School reform and the emotional demands of principals: Lorna's story

Abstract

The issue of emotions in school leadership is one that has received increasing attention in recent years. In this paper we present a case study of the emotional demands upon one principal as she undertakes a programme of school reform. This case study works against the common discourse of ‘emotional maturity’ inherent in an individual that is prevalent in leadership standards and literatures and shows how this principal's emotional work is constructed within the political frameworks of schools. This principal was both normalised into traditional ways of being a school principal and also sought to resist such normalisations. This paper provides an important contribution to understanding the ways that women leaders are negotiating the emotional terrain of enacting change and reform in their schools.

Keywords:

• leadership
• emotions
• educational change

Introduction

The topic of emotions and school leadership has received significant attention in the educational leadership literature over recent years. However, while there is increasing recognition of the social and organisational dimensions of emotions, leadership is still largely assumed, in much of the leadership literature, to be an individual trait, characteristic, behaviour or practice (Blackmore 1999; Zorn and Boler 2007). The relentless drive of education reform in countries such as the USA, England and Australia has enormous consequences for school leaders, and the construction of leadership as the solution to education's problems in research and policy still centres on the principal or head teacher as the necessary ingredient for successful school change (Gunter 2012; Thomson 2009). As such many studies of leadership and emotions have focused on these individualised accounts of emotions.

Furthermore, social justice leadership, as opposed to other forms of leadership, entails a significant emotional investment in the kinds of work that is required to address issues of justice, equity and disadvantage. With a renewed focus on social justice in many education systems (No Child Left Behind, Every Child Matters, Melbourne Declaration, etc.), what is required is more empirical focus on leaders and school communities that are striving for social justice and the emotions entailed in such leadership practices (Zembylas 2010). For leaders working in disadvantaged schools, leadership is very much a form of emotional labour (Blackmore 2010). That is, leadership for social justice is undoubtedly challenging work that can evoke a range of emotions of anxiety, guilt, anger, passion, excitement and indignation at the injustices for their students and communities (Blackmore 2010; Zembylas 2010). As such there is a need to understand the complexities and challenges of these emotional investments and to understand how leaders are negotiating these issues in implementing change in schools (Sachs and Blackmore 1998).

In this paper we examine the emotions of educational leadership in one school in Queensland, Australia, as the principal embarked on a period of reform in the school. The school is in a very low socio-economic status (SES) area characterised by severe levels of poverty, unemployment and disadvantage. The case study is telling due to the types of leadership practices involved and the complex interplay of emotions involved in working for justice and equity. We present this case study not as a case of heroic leadership (although one could construct such a discourse) but rather as a way of understanding how emotions and leadership are constituted and operate primarily in the experiences of the principal but also the teachers in this school. As such the case will resonate with similar leadership undertaken in disadvantaged contexts in many other places around the world.

Emotions and educational leadership

Emotions have been attracting significant attention within the educational leadership literature. This includes both literatures for leadership (Percival and Tranter 2002; Reeves 2002) and about leadership (Lingard et al. 2003; Beatty and Brew 2004; Blackmore 1999; Zembylas 2010). There is an increasing recognition that leadership within schools, especially within times of change, involves emotional demands on the part of all within schools, including principals, teachers, students and parents (Blackmore 1996; Sachs and Blackmore 1998; Hargreaves 2004; Little 1996). While the focus in this paper is mostly on the emotions of the principal, we do acknowledge the leadership of teachers in schools as important (Lingard et al. 2003; Hayes et al. 2006), along with the emotions of teachers (Hargreaves 2004; Leithwood and Beatty 2008). In this paper we work with the understanding of emotions as not simply private individual traits but rather as both collaboratively and publicly formed (Boler and Zembylas 2003; Harding and Pribram 2002; Zorn and Boler 2007). The importance of this conceptualisation is it allows for a focus on the constitution of emotions and leadership in social and organisational contexts and to move away from essentialised approaches to leadership and emotions.

