in leading their Pre-K and K programs, all 14 principals also wanted district and state support in restructuring their Pre-K programs; they wanted to transform Pre-K from an intervention program to a universal one. As Principal Gunn said, “I would love to see universal Pre-K.” Principal Wayne wished, “You could just be 4 and go to Pre-K.” Principal Salinas explained that “with access to Pre-K, students start off on a better foot. They are more comfortable and get the academics a little faster.” For Principal Isbell, universal Pre-K was needed because “kids who went to Pre-K are in a significantly better place, starting their educational career when they’ve participated in our program.” The principals’ desire to universalize Pre-K illuminates two key points. First, they recognized the positive impact that universal Pre-K could have for all their students (Burchinal et al., 2020). Second, they appeared to understand that creating an instructional cohesive elementary school requires aligning teaching practices among school personnel and ensuring all students within the school community have the same learning opportunities and experiences.
Discussion
By merging the work of Hitt and Tucker (2016) with Kauerz et al. (2021) to analyze instructional leadership from an ECE perspective (see Figure 1), our case study examined how these principals sought to establish and convey an instructional vision (Dimension 1) that facilitates and builds Pre-K and K teacher capacity (Dimension 3) to engage in high-quality learning experiences for their students (Dimension 2) while continually attending to the needs within and outside the school community (Dimension 4). We also sought to understand the support these principals identified as needing to lead their Pre-K and K programs effectively. Our investigation into these questions first adds to the research literature by illuminating how these school leaders, who work in a state that has a long history of locating Pre-K and K in elementary schools, consistently took responsibility for establishing and conveying an instructional vision of leading and aligning their Pre-K and K programs with their entire elementary school, which differs from studies in both NC (Cohen-Vogel et al., 2020) and California (Stein & Coburn 2023). These principals, who understood the impact of the early years on students’ academic trajectories in school (e.g., Gray-Lobe et al., 2023), viewed it as their responsibility to ensure they and their Pre-K and K teachers were creating learning environments that supported the growth and development of all their Pre-K and K students (e.g., Principal Griner stating that “the focus in the early childhood grades is making sure that the students have a strong foundation that they can build off.”). To provide this foundation, these principals, such as Principal Black, recognized that they needed to support teachers in structuring their teaching through such developmentally appropriate practices as offering rich language experiences and hands-on learning experiences that foster interactive listening and allow for play as well as children speaking with each other so that they could develop their academic and social skills, which aligns with many aspects of NAEYC’s (2020) conceptions of DAP; teachers engage in developmentally appropriate practices by making instructions decisions based on their students in relation to what is known about typical development, the children’s individual developmental needs, and their socio-cultural, linguistic, and historical backgrounds (Brown et al., 2018). Together, many of these principals’ statements reflected Garrity et al.’s (2022) finding that school principals who are successful instructional leaders support Pre-K and K to ensure that teachers engage in developmentally appropriate instructional strategies.
While these principals seemed to make sense of their instructional leadership through the four dimensions outlined in Figure 1, the high-stakes testing system within Texas appeared to impede their ability to enact such understandings of teaching and learning into their leadership of their Pre-K and K programs. As Principal Morales noted earlier, “The demands of state accountability and the demands of the district don’t allow us to focus on the lower grades.” Instead of working with their Pre-K and K teachers to establish high-quality learning experiences for students, many of these principals stated their Pre-K and K teachers offer fewer opportunities for play and more direct instruction of content. As Principal Isbell pointed out, such efforts reflected their instructional leadership goals, which resulted from ensuring teachers and students in the upper elementary grades were ready for the state-mandated tests. Finding that these principals spend very little time in the ECE grades is disconcerting but not unexpected in states like Texas (Brown, 2024; Brown & Gasko, 2012).
