THE POTENTIAL OF A SOCIOCULTURAL approach for empowering early childhood educators cannot be presumed, and its impact on leadership strategies and literacy teaching may be open to question. This paper reports on research into a professional learning program, the Programa Futuro Infantil Hoy, developed and implemented by a team of Australian early childhood academics in collaboration with Chilean early childhood educators. To contextualise and add meaning to this study in terms of the shifts from teacher-directed, instructional teaching to a child-centred, sociocultural approach, a brief partial account is provided of Chilean early childhood education. Analysis of interview data reveals that the participant early childhood educators changed from heroic leadership to a more distributed leadership role in their pedagogical interactions with children, parents and colleagues. The data analysis indicates changes occurred in the early childhood educators' teaching philosophy, curriculum, teaching strategies and model of literacy teaching.