The issue of emotions and leadership in schools is also highly gendered (Blackmore 1999; Sachs and Blackmore 1998). Whilst all principals are clearly affected emotionally by aspects of school life, the ways in which men and women respond to emotional demands and the ways in which such responses are read are often very different (Sachs and Blackmore 1998). For example, displays of anger can be perceived very differently when performed by men and women (Boler 1999). Schools have traditionally been constructed within a framework that has prioritised rationality over emotions (Putnam and Mumby 1993). Within this framework, effective organisations, including schools, are expected to be rational organisations. These rational organisations are institutions where difficult decisions are made, where there are clear lines of authority, where annual operational plans are clearly prepared and their objectives systematically achieved, and where academic outcomes are valorised over social outcomes. Within such an organisation emotions are to be controlled. An unruly organisation, in contrast to the effective organisation, is one where emotions are deemed to be unfettered and uncontrolled (Lutz 1990). The former organisation is one that is grounded in attributes characterised by hegemonic forms of masculinity: tough, controlled, authoritarian, objective and efficient, where goals are achieved rather than ‘just’ talked about. The latter are characterised by attributes most often constructed as feminine: soft, flighty, romanticised or idealistic notions about children and learning, and where there is more talk than action (see Lingard and Douglas 1999; Blackmore 2006). New managerialist discourses have, as Blackmore (1996) has noted, begun to advocate various practices identified as ‘feminine’, for example, collaboration, reflective dialogue and shared leadership. However, within these discourses the valorisation of rationality has not been disrupted in any significant way.

The rational/emotional binary has been a significant concern of feminists who have argued that this binary is constructed within highly gendered ways to make distinctions between the private and the public (Paechter 1998). For instance, within education, Beatty (2000, 334), in critiquing this binary, has argued that: ‘Educational administration researchers can no longer afford to treat the emotions as subordinate, insignificant or peripheral if we are to explore fully the way leaders are and the ways they can be’. Blackmore has critiqued the ways in which new forms of management and associated accountabilities have been creating new emotional economies that have had detrimental effects on social justice, and on female principals (Blackmore 1996, 1999, 2004). She has argued that within these economies, principals are expected to manage the emotional responses of teachers (and students) to the new performative cultures that prioritise outcomes on standardised testing over substantive and rich forms of pedagogy. Such management, she contends, can lead to emotional dissonance for principals who are on the one hand pressured by their own accountabilities to the system, but on the other hand politically aligned with the views of teachers. These performative expectations and accountabilities can also lead to a breakdown in trust between principals and teachers (Blackmore 2004). Blackmore (1999) also argues that such a dissonance is greater for female principals whose preferred mode of leading is often (co-opted) by new managerial discourses.

Feminist educators have not been the only ones to raise the importance of understanding the impact of emotions on schooling practices. Accompanying the feminist critiques of bureaucratic and management discourses within education has been one of the mainstream approaches to emotions. Many of these approaches have drawn on the work of Goleman (1995) and his notion of ‘emotional intelligence’. Hartley (2004, 583), for instance, notes that ‘Within management theory, there are emerging some decidedly non-rational terms’. He refers to the use of such expressions as ‘vision’, ‘passion’ and ‘delight’ within the literature. However, rather than a concern for the welfare of others, he argues that what is expected now from managers is an ability to ensure that the workers for whom they are responsible are both productive and emotionally connected to their work and workplace. He thus suggests that the field of leadership is still located within a modernist framework that privileges the rational – non-emotional – bureaucratic model. Thus, whilst in education there is a consequent recognition that schools are places where emotions are constantly at play with significant effects for all of those working (and studying) within schools, some leadership discourses promote the management of one's own and others’ emotions in order to maximise outcomes (Blackmore 1999: Sachs and Blackmore 1998). The importance given to managing others' emotions has become evident in the attention regularly given to principals’ people skills within educational departmental policies. For instance, within the Australian State from which the data are drawn for this paper, a leadership framework was developed in 2006 that highlights five ‘capabilities’ of ‘effective leaders’ for ‘effective school leadership’ (State of Queensland 2006). Under the heading Personal Leadership Capability, it is indicated that principals who demonstrate this capability are ‘emotionally mature’ and ‘remain composed in challenging and complex situations’. Further to this is the list of traits associated with ‘good’ leadership, for example, ‘courage, tough-mindedness, intuition, passion, self-confidence, optimism and wisdom’ (State of Queensland 2005). This concept of ‘emotional maturity’ has important political ramifications and, as we argue here, gender implications. As Hartley (2004, 592) says in relation to new discourses of emotional leadership – ‘they leave intact existing hierarchies and power relations’.

These power relations are evident in gendered relations of power. The new focus on emotions still primarily conceives of emotions as individual rather than as personal and political constructs (Blackmore 2004; Boler 1999; Beatty 2000). As we stated earlier, feminist literature on emotions and leadership has argued that emotions are collaboratively constructed within the context of the school and with other people and are thus neither private nor individual (Zorn and Boler 2007). Thus, as Zorn and Boler (2007, 148) state:

Within education, as in the wider culture, emotions are a site of control and a mode of political resistance. Emotions matter in educational leadership because leaders, teachers and learners understand and enact their roles of subordination and domination significantly through learned emotional expressions and silences. Furthermore, emotions are a basis of collective and individual social resistances to injustices.

