Over the last decades, pedagogical leadership has been consolidated as a key factor to promote the quality of educational institutions. It is a commonplace, but it is also highlighted in the results of educational indicators and in educational policy studies: leadership matters. Traditionally, leadership has been linked to the formal roles of management, especially to the head or principal (Fullan, 2014; González-Falcón et al., 2020), however the most recent research has highlighted on the relevant role of middle leaders (De Nobile, 2018; Gurr, 2023; Lipscombe et al., 2023) and teacher leadership (Muijs y Harris, 2003; Pan et al., 2023). It should also be noted that research has been contextualized more often in secondary education and to a lesser extent in the context of early childhood education (Heikka, et al., 2018; Fonsén et al., 2023; Cooper, 2023).

In this framework, this contribution aims to analyze the perspectives about pedagogical leadership of Early Childhood teachers. More specifically, the objective is to explore the perception of early childhood teachers about the importance of indicators of the teacher's pedagogical leadership to explore the possibilities to implement theoretical models in practice through initial and continuous training.

We present a survey study focus on gathered the perceptions of Early Childhood teachers regarding the importance of teacher pedagogical leadership. The participants in this research are 36 teachers of five schools located in Madrid Region. The 88.90% are women (n= 60) and the 66.7% teach in the second cycle (3-6 years) of early childhood education. Regarding teaching experience, it is very varied (while 52.8% have less than three years of experience, 27.8% have more than ten years). The instrument was a questionnaire specifically designed for this purpose, considering the background of the literature and especially the proposals of Gento (2002) and González-Fernández et al. (2020, 2021). The questionnaire includes 26 items, which is filled by the teachers on a 6-point scale according to the importance they ascribed to each indicator of teacher pedagogical leadership. Also, the survey includes three open-ended questions about pedagogical leadership in early childhood education (advantages, competencies necessary for teacher leadership and the relationship between leadership-quality). The internal consistency coefficient showed that questionnaire is highly reliable (.913). The questionnaire of this study was distributed during September 2013. The results were analyzed with an exploratory and descriptive approach with SPSS v24 and we also conducted thematic analysis with coding to delve deeper into the arguments and teaching reflections on teacher leadership.

The results showed interesting results that allow us to answer our research objectives. First, it should be noted that the set of indicators derived from Gento's (2002) theoretical model are globally valued as important by the participating teachers. However, the quantitative study highlights that the participating teachers perceive the indicators included in the professional, emotional, and charismatic dimensions as more important than those included in the administrative and training dimensions (Gento et al., 2022). Although it is important to delve into the analysis by items, this result has implications for establishing policies that affect issues that really matter while reducing irrelevant ones (excessive bureaucratization of teaching, which reduces the capacity to innovate and improve). In a complementary way, the qualitative analysis carried out allows us to interpret the quantitative scores and position the teacher's pedagogical leadership as an informal but very relevant role in the life of schools (Scallon et al., 2023). Its relevance is in the direct educational relationship with students, and the capacity to improve school coexistence, inclusion, and guidance/tutoring (Fernández y López, 2023; López-Gómez et al., 2020). These results, which should be interpreted considering limitations of generalization, will be discussed to propose a teacher professional development program focused on specific teacher leadership in Early Childhood Education and related teaching competencies.

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