https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8306-5202
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ABSTRACT
Principals around the world are in crisis. There is a looming shortage of people who want to take up the role, and principals deal with heightened emotions each day – both their own and those of others. The work of school leaders is emotionally intense, and the intense nature of their work has direct consequences for principals’ health and well-being and their own personal relationships. This paper presents a scoping review into aspects of leaders’ labor which are often undervalued or overlooked – those that are grounded in emotions, relationships, and ethics of care. It explores the literature across four key themes: emotions and emotional labor, relationships, health and well-being, and care. The emotional intensity of principals’ work is evident across these themes, and the paper highlights the importance of focusing on these elements of principals’ work into the future.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Amanda McKay
Amanda McKay is a Senior Lecturer in Educational Leadership in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. Her research explores the contemporary challenges of principals’ work and how we can better attract, support, and keep school leaders within the profession.
Katrina MacDonald
Katrina MacDonald is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Research for Educational Impact (REDI), Deakin University’s Strategic Research Centre in Education. Her research and teaching interests are in educational leadership, social justice, gender, public schooling, school autonomy reform, spatiality, and the sociology of education through a practice lens (feminist, Bourdieu, practice architectures). Katrina is a former anthropologist, archaeologist and primary and secondary teacher in Victoria, Australia. She tweets at @drfreersumenjin.
Fiona Longmuir
Fiona Longmuir is a lecturer in Educational Leadership at Monash University. Her research interests include intersections between educational leadership and educational change with a particular focus on student voice and agency. She is currently working on projects investigating school leadership for social cohesion, leadership for unprecedented times and student voice and agency in alternative educational settings.