This year, Sweden’s preschools and its educators have been introduced to a new curriculum, which clarifies and specifies the preschool teachers’ responsibility for teaching and to lead the teaching processes. The aim of this study is to investigate how five preschool teachers and one vice-principal interpret this responsibility related to the work team – primarily from a leadership perspective. The study also investigates how the respondents interpret this leadership in relation to their experienced conditions of the work team and the occupation.

The empirical data has been collected through qualitative interviews conducted at a unit of six public preschools in Stockholm, in order to investigate the preschool teachers’ subjective thoughts about the area. We used Sveningsson & Alvessons perspective on leadership, in combination with Biestas democratic concepts of inclusion and exclusion, as tools to analyse the empirical data.

The result shows a range in the leadership styles, used by the preschool teachers, between the authoritarian and the democratic leadership. The other employees in the work team (in the result called followers) were given little or great influence in relation to the preschool teachers based on the conditions prevailing in the situation.

Our conclusions, based on our survey questions, are that the preschool teachers and the vice-principal define and interpret this leadership differently, and make different leadership choices and strategies based on the experienced conditions in the professional practice. However, all respondents showed an aim for, and the pursuit of, a democratic leadership.