In this paper we recognise the construction of emotions within the political framework of schools and draw on the case study to illustrate the emotional work conducted in an Australian primary school. It indicates the ways in which the emotional economy within which the school's principal was located worked to discipline her into being a normalised construction of a ‘school principal’. It also demonstrates the ways in which she worked to resist such a normalisation and provides an indication of the extent of emotional demands involved in this resistance. In so doing the paper provides a critique of those discourses within schools that valorise ‘emotional maturity’ as an individual private trait rather than recognising that emotions are constructed within the political framework of schools.

The school

The focus of this paper is on the leadership practices of one principal in a small Australian inner-city primary school, Stony Lane State School. The data in the paper are drawn from two large studies of school reform conducted over a period of 10 years in the state of Queensland, Australia (Lingard et al. 2001; Mills et al. 2008). Those studies were both concerned with issues of school reform and improved classroom practice. The first study involved 24 schools and the second 18 schools. In each case the research involved classroom observations and interviews with teachers, principals and other key personnel in schools. Stony Lane State School participated in both studies. In these studies Stony Lane stood out as a school where students were highly engaged in intellectually challenging and meaningful lessons, where teachers were highly motivated and supportive of the school and each other, and as a school that performed extremely well on standardised tests compared with schools located in areas with similar demographics. It was a consequence of these factors in the first study that led to its inclusion in the second. Lorna was interviewed in 2000 and then again in 2008 about the school's reform processes, and her own leadership practices and relationships with staff. At the time of the second interview she was close to retirement. Whilst other teachers and some students from the school were interviewed, their transcripts are not the focus of this paper as its primary concern is with the principal's account of her emotions and emotional investment in school reform. However, all of those interviews indicated that Lorna and her work were highly regarded and valued by staff and students. The following comments from staff are indicative of the way in which she was regarded at the school. For instance, one of the teachers at the school commented in 2000 on Lorna's support for their professionalism:

To come into a school where the principal appreciates you as a teacher and says, ‘I may not agree with the way that you do stuff, but I can see that what you are doing is fine’ and you feel affirmed by that and the fact that you are supported makes such a difference.

Another teacher in 2008, whilst reflecting about the changes in the school since the first study, made the following point:

But one thing that never changes here (laughs) and, I think it comes from the leadership style here, is that you're never allowed to rest on your laurels here. There's always some freshness injected into our direction, and there's always a sense that, you know, let's recognise what we're doing well, and we'll take time to contemplate and be reflective about that, but there's always a new challenge.

Stony Lane is a small primary school located in an inner-city industrialised area that at the time of the first interview was not far from one of the State's major prisons, which has since closed down. Over the last 15 years Lorna has overseen the school's reform efforts and the growth of the school from just under 50 students to 200 students. The student enrolments are now capped at 200 due to the small size of the school grounds. New teachers to the school have worked closely with Lorna to align their practices with the school ethos. The growth of the school has corresponded with a gentrification of the local area and more middle-class people with young children moving into the school's catchment area. The school attracts many visitors from interstate and overseas, primarily due to its philosophy programme, a programme that has been introduced by the principal, and which is not common in Australian primary schools. It has also attracted attention because of its impressive environmental education programme and commitment to multi-age classrooms. This attention has been sharpened by the high results achieved by many of the students on standardised tests.

Much of the reform within the school was born out of crisis. Blackmore (1999) has noted how women principals tend to be located in schools most under threat, schools in disadvantaged areas, small rural schools and schools with multicultural student populations. She suggests that as a result, ‘women principals are more susceptible to being judged as failures according to market norms’ (1999, 156). Stony Lane at the time of Lorna's appointment was a very small school, under threat of closure and located in a low socioeconomic area. However, she and the teachers at the school have been highly successful in making this a school that is highly valued and respected. This success though has not been easy and has placed significant emotional demands on both Lorna and the staff. When the reforms were first initiated there were only two other teachers at the school with Lorna, who was a teaching principal. When asked in 2000 how the school had developed its programmes, Lorna commented about this time:

The school had 48 children and we were going downhill fast, and I thought well, we can't make any mistakes here, you know, we can't go wrong, so basically I said to the others ‘What is your passion about teaching? What is it that you really believe about teaching?’ … I said that to Lisa and Wendy who were the ones here at the time, and I said what do you really believe about teaching, what do you really honestly get passionate about, and that's where we started. With Wendy it was environmental education. With Lisa it was multi-age. And with me it was getting kids achieving at their potential, whether they're that clever or not clever, getting them doing their best and feeling good about that. And part of that was let's try philosophy.

