Session Information
26 SES 01 B, Leadership, Organization and Context
Paper Session
Contribution
The educational research community has largely focused, until relatively recently, on the rationality of leadership, documenting the complex role of principals and indicating the elements of successful school leadership. We are now at a point where the rationale identified in the literature creates the imperative for a consideration of the emotional realm in school leadership inquiry in order to produce empirical research into school leadership praxis that points very solidly to the central role played by the emotions in the doing of school leadership (Brennan & Mac Ruairc, 2011). Context is crucial (Crawford, 2014). The socio-economic and local context of the school constrains and enables principals’ work and shapes the ways in which they exercise their agency. This context also delimits, with varying implications and impact, all elements of leadership practice which in turn gives rise to an array of emotions. For Barbalet (1998), emotions are distributed differentially across segments of a society, most typically matching each segment’s socioeconomic status; individuals react emotionally to their respective shares of money, power, and prestige. This impacts how the principal builds a healthy emotional climate in school. Educational leaders who ignore context and their own and others’ histories will not be able to understand the emotional context of the school. This impacts on how the principal builds a healthy emotional context. Working in difficult contexts presents many challenges; in more recent times these challenges are compounded by a standards agenda. Added emotional strain is placed on principals in schools which fail to reach acceptable standards. There is a strong correlation between poverty and low achievement; it is difficult for children to focus on school when their families and neighbours are dogged by material anxieties, by high and enduring employment levels (Wrigley, 2003). “Distinction and disgust define the emotional economy of social exclusion” (Hargreaves, 2004a, p. 35). The anger, despair and frustration of others that emerges in difficult contexts arising from a sense of failure, insecurity, exclusion or marginalisation are features of the dark underbelly of leadership which are rarely mentioned in the research trajectory on emotions which champion an individualistic approach (Blackmore, 2011). No one exists in isolation; principals affect and are affected by the context in which they work. To ignore the social context of the school is to uncouple the emotions of principalship from the conditions of their social construction.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the emotional realm of principalship in Irish primary school settings. The research gives a ‘voice’ to principals in order to gain a better understanding of the complexities of school leadership and the factors which impact on their emotional praxis. The main research question is to examine the extent to which emotions in the doing of school leadership are influenced by the socio-cultural context of the school. Layder’s (1997) theory of social domains provides significant value for broadening existing knowledge about leadership practice, by providing nuanced, theoretically rigorous understandings of the emotional complexities faced by principals in their day to day leadership practice. The theory of social domains unpacks the dualism of lifeworld and system elements into their component units. Lifeworld is decomposed into the constituent elements of psychobiography and situated activity, while system elements are broken down into settings and contextual resources. The emotions of principalship are a complex amalgam of the causal influences of all four domains as they operate in time and space. The theory of social domains provides a framework of analyses for the emotions of principalship and leadership practice which enables one to get at the big picture while focusing in with a more detailed examination of the constituent parts
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Barbalet, J. M. (1998). Emotion, social theory, and social structure: A macrosociological approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beatty, B. (2000). The emotions of educational leadership: Breaking the silence. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 3(4), 331-357. Blackmore, J. (2011). Lost in translation? Emotional intelligence, affective economies, leadership and organizational change. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 43(3), 207-225. Brennan, J., & Mac Ruairc, G. (2011). Taking it personally: Examining patterns of emotional practice in leading primary schools in the Republic of Ireland. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 14(2), 129-150. Crawford, M. (2014). Developing as an educational leader and manager. London: Sage Czarniawska, B. (2007). Shadowing and other techniques for doing fieldwork in modern societies. Univesitetsforgalet: Copenhagen Business School Press. Hargreaves, A. (2004). Distinction and disgust: The emotional politics of school failure. International Journal of Leadership in Education: Theory and Practice, 7(1), 27-41. Layder, D. (1997). Modern social theory: Key debates and new directions. London: UCL Press. Layder, D. (2013). Doing excellent small-scale research. London: Sage Reay, D. (2004). Gendering Bourdieu's concepts of capitals?: Emotional capital, women and social capital". In L. Adkins & B. Skeggs (Eds.), Feminism after Bourdieu. Oxford: Blackwell. Seidman, I. (2013). Interviewing as qualitative research: A guide for researchers in education and the social sciences (4th ed.). New York: Teachers College Press. Wrigley, T. (2003). Schools of hope: A new agenda for school improvement. Staffordshire: Trentham Books.
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