Reconceptualizing Principals’ Emotional Labor in Volatile Times

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 8:00 am Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: Focusing on Educator Emotions and Well-Being (Table 13)

Abstract

This paper reports on the increasingly challenging dimensions of principals’ work in Australia, including the intensified social volatilities in which it is manifested and experienced. Heightened social tensions and educational inequalities interconnected with social, health and political injustices, have exacerbated the emotional demands in the principalship and present significant challenges for leadership practices and emotional management capacities. The research developed a multifaceted, robust evidence base to inform scholarship, education policy and workforce development to enable educational systems and principals to recognise and productively manage new and intensified forms of labour, where learning conditions are inseparable from leadership conditions. The findings provide significant benefits in reparative efforts for redressing a looming principal recruitment and retention crisis.

Authors

• Jane Wilkinson, Monash University

• Christine Grice, University of Sydney

• Fiona Longmuir, Monash University

• Tim Delany, University of Melbourne

• Amanda Keddie, Swarthmore College

• Lucas Walsh, Monash University

• Philippa Chandler, Monash University