This chapter describes the “rhizomatic writing machine,” described in Chapter 4, in action in a nursery school in Norway. Data are shared about moments with the children as well as about the experience of writing itself. At the heart of the participants’ experience is the tension between safety and transgression, as they become increasingly willing to share difficult aspects of their daily work with children. Transgressions in this context are understood from a processual perspective, in which change happens in practice when educators understand something new or see realities differently through written approaches. In this way, both the writing process and the sharing of writing become sites for the building of sensitivity, for relationship making, and for serious assessments of the complex nature of quality improvement. Writing becomes equivalent with thinking, with written texts used to prompt questioning and reflection on the intimacy and quality of pedagogical practice. The chapter concludes by stressing the importance of close collaboration between center leaders to ensure strong internal systems exist to support the ongoing developing of staff and of the writing process.

Whereas business innovation is related to commercialization, market demands, and profitability, social innovation addresses fulfilling social needs and meeting public demands. Social innovation depends more on government support and satisfying interest groups than on investors. Social problems are ‘wicked problems’ because they are tremendously complex, have multiple causes, and are interconnected to other problems. Collaborations are therefore needed for solving the world’s biggest challenges such as global warming; supplies of energy, water, and food; aging societies; public health; pandemics; and security. Achieving social innovations requires the combined contributions of the public sector, businesses, and citizens. It depends on adaptive intelligence in which people have novel and compelling ideas (creative intelligence), can ensure that these ideas are logically sound and coherent (analytical intelligence), can put these ideas into practice (practical intelligence), and can apply them for the common good (wisdom). Another source of intelligence is artificial intelligence that should be directed toward grand challenges that span health, wealth, and wisdom.

Although Indigenous theories of knowledge have regained much ground in recent years, their application to early childhood education remains rare. This chapter outlines the ontology, epistemology, and methodological principles of kaupapa Māori theory, which has been brought to studies of education in Aotearoa New Zealand in recent decades. As is customary in Māori culture, the author opens with her whakapapa, or genealogy, locating herself in relation to the reader and to the text that follows. The chapter begins by briefly outlining the cosmological ontological origins of kaupapa Māori theory. It then turns to the principles of mātauranga Māori (Māori epistemology), and how these principles are operationalized as tikanga Māori (customary practices) to influence research methodology and practice. The chapter concludes with a short description of the case study described in Chapter 3 of this book and how it was informed by the sequential knowledge framework of Te Ao Māori, Te Reo Karanga o Matangireia, kaupapa Māori, kaupapa Māori theory, and tikanga Māori.

Newell & Simon’s 1972 book Human Problem Solving continues to influence theories of problem solving. Their theory provides a general framework for specifying how the structure of the problem, strategies, and different sources of knowledge influence progress from the initial state to the goal state. In contrast, discovering solutions for problems studied by Gestalt psychologists typically require a perceptual reorganization to identify the correct relations among the components of the problem. A rapid shift to a correct organization is referred to as ‘insight’. Solving mathematics and scientific problems requires utilizing information learned in the classroom. This information is organized into clusters of knowledge that are typically called ‘schema’. Design problems are usually ill-structured in which the initial, goal, and intermediate states are incompletely specified. There are no right or wrong answers, only better and worse ones. The size and complexity of the problems require decomposition into smaller problems or modules.

Innovation depends not only on group decisions but on collaborative problem solving that implements those decisions. Collaborative problem solving requires both cognitive skills and social skills that include identifying the knowledge of other team members, establishing shared understanding, coordinating behavior, and pursuing common goals. The 2015 international test of educational progress (PISA) found that only 8% of the evaluated students excelled at these skills. Teams functioning effectively require members to have access to relevant information and then communicate, elaborate, and integrate that information to discover and defend the best solution. As teams progress through the idea generation and implementation phases, leaders must be flexible in managing this transition. Leaders differ in their style of management and different conditions require charismatic, ideological, or pragmatic leadership. Attributes of creative leadership include intelligence, creativity, and the wisdom to use these attributes for the greater good.

Designers in the real world must adhere to cost and schedules, pay attention to the competition, and work in multidisciplinary teams. Their products are typically the result of incremental, rather than radical, innovation. A questionnaire on how design thinking influences organizational outcomes revealed that four beneficial practices were to form diverse teams, generate diverse ideas, emphasize active listening, and execute real-world experiments. Curiosity, interest, and a drive for sense-making drive motivation, which can be measured by the Motivation to Innovate Inventory. Innovation requires risks and thus a balance between taking and reducing risks. Both traditional and foresight forecasting reduce risks, although the foresight perspective is more uniquely suited to the current complexity of world events. Technical and scientific progress contributes to success, but the process of innovation must be analyzed within a complete system that depends not only on the product but on the market environment, production facilities, knowledge, and social support within the organization.