What is interesting here is that the school's reforms were not imposed from outside, that is they were not part of any departmental directive. In each case the three significant reforms that were to take place, environmental education, multi-age classrooms and philosophy, were all derived from the school's three teachers’ passions. These three key teachers, all of whom were women with many years' teaching experience and who are still at the school, had emotional investments in the success of these reforms. In many ways this approach is in conflict with more rationalist forms of school organisation and planning. For this group, and for the principal, there was no decision about trying to be the number one school in the area, there was no discussion about how to differentiate the school from other local schools in order to capture the student market, there was no fallback on conservative measures such as an increased focus on discipline to change the school's image. Planning for the school's growth had not been detailed beyond trying to work with the teachers’ passions and Lorna's view of young people.

In discussions with teachers and the principal it became very clear in 2008 that philosophy was still one of the strongest elements of the school and underpinned much of the classroom teaching. However, many of the other particularities of this school were still in evidence, such as the environmental education programme and the multi-age classrooms. Although in relation to the multi-age programme, the year seven class, the last year of primary school in Queensland, was now on its own. When asked about this Lorna responded:

Grade Sevens have chosen to be on their own … they made that decision a couple of years ago and we've just left it at that. Lisa of course says that ‘well I still run it as a multi-age class’ and that's fine.

The success of the school's reforms and the associated growth of the school have had an impact upon the school. Over the last 15 years the school began to earn a reputation as an alternative school within the state system. This reputation was based on its various programmes, along with its democratic decision-making, its consultations with parents and its focus on learning rather than behaviour. As a consequence, many students who did not seem to fit in at other schools began to enrol at the school. As Lorna stated:

Once it became known a long time ago that we were doing this [philosophy, environmental education] the numbers started to change. In the beginning we got a lot of children that weren't managing at other schools, behaviourally maybe? And so that was a pretty tough time. But very exciting all the same.

The behavioural issues that the school now faced were regarded not as a problem for the school but as an exciting challenge. The excitement that was generated through these new students for whom other schools were not catering was accompanied by other changes to the school population. As Lorna stated in 2008:

First of all the demographics of the area are changing because it's being regentrified. So the nature of the children in the local catchment is changing a little, not a lot, but a little. We still get the same very low-SES, very troubled children. But we also have a lot of the children, more children from professional families. So what it means actually is that we have this really nice mix of children, culturally, socio-economically, in terms of academic ability, and behaviourally.

Emotional demands on the principal

The development and growth of the school through its reform processes have not followed any set plan and have from the beginning been grounded in the teachers’ passions. Lorna's reflections in 2008 are indicative of this lack of planning:

Yeah, I mean, I don't know, when someone said to me the other day, ‘Did you have a vision?’ And the answer would be, ‘no’. There was never anything articulated. When I look back and write up plans of what's happened or, you know, it looks like there was a vision and maybe there was somewhere, but it was never articulated.

Such an approach to reform stands in stark contrast to the advice for principals often provided in leadership books. For example, Reeves (2002, 108) in emphasising the importance of school leaders creating a mission statement, or vision for the school, makes the following point:

One thing that businesses, non-profit organisations, and school systems all share is this truth: pay checks do not engage emotions. The leader depends on the hearts and minds, not merely the hands and seats of employees, and thus a mission statement is at the heart of this fundamental organisational need.

And ‘… an effective mission statement is compelling. It engages the emotions of people’ (Reeves 2002, 109). The suggestion made by Reeves is that an effective school leader is able to harness the emotional investment of teachers in reform efforts by including them in the construction of the mission statement document. The approach adopted by Lorna did not follow this prescription. However, she did seek to gain an emotional investment of her staff in the implementing of school reforms.

The ‘crisis’ that the school was in clearly facilitated the take up of the school's three major reforms. The school was in danger of closing and to some extent Lorna felt that there was nothing to lose. As she said in 2000:

The worst that will happen is they'll give me the sack, but they're not going to do that, or if they do then it's time for me to move on and do something else. You know, I don't have any fear about what might happen to me next, you know, at all.

