This study examined leadership in Early Childhood Education (ECE) enacted in municipalities in Finland. This study is a thesis by publication consisting of five articles. Two of the articles are literature reviews focusing on the theoretical underpinnings of this study and three articles are based on the data collected to address the specific research questions investigated in this dissertation.

The four main aims of the dissertation were: - To investigate how distributed pedagogical leadership can be conceptualised in the contexts of ECE. - To examine how the enactment of ECE leadership responsibilities, especially pedagogical leadership, is perceived by different stakeholders involved in leadership roles in municipalities. - To gain a holistic understanding of the perceptions of leadership enactment held by different ECE stakeholders. - To analyse the leadership perceptions of different stakeholders in order to identify the main constructions of ECE leadership within the theoretical frame of distributed pedagogical leadership.