This article presents the findings from a review of literature on leadership in early childhood (EC). It identifies a paucity of research, despite a high potential for leadership activity in the early childhood field. It concludes that there is a clear need to identify what effective leadership practice is in terms of processes and outcomes within this field. It also concludes that theoretically based studies that allow different models and characteristics to be empirically tested are long overdue. The serious lack of leadership training is also highlighted by the literature review, which means that many early childhood managers could be significantly under-prepared for their role.

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With the policy of developing a, transparent and competitive European higher education sector, learning outcomes (LOs) are attributed a foundation stone role in policy and curriculum development. A premise for their implementation is that they bear fundamental similarities across national, institutional or professional/disciplinary contexts. In contrast, detractors suggest that LOs cannot communicate precisely across programmes or national boundaries. With this as a backdrop, this article analyses how LOs are used to communicate what students are to learn and the extent to which their use drives standardisation. The analysis is based on a case study of how LOs are formulated in study programme documents in two professional education programmes in Norway and the UK. The findings indicate that LOs can be considered to drive standardisation through the same presentation using bullet points. The study also finds that LOs are framed in different ways in the two countries and within the different study programmes and in a web of interconnected documents. This 'local' structural use of LOs disrupts their 'foundation stone' role as a vehicle for standardisation and weakens the establishment of sameness across institutions and nations.

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