This final chapter returns to the Think Tank Manifesto outlined in Chapter 1 to reflect on the three pairs of theory and case study documented in Chapters 2 to 7, with the seven claims of the opening manifesto linked to specific examples in the book. Themes of curiosity, inclusion, and resistance are taken up in order to summarize the process of coauthorship and frame a way forward for research and learning in leadership in early childhood education. Derrida’s concept of the “Gift” and its dangers are used to maintain an argument for plurality in theory and method in leadership studies, and to resist foreclosure on the “right” way to be a leader in early childhood education.

The work of philosophers Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari is drawn on in this chapter to make a case for looking beyond discourses of accountability and quality improvement for leaders in early childhood education and embracing more fully the affective dimensions of this work. In engaging with the inevitability of change, the chapter upends ideas about rationality, individualism, and time, turning instead to understanding the “leadership event” as complex, integrated, holistic, and laden with affect. Concepts and practices of group-decentered writing projects are introduced as a way of manifesting the ethical and embodied nature of work in early childhood education. An argument is made for the development of a “rhizomatic writing machine” to allow leaders to fully embrace the liminal, and even unconscious, aspects of the development of their subjectivities as leaders as they work in constant states of change and flux.

The first half of this chapter outlines key concepts in cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), including implicit and explicit mediation and double stimulation. The nature of contradictions within CHAT is described as a springboard for development in workplace practices. The chapter then describes how these concepts have been operationalized in the work of Yrjö Engeström and colleagues through the formative interventionist methodology known as Change Laboratory. Change Laboratories are collaborative settings in which contradictions are brought to conscious awareness and worked on to redesign workplace artefacts, norms, and labor arrangements. As contradictions are resolved through new concretizations of practice, participants in the workplace increase their capacity to develop their working world and, therefore, themselves.

This chapter presents a case study of kaupapa Māori theory applied to the leadership perspectives of ten Māori women leading “mainstream” (i.e., non- Māori) early childhood education services in Aotearoa New Zealand. The chapter recounts how, as the research progressed, it became increasingly clear that the perspectives of the participants had been, and continued to be, shaped by continuing traces of the colonial history of Aotearoa New Zealand. The chapter portrays the participants’ acute awareness of a variety of mechanisms of racism and white privilege, including self-silencing, appropriation of cultural knowledge, and, for some, shame at not being able to speak the Māori language. These mechanisms of erasure are traced back to key initiatives and legislation in the country’s colonial history. The later part of the chapter recounts how the participants were able to draw on their cultural knowledge as a source of strength and to to exert resistance to ongoing oppression. The chapter ends with a call for the early childhood field to recognize and respond to the ongoing harmful effects of colonization for Māori.

One method for teaching creativity is to encourage students to adopt broader perspectives. Taking different perspectives provides access to a wide range of knowledge, including social categories, stereotypes, interactions, roles, and events. Prospective thinking has also proven effective by asking students to judge how probable it would be for various future events to happen to them. Examples of creative methods (cartoon captions, gestures, incongruent contexts, novel uses of parts) and types of thinking (prospective, perspective) can serve as guidelines for instructional interventions when developing curricula for improving creativity. For example, an undergraduate creative thinking course at a large Midwestern university focused on strategies to help students develop different perspectives, identify unique opportunities, generate multiple ideas to solve problems, and evaluate those ideas. One of the themes that emerged from six international studies was the role of the teacher in managing discomfort from the uncertainty of open-ended tasks.

The most important cognitive taxonomy in education is Bloom’s taxonomy. The revised taxonomy has two dimensions. The knowledge dimension consists of factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive knowledge. The cognitive-process dimension consists of remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. Other taxonomies expand on these cognitive skills to include social and emotional skills such as social engagement, cooperation, and emotional resilience. Still others add ethical, civic, and cultural dimensions. Developing talent in areas such as mathematics, music, and the visual arts requires general cognitive abilities, mental flexibility, and creativity. Motivation and conscientiousness are also needed to support learning and engagement. Predictors of performances in a sample of more than 6,000 athletes revealed that participation in multiple sports is better for superior performances at the adult level. World-class athletes typically participated in multiple sports, began playing their major sport later, and initially reached performance milestones at a slower rate than their competitors.