Still, these findings add to the research literature by illuminating the support principals need to instructionally lead their Pre-K and K programs and build a culture of continuous improvement that filters throughout their elementary schools. The principals in this case study consistently stated that they needed district administrators and supervisors to reprioritize Pre-K and K so that they have the time and space to engage with these programs. As Principal Black stated, “The time we’re given doesn’t match the kind of expectations on me for ECE.” Their awareness in this disconnect between what effective instructional leaders of Pre-K and K are to do and what they can do led many of these principals to call for more assistance from district administrators in creating the time, space, and resources within their day-to-day leadership practices of Pre-K and K (e.g., Principal Russo pondering what would happen if the district put a reading specialist and a math specialist in the ECE years). These principals’ need for districts to reprioritize Pre-K and K is important because instructional leadership and guidance that supports Pre-K and K teachers matters; Vernon-Feagans et al. (2019) found that students who receive high-quality instruction from their teachers across K through third grade had higher literacy scores than those who did not receive such instruction.
Furthermore, the principals wanted district administrators to enhance their ability to support their Pre-K and K teachers. In the case of the LUD, school leaders such as Principal Walsh wanted the district to have a clear “leadership and support structure” available to their teachers. As Carraway and Young (2015) have documented, such support from an LEA is vital for any district-wide initiative designed to improve instructional leadership.
Lastly, these principals hoped district and state leaders would expand access to Pre-K because, as Principal Salinas noted, “With access to Pre-K, students start off on a better foot.” Expanded access would instill a statewide understanding that Pre-K matters to all Texans and support the learning of the children currently not eligible for Texas’s Pre-K programs. For instance, Gormley et al. (2018) found positive effects of Tulsa’s universal Pre-K program on children’s academic performance that continued through middle school. Still, Cohen-Vogel et al.’s (2022) findings through their event history analysis of public Pre-K in the United States demonstrate that states like Texas, where there is “greater representation by Republicans and lower legislative professionalism,” is less likely to expand its Pre-K program to all 4-year-olds.
Nevertheless, multiple principals stated that they sought to build their own professional capacity as instructional leaders of Pre-K and K teachers so that they could create a culture of continuous improvement that attends to the needs of their immediate environment, which includes the students, their families, and the teachers that principals lead (Hitt & Tucker, 2016; Kauerz et al., 2021). Moreover, these insights highlight several opportunities to consider how to support principals as instructional leaders of Pre-K and K programs.
Implications
Supporting the growth and development of elementary school principals in becoming effective instructional leaders of Pre-K and K who establish and convey an instructional vision that assists them in facilitating as well as building Pre-K and K teacher capacity to engage in high-quality learning experiences for the students continually requires change at the national, state, local, and school level. On the one hand, as many others have pointed out (Cunningham et al., 2023; Little, 2020), national organizations, like the NPBEA, should amend their Professional Standards for School Leaders (NPBEA, 2015) and National Educational Leadership Preparation Program standards (NPBEA, 2018). Preparation and practice standards with ECE emphasized as core knowledge and practice would prompt change within states, districts, and university-based principal preparation programs.
Relatedly, state education agencies and other state policymakers can revise school leadership certification standards and assessments, evaluation tools, and accountability metrics to emphasize ECE adequately. States and principal licensure programs should incorporate the skills and knowledge principals require to instructionally lead the ECE programs in their schools into their guidelines, training programs, and licensure requirements. This would include incorporating theories of learning and development of young children as well as curriculum theory and models that support the education and development of various populations of students (Horm et al., 2022; Howard et al., 2007). They must also be taught how to support teachers to engage in high-quality pedagogical and assessment practices that improve children’s academic performance (Brown et al., 2018; Kauerz et al., 2021; Nicholson et al., 2022). Still, on the other hand, the principals in this case study had a more than basic understanding of many of these dimensions required to be instructional leaders of their Pre-K and K programs. For those who already are licensed, SEA and LEAs should capitalize on principals’ knowledge and experience of ECE programs, such as Pre-K and K, and provide professional development to enhance their sensemaking of how children learn and develop (Drake et al., 2023; Schmidt & Datnow, 2005), what appropriate curricula and assessments they should offer, and what leading and aligning ECE programs with their entire school entails.