The reform processes that were taken up within this school were thus very differently conceived and hence enacted than is often the case within other schools that are in danger of being deemed a failure. Within many such schools there are attempts to focus on a restoration or introduction of supposedly traditional educational values. These have included, for instance, zero tolerance policies on student behaviour, school uniforms modelled on those of private schools and a focus on lifting test scores through increased accountabilities on teachers. Within such reform efforts principals construct themselves and are constructed within hero narratives whereby they will lead the school out of crisis. Of course, some fail and some succeed. The failures are necessary in order to valorise the successes. These attempts to be an educational hero have significant emotional implications both for the principal and for others involved with the school, teachers, students and often parents. The emotion that underpins most of the reactions within such schools is fear (Thomson 2009). There is a fear associated with the accountability measures put in place. For the principal there is a fear that central (or district) offices will put special measures in place that have the potential to ruin the career of the principal; for teachers there is a fear that they will be disciplined through a variety of measures if their students do not achieve to the expectations of the school administration or if their students do not conform to the school's behavioural and uniform policies; for the students there is a fear that comes with the constant threats of punishment for non-conformity; for parents there is a fear that not supporting the school's policies or that attempts to undermine the school's policies by their or others’ children will damage their children's educational opportunities. Through such fear reforms often become performative rather than substantive. An absence of fear for Lorna was very liberating and enabled her and the other teachers at the time to engage in reforms that excited them.

The success of the school has placed particular demands on both the school and Lorna. Many of the teachers have become heavily involved in the ‘philosophy for children’ movement and regularly attend and present at conferences. They also hold from time to time demonstration lessons at the school. The school's performance on standardised tests is also very impressive. This has meant that visitors to the state and within the state often request access to the school to observe the school in action and to talk with Lorna, and the teachers and students. The demand is such that in order for the school to be able to function freely, visitors are often turned down. As Lorna states:

I say ‘No’ to a lot of people, probably more than I say ‘Yes’ to. People think I'm unfriendly and unwelcoming. They've got no idea of the volume that I'm dealing with. I mean I had a request to a visit from Singapore, last week, and they said they'd stop in maybe last week, for 12 people to come and have a look. Now, I said, ‘No’, they asked again, I said ‘No’, they asked again and I said ‘No’. You know, they say ‘Is there any way?’ And I say, ‘No I can't, I've just had a group from England. It's not possible to do that’.

The success of the school has therefore put extra emotional stress on Lorna. In regard to denying people access to the school she has to construct herself as ‘unfriendly and unwelcoming’. Such a construction is used in a way that works to protect the teachers and the students. These protective emotions are something that is rarely considered within the leadership literature and preparation programmes for principals (Bolton and English 2010; Schmidt 2010). Furthermore, Lorna's fear of being considered as impolite is highly gendered (see for example, Mills 2003). Whilst the refusal was clearly justifiable on the grounds that it could disrupt the school, Lorna had to repeatedly refuse the visit from Singapore and was upset about appearing to be unfriendly. Such a concern does not align with hegemonised masculine behaviours. Hence, a male principal may not have had to put up with so much pressure whilst remaining polite.

This gendered pressure on Lorna to be open and friendly is also present within the everyday management of the school. Many principals move into the position in order to make a difference to students’ learning, but along with the position comes responsibilities around meeting policy expectations and managing staff that can be emotionally difficult (Schmidt 2010). The significance of this latter task for principals is evident by the coverage it receives in various management texts. When asked about how she addressed difficult issues with staff Lorna commented:

Yeah, and I'm not good at that. I'm not good at that because I get too upset. I'm getting better at it. I worry if I've offended people and my job is that I do have to sometimes offend people. Not often. Mostly things can be worked out amicably, but not always. And I'm not good at that, I'm not good at confrontation ever, I never have been. But there are times when I have to give teachers say an unpleasant message, and I have to steel myself to do that. I'm not very good at that. But I do, I think that I provide a lot of support for teachers who are going through a crisis of some sort.

Within this short quote she states three times that she is not good at confrontations or offending others and that she gets upset at other people's reactions. There are a number of possible readings of her comments here. One reading is that an expectation of the principal's role is that she will have to offend from time to time. Such offending can be read in masculine terms of needing to be tough and assertive. Behaving in such a way is clearly not her preferred way of operating and it places emotional demands upon her. However, she indicates that she is ‘getting better at it’. In what ways she is getting better is a matter of conjecture, but this can be read as her becoming disciplined by the masculinist discourses of leadership.

When asked if the system recognised the emotional demands of being a principal, Lorna replied:

I think – and this is probably a silly thing to say – I think there's a gender thing involved here. I think that men don't become as emotional. I sometimes, you know, we have breakfasts, principals’ breakfast every couple of weeks, and they're really nice and they're just informal, but sometimes I hear the males’ responses to something that's happening in the Department and I think why would you be so confrontational, there is absolutely no point.

Here we see a number of issues being raised. First, in the interview, there is a concern that pointing to gender differences might be read as ‘silly’. It is fears such as being considered ‘silly’ or irrational that can work to silence gender debates within schools. Second, Lorna earlier noted her dislike for confrontation. However, within the principals’ breakfasts she has observed male principals almost enjoying the act of confrontation. Interestingly, these men's confrontations around departmental policies are often not read as emotional. Lorna also saw that male principals were able to be more emotionally detached from the everyday realities of the children in the school:

It's just a different, I mean, men are able to sit up and shut the door and, I mean, I try never to be too busy for a child. That is my fundamental policy. I mean, I have two fundamental things I live by. One is that a child won't learn unless they're happy, and by happy I mean all the stuff, you know, trust and all the stuff they're trying to write about in a supportive school environment. I just think the bottom line is if you're not, they won't be. So that's where you start.

In this instance, Lorna provides an indication of her priorities at the school: the children's happiness. Within the management literature and the current political framework surrounding student outcomes, there is little mention of happiness.

However, whilst Lorna is able to point to the work that is currently being done by the department around supportive school communities, such work receives little attention within the political discourses surrounding student outcomes and behaviour. Her preferred way of working within the school is one in which all those who are impacted upon by various decisions are consulted and have a say in the outcome. This was apparent in the earlier references to the decision made by grade sevens to have their own class. In commenting about the importance of a supportive environment, Lorna also stated:

I do think that if people aren't feeling supported, children and teachers, that they won't work well and they won't be happy, and having everybody happy, I know that that sounds idealistic. I know that isn't the way it happens, you know, life isn't like that, I know that too.

As with many of Lorna's comments, there is a qualification of her views by noting that perhaps she is being ‘idealistic’ and that she knows that ‘life isn't like that’.

Whilst holding steadfastly to her views, there is also apparent an attempt to resist the ‘rational’ critiques that are likely to be levelled at her idealistic ways of operating.

Lorna's concern with the children at the school is also evident in her maintaining a teaching role at the school. Prior to coming to Stony Lane she was a deputy principal with a non-teaching role in a very large primary school. For her this was a less rewarding position because it meant that she was distanced from the students in the school:

I didn't like being a deputy because I felt like I was losing contact with kids and I don't just mean going in and teaching to the kids. I mean actually ‘How's your baby sister?’ you know? ‘Did your dad come home last night?’ or ‘Is he still drunk or what?’ You know, that kind of – the personal stuff that I miss if I'm not with kids on a regular basis?

Here we see Lorna's commitment to the emotional life of the students and the recognition that this commitment can only be realised through meaningful contact in the classroom. However, she noted that there are significant demands in balancing the roles of teacher and principal:

It's very difficult because I'm mindful that I need to see everybody I have to see on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday kind of disappears because I'm teaching in the afternoon. Thursday and Friday I'm a teacher and I will not speak to parents about office stuff. That is the day I'm a teacher and that is the day if anybody ever gets the impression I'm being rude to them it would be on a Thursday or a Friday. The bell will go and I say I have to go. And someone will say, ‘Well I won't take very long’. And I say, ‘I'm sorry, I'm needed’. And that's the bit of the job I love the best. I kind of – there's some things about the principal's job that I love, but I rarely go home on a Monday and a Tuesday and think that was a great day, I did some good stuff there, but I usually do on a Thursday and Friday, and even Wednesday afternoon I manage to do that.

The demands that Lorna points to here also relate to politeness. Her prioritising of her teaching role, she suggests, could be interpreted as rudeness. However, as with her refusal to allow certain visitors into the school to offer some protection to the students and teachers, she is prepared to be rude in order to fulfil her teaching responsibilities and commitments to her students. In explaining her priorities she alludes to how it might be easier if she were more detached:

If you were a corporate manager it wouldn't matter because you would just be running a ship or running a business. It wouldn't matter whether you had connection with your client or not. You would probably run it very well. That isn't the way I operate. I like to, I like to get to know people I think is my trouble. I'm a little bit too nosy. I like to know what people are doing and, you know, how things are going and all of those things.

Her reference to corporate managerialism picks up on the perception that organisations such as schools can be run more efficiently when done so in detached business-like ways. However, there is a resistance on her part to fall into this dominant way of operating as a principal. She recognises that her more personable way of working within the school is not time efficient, but that is the way she is. She does, however, almost make an apology for this – ‘I like to get to know people I think is my trouble’. Her commitment to working with people in ways that limit confrontation perhaps also underpins her consultative approach with working with staff, students and parents. This consultative approach was evident within her approach to behaviour management at the school.

Some of the greatest demands facing Lorna have occurred through her work with the department. In discussions about the state department's commitment to pedagogy and to understanding the work at the school, she commented in 2008:

Do they ever listen to anybody about pedagogy? You know, is there a person in there who really does know about pedagogy or are they all worrying about the corporate management stuff, and I get despondent about that and I have to not do that because I have to kind of get back into my own box and think just do it well where you can and let the rest go because otherwise I get all bitter and twisted, you know, life's too short for that.

This reference to bitterness is interesting. Boler (1999, 14) has discussed the ways in which bitterness is constructed as an individual phenomenon, often as a mean of silencing dissent. Bitterness can also be read in political terms as a form of disillusionment with a system that is supposed to provide support to schools and to principals. For Lorna, the support from the system has been minimal:

… I sometimes think that we have achieved what we have achieved despite the system … I guess I used to be much more idealistic, particularly about philosophy. I think philosophy implemented properly is extraordinarily powerful in terms of academic outcomes and behavioural outcomes. Extraordinarily powerful. It's not the only thing we do here, but it is a major thing that we do here. Now, I used to think that people in there would realise, and they'd say ‘Gosh, we want this for other people’. And I very quickly realised that's not going to be the case, and I actually did a bit of a nosedive. But that doesn't matter anymore, because no one can take away the impact we've had on all these children who go through here. And that's what I come to school for every day, it's about the children and what we're doing for them as future citizens. Which is not to detract from today and here and being a child, right.

As elsewhere Lorna refers here to her idealism as something that she suggests has been tempered by her experience of working with the department. There is an interesting tension for Lorna in that the school has received significant recognition for its work around philosophy and, as indicated earlier, attracts large numbers of visitors to the school. Lorna's work in rebuilding the school has also been recognised. However, she suggests that this recognition has not been accompanied by any extra support for their programmes at the school:

What I do get discouraged about, and I don't get discouraged easily ever, but I do get discouraged because on the one hand central office is prepared to send me to out west in May and tells me to speak at a conference for new principals … So on the one hand they're prepared to spend money on me to take me places to say listen to what's happened to this school, you can do this too, but on the other hand … if I say could I please have a bit of money, even though I apply through the correct processes, I'm always getting nothing, nothing at all, and I find that discouraging.

She also stated that:

… another thing people say to me is, ‘It's easy for you, you get all the good teachers’. In fact I get the teachers I'm sent, in the main, and they get better here because they have to.

Whilst Lorna did not comment upon these reactions in terms of how they made her feel, there was a note of anger in her voice at the time. She has on the one hand been held up by various sections of the education community as a leader who has made a difference to her school, but on the other hand she also experienced a significant devaluing of her and the other teachers’ achievements.

Conclusion

Sachs and Blackmore (1998, 266) have argued that there is a need to understand the ways in which women leaders ‘are negotiating the emotional terrain that is a consequence of change in their schools’. Lorna's story is one that demonstrates some of the ways in which one female principal has negotiated that terrain whilst implementing successful school reforms. The reforms at Stony Lane have been significant. By all accounts this is a successful school. The children and staff interviewed are happy there, parent surveys indicate that they are satisfied with the school, enrolments have increased substantially over the last 15 years, the academic outcomes are good, the philosophy programme (along with other programmes) has received widespread attention and the principal is often asked to provide advice to new principals. Throughout her interviews, Lorna foregrounded the emotional work that was part of her everyday life as a teaching principal at the school and that had been integral to the success of these reforms. This work was a source of both pleasure and pain for Lorna (Sachs and Blackmore 1998).

Much of the emotional work described by Lorna was pleasurable. For example, she indicated that underpinning the major reforms at the school were the passions of staff. When Lorna described the excitement she received from being a teaching principal, she spoke of the joy that was produced by students doing well, and by them talking to her about their issues and problems. She does not suggest that the changes that occurred in the school were always easy. She indicates that there were ‘tough times’. However, she describes these tough times as exciting.

Lorna also spoke of her love for aspects of the job. It was these pleasurable emotions that kept Lorna at the school. These enjoyable emotions were tempered by those produced within contexts where she felt that she had to be confrontational, unwelcoming and possibly rude. She indicated that whilst she did not like constructing herself as such, and in the process making herself upset, she felt this was sometimes a necessity in order to do her job in such a way that the interests of students, their learning and the well-being of staff were protected. Lorna also indicated that the relationships that she has had with the department outside of the school had produced despondency and bitterness due to the dominance of the focus on managerialism as opposed to pedagogy. She also found it discouraging that on the one hand she was held up as a good manager because of the school's successes, but on the other hand that this valuing was not materially supported to further develop those programmes that have been central to the school's achievements. The lack of recognition by the department of the impact of the school's programmes on the well-being of students produced some of the greatest disappointments for Lorna. She spoke of the ‘nosedive’ that she took as a result of a lack of interest by the department in the school's philosophy programme. This disappointment was compounded by the dismissal of the school's successes by some who suggested that these had been made easier by the type of students and selection of teachers at the school.

Much of the emotional work performed by Lorna is political work. Lorna, and other teachers within the school, have resisted the more dominant discourses of corporate managerialism which circulate through educational policy documents and practices within Queensland, as elsewhere. Likewise Lorna demonstrates a resistance to dominant masculinist discourses about authority, objectivity and hierarchy. Her mode of operating within the school provides a counter-narrative to many common leadership discourses. Whilst there is a growing concern within the leadership policy literature for principals to demonstrate an ability to manage their own and others’ emotions, perhaps by demonstrating an ‘emotional maturity’, these latter leadership practices are often about managing dissent, ensuring that ‘the team’ is of one mind, and that the principal's vision is accepted by all. Lorna rejected this form of management. Underpinning the everyday life of the school was trust. On regular occurrences Lorna constructed her trust and belief in students and teachers as ‘idealistic’. Throughout Lorna's interviews there were constant references to her idealism. Lorna's responses suggest awareness that idealism contrasts with the more rational approach to schooling common within leadership discourses. However, Lorna indicates that she is not prepared to give up on this idealism despite it being in conflict with many of the dominant managerial discourses operating within the current system.

There is much to suggest that being a woman working within a field in which hegemonic masculine qualities align with valorised leadership practices shapes Lorna's emotional experiences. This is not to say that such practices have not been contested and rearticulated in ways that align with attributes often associated with femininity, such as negotiation and consultation (Blackmore 2004). However, as Lorna indicates, there is an expectation that principals should not become too emotionally involved in the lives of students and teachers, but that such a detachment is easier for men. In their work with female leaders in Australia, Sachs and Blackmore (1998, 271) state that: ‘Being in control of your feelings and emotions was important if you wanted to be taken seriously in the job and if you were to be rewarded by promotion’. Lorna has not sought promotion, instead choosing to stay at Stony Lane. This has perhaps created a space for her to become more emotionally involved in the school and in the lives of students and teachers. This space is also supported through her lack of fear. On more than one occasion she made mention of an absence of fear in relation to being fired, and in one interview made a reference to her husband having retired and that if she could no longer work in the way that she wanted to, she would be happy to join him.

Despite the increased interest in the emotional capabilities of principals, schools are still very much rational organisations. Within such organisations those principals who can function in detached ways, are corporate players and can proceed in a linear fashion towards strategic priorities are likely to become highly successful within their various educational systems. Traditionally it is men, but not all men, who have been most adept at meeting these systemic expectations because of their alignment with behaviours associated with hegemonised forms of masculinity. Some female principals have also succeeded within educational systems. Masculine behaviours are not the preserve of men (Halberstam 1998). However, Lorna's story is one of resistance to the masculinised discourses within schools. It is not an unproblematic resistance. There are times when Lorna qualifies her critiques of the system by suggesting that they could be ‘silly’ and qualifies her statements about her educational philosophies by suggesting that she is perhaps being idealistic. These qualifiers are indicative of the ways in which resistance to the dominant discourses within education can be silenced and trivialised. Lorna's story has also highlighted the emotional pressures involved in principals’ work that can provoke feelings of bitterness and resentment. However, for Lorna there is still great joy in her work. It is this joy that is the product of the structures and relationships that have been constructed within her school that keeps her in the profession. At a time when it is clearly difficult to attract people into principal positions it is critical that the emotional benefits that can accrue from particular school environments be foregrounded. It is also critical that the systemic pressures that produce painful emotional responses be critiqued. Educational policy frameworks concerned with leadership, such as those in Queensland which suggest that good principals are emotionally mature, need to recognise that emotions are produced, not inherent behaviours, to be cognisant of the ways in which emotions are produced in response to school contexts and educational policies and reforms, and to acknowledge that the production of emotions has gendered dimensions.

Notes on contributors

Martin Mills is a Research Professor in the School of Education at The University of Queensland, Australia. His research interests include the sociology of education, social justice in education, alternative schooling, gender and education, school reform and new pedagogies. His recent books include Re-engaging Young People in Education: Learning from Alternative Schools and Boys and Schooling: Beyond Structural Reform.

Richard Niesche is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at The University of New South Wales. His research interests include educational leadership, social justice and poststructuralist discourses. His latest book is Deconstructing Educational Leadership: Derrida and Lyotard (Routledge, 2013).