The Predicament and Breakthrough Paths of Preschool Teachers' Creative Leadership under China's Centralized Education Management System

Abstract

China's centralized education governance expects preschool teachers to foster children's creativity while compressing their autonomous decision-making power. This study examines preschool teachers' creative leadership predicaments and breakthrough pathways within this constraints. Employing library research method and drawing upon Structuration Theory, Early Childhood Leadership Theory, and Creative Pedagogy Theory as analytical frameworks, the research reveals four core dimensions of creative leadership: curriculum creation, environment creation, play-based teaching creation, and creative parent partnership. Teachers confront four predicaments: safety (risk aversion), institutional (standardized constraints), role (identity conflict), and evaluation (outcome orientation) dilemmas. The research proposes breakthrough pathways that require establishing balanced space between structural constraints and professional autonomy through teacher agency, kindergarten support systems, and policy-level decentralization. This study’s novelty lies in pioneering creative leadership research in China's centralized context, offering the theoretical perspective of "autonomy within constraints" for understanding teacher agency in high-stakes accountability environments globally.