SEAs and LEAs should also work with and educate practicing superintendents and other district administrators about the importance of providing school leaders with professional development opportunities that further inform their ECE instructional leadership skills so that they can create school environments that meet the needs of Pre-K and K students and foster their teachers’ pedagogical skills and knowledge (Garrity et al., 2022; Kauerz et al., 2021; Nicholson et al., 2022; Walker & Wooleyhand, 2022). This includes SEAs and LEAs informing superintendents and other district administrators about the importance of providing school leaders with the time and space needed within their daily schedules to engage with their Pre-K and K teachers as well as offer the training they might need to lead instructionally their early educators in a manner that builds the required capacity needed to ensure that all children receive a developmentally appropriate education across school districts (Carraway & Young, 2015; Kauerz et al., 2021). Furthermore, as part of these training opportunities and discussions, SEAs and LEAs must also do their part to ensure that principals are not making short-term investments with their instructional leadership in the testing grades while ignoring their Pre-K and K classrooms, which can have positive long-term impacts on their students’ academic achievement (e.g., Horm et al., 2022).
Finally, at the school level, principals should be responsible for directing their instructional leadership efforts. They possess “positional authority” about policy, and the instructional goals of their school empower them in a manner they may not recognize (Mavrogordato & White, 2020, p. 8). Because high-quality instruction across the early years improves students’ academic achievement in reading and math (Vernon-Feagans et al., 2019), they might reconsider and shift their leadership emphasis on the upper grades. By recentering their efforts to include Pre-K and K, students might become better prepared for the testing that awaits them if they received quality instruction beginning in their earliest school years. This requires principals to know how to and then provide “feedback on pedagogy, structuring professional development, [and] reviewing lesson plans” to their Pre-K and K teachers so that there is a seamless link in instruction from Pre-K through the end of elementary school (Sebastian et al., 2016, p. 91). As such, principals must use their “professional judgment” to create an “effective balance between reform demands and school internal goals” (Ganon-Shilon & Schechter, 2017, p. 693).
In sum, to effectively lead Pre-K and K programs, which the principals in this study wanted to do, requires systemic, organizational, and professional change at all levels of governance so that principals can “provide ambitious whole child-focused instruction, authentic relationships with families and communities, and internal accountability” as they mentor their teachers and monitor the progress of their students as learners and community members (Kauerz et al., 2021, p. 16).
Future Research
There is a continuing need for studies to examine how principals instructionally lead Pre-K, K, first-, second-, and third-grade programs, which goes beyond our investigation into only Pre-K and K. There is also a need to examine the impact of principals’ leadership practices on students’ academic development and achievement across the early childhood grades. Moreover, additional research is needed to discuss integrating principals’ leadership practices of Pre-K and K with those of the testing grades in high-stakes contexts such as Texas. While this article provides initial insight into these issues, additional research is necessary to assess aspiring and current principals’ preparation and professional development needs and design more effective systems and conditions for school leaders. There is also a need to identify effective leadership practices that support Pre-K and K across elementary school contexts and examine the multi-faceted barriers and challenges principals confront to support ECE and Pre-K and K teachers. Scholars should also address how principals in high-stakes versus low-stakes contexts integrate Pre-K and K into their elementary schools.
Footnotes
Appendix A
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank all the principals for their time and insightfulness into the issues examined in this study. They would also like to thank the editors of this journal and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and insightful suggestions in strengthening this article.
Authors’ Note
A version of this article was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association in Chicago, IL.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Authors
CHRISTOPHER P. BROWN is a professor of education leadership and policy at the University of Texas at Austin, 1912 Speedway, Austin, TX 78705;
PEDRO REYES is the Ashbel Smith Professor of Education Leadership and Policy at the University of Texas at Austin, 1912 Speedway, Austin, TX 78705;
LAUREN C. M
DAVID E. D
SARAH L. WOULFIN is a professor of education leadership and policy at the University of Texas at Austin, 1912 Speedway, Austin, TX 78705;