This paper examines principals’ emotional, and often invisible, work (Hochschild, 1983; cf. Wilkinson, 2021). Recent studies undertaken in a long-term network collaboration between school principals in low socioeconomic status Swedish communities and educational researchers, show how leadership is learned and shaped in and by context specific circumstances, entailing several challenges. The most prominent challenges are connected to a) high population mobility, b) comprehensive linguistic and cultural diversity, c) comprehensive knowledge diversity, and d) an intense problem complexity, i.e., a dense flow of extraordinary incidents in and around the schools (Hirsh et al., 2023). Although not explicitly elaborated on in these studies, the results also indicate that emotions are a prominent, albeit often unspoken, part of the principals' work. In this study, we re-analyse the same data that led to the above-mentioned findings, with specific interest directed towards finding discursive manifestations of emotional labour. Additionally, the new analysis is directed towards understanding and explaining principals’ emotional labour through a practice architectures lens. Principals’ leading is explored as a practice that consists of sayings, doings and relatings conditioning and conditioned by site-specific cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political arrangements (Kemmis et al., 2014). The empirical data underlying this study consists of five audio-recorded peer group dialogues between principals (N=20), conducted within the framework of the longitudinal R&D collaboration mentioned above. Our preliminary results show that some site-specific conditions in particular involve emotional labor: Work intensification, clearly connected to the context-related challenges that the previous study made visible and navigating the local policy context. We suggest that understanding emotional labor as an essential and demanding aspect of principals' work is necessary for the building of support structures around them, which in the long run can counter the impact of work intensification. Preliminary analysis also makes visible how the intertwined site-specific arrangements condition the principals' leading practices, and how they navigate and learn 'how to go on' based in the emotional labor. This suggests that emotional labor can be understood as conditions for educational leading practices, sometimes perceived as a burden for the individual but indeed also as important, site-based practice knowledge that gives principals’ work joy and meaning. Further, the methodological approach in the R&D collaboration, i.e., the peer-dialogues, seem to empower the principals and trigger agentive action in terms of proposing and initiating educational and workplace changes (cf. Hirsh et al, 2023).

References:

Hirsh, Å., Liljenberg, M., Jahnke, A., & Karlsson Perez Å. (2023). Far from the generalised norm: Recognising the interplay between contextual particularities and principals’ leadership in schools in low-socio-economic status communities. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 1-18. DOI: 10.1177/17411432231187349

Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. University of California Press.

Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Hardy, I., Grootenboer, P., & Bristol, L. (2014). Changing practices, Changing education. Springer. Wilkinson, J. (2021). Educational leadership through a practice lens: Practice matters. Springer.