This practical book deals with the emotional and moral dimensions of school leadership. The author sets out the intra-personal and interpersonal attributes, attitudes and behaviours necessary to develop emotional and moral leadership within the school community. The book provides a range of person-centred strategies for building communities of professionally committed, relationally competent, collaborative individuals.
Against the backdrop of research that tells us emotions are playing an increasingly prevalent role in organizations’ performance, this text draws on empirical studies to powerfully argue that it is incumbent upon school principals to display emotional leadership within the education system. A Model of Emotional Leadership in Schools sets out the importance of affective wellness in teachers and addresses questions on emotive school management. Bringing together a range of studies, the book elucidates emotion as a managerial tool in the school environment, and considers the interpersonal emotional support of teachers by principals. Ultimately, the text puts forward a new model of emotional leadership in schools to provide practical insights into the ways in which principals can influence, transform, and manage teachers’ emotions. This insightful text will be of interest to researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of school leadership and leadership strategy, as well as educators and school leaders concerned with how interpersonal aspects of emotion management play out within the school context. Izhak Berkovich is a faculty member in the Department of Education and Psychology at the Open University of Israel, Israel. Ori Eyal is Chair of the Graduate Division of Policy, Administration, and Leadership in Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
This practical book deals with the emotional and moral dimensions of school leadership. The author sets out the intra-personal and interpersonal attributes, attitudes and behaviours necessary to develop emotional and moral leadership within the school community. The book provides a range of person-centred strategies for building communities of professionally committed, relationally competent, collaborative individuals.
This guide to the 21 leadership responsibilities that influence student achievement will help school leaders focus on changes that really make a difference.
School leadership instability is particularly problematic for scholars and practitioners concerned with PK-12 school improvement, as second only to teachers, campus leadership has been identified as a primary factor in students' academic success (Young et al., 2007). Yet, while principals play an indispensable role in students' academic success, the job has become considerably more stressful as the role of a school leader continues to evolve. Specifically, added responsibilities, increased work intensity, and the ever-present menace of high stakes accountability have intensified the stress levels encountered by today's school leaders (Carpenter & Brewer, 2012; Chaplain, 2001; Darmody & Smyth, 2016; Wang, et al., 2018). This intensification negatively impacts a school’s teaching staff and its students, as the overall quality of the school experience can deteriorate if principals are unable to meet their potential due to the burnout and fatigue associated with chronic stress (Darmody & Smyth, 2016; Devos, et al., 2007). For principals to fully realize their ability to serve as catalysts for school improvement, they should be allowed to prioritize physical, mental, cognitive, and emotional health. Desired levels of wellbeing occur in the absence of chronic physical, social, psychological, emotional, economic, and cognitive distress (La Placa, et al., 2013). As authors in this volume demonstrate, many school leaders have commenced specific practices targeting cognitive, emotional, and behavioral wellbeing to cope with occupational stress and flourishing- or, at the very least, surviving in such a challenging environment. Among coping strategies leaders have adopted include mindfulness and other wellbeing interventions/strategies intended to facilitate healthier lifestyles, relieve stress, and improve personal resilience (Aviles & Dent, 2015; Mahfouz, 2018; Wells, 2015). Recently, there has been a call to consider educational leadership through a positive human flourishing lens. Research in this area focuses on integrating wellbeing practices in professional development programs for teachers and school administrators to highlight the positive effects of personal and collective wellbeing in schools (Cherkowski & Walker, 2014). For example, empirical studies have examined how incorporating mindfulness practice promotes positive adaptive skills, stress resilience, and social and emotional skills needed in a school environment (Abenavoli, et al., 2013; Benn, et al., 2012; Dvor a kova et al., 2017; Jennings, 2015; Meiklejohn et al., 2012; Mahfouz et al., 2018). New understandings about the relationship between school administrators' wellbeing and school improvement efforts should ignite interest within the field. As such, this book’s chapters are organized into four distinct sections that provide: (a) an overview of the field (Section I), (b) an empirical argument for why such research is essential (Section II), (c) wellbeing models to be considered for use in the PK-12 setting (Section III), and, (d) specific wellbeing practices and frameworks currently being in PK-12 (Section IV).
Most educators will agree that they would love to see each student and staff member in schools flourish. Furthermore, it would be great to see entire communities experience the transformative power of circumstances that feature happy and vibrant learning. However, what does it mean to experience flourishing in schools? What is the role of positive leadership in this process? What can we learn from inquiring into the positive emotional and social aspects of the work of school leaders? Building on our research on flourishing in schools, this book highlights the stories and perspectives of educators and school leaders at all levels of the school system and demonstrate the intricacies of how positive leadership contributes to well-being in schools and encourages flourishing in these schools. This book aligns with a growing shift in psychology and organizational studies to frame research using phenomena and constructs such as resilience, compassion, hope, efficacy, self-determination and meaningfulness at work and in other areas of life. Research findings from the disciplines of both positive psychology and positive organization studies bring these positive research intelligences into the field of education to study what works in school leadership practices, what goes well, what supports growth, and what brings vitality to people in school organizations. Research in positive psychology contends that attending to the strengths, positive outlooks, habits and mental models, as opposed to a deficit-oriented perspective, is beneficial to increasing subjective well-being, by increasing resilience, vitality, and happiness and decreasing stress, anxiety, and depression. How we imagine leading, teaching and learning in schools are implicated in these understandings and help us to contemplate the benefits of focus positive leadership in school organizations. Powerful insights into human inquiry and positive psychology are gained through qualitative study and most of the chapters of this book are grounded in such research. Importantly, chapters in this book provide a varied repertoire of answers to the question that underpins this shift in research toward a positive organizational perspective: How does positive leadership leverage what works well to instill in each community member a sense of their value and capacity to contribute, encourage wellbeing for all and create school contexts of flourishing? This edited collection provides many examples, invitations, and inspiration for readers to notice in their own contexts in ways that encourage them to shift and grow through moving toward appreciative, strengths-based, positive approaches to teaching, learning, and, especially, leading in all school contexts.
The book differs from other books on emotions in teaching by acknowledging all relationships within the complex system of schools and the ways that emotion influences the relationship and practice of the those working within schools- administration, teacher-peer, teacher- student, and veteran- novice.
"Clears out the bureaucratic techniques of impersonal management and focuses the core of leadership on dealing with school change as a most human endeavor. When all is said and done, the quality of education revolves around the aspirations, commitments, and wellness of teachers giving their best." —Carl Glickman, Scholar in Residence The University of Georgia Develop a leadership approach that responds to the emotional needs of teachers! School leaders know that an engaged and committed faculty is critical to student learning and the success of a school community, yet traditional leadership practices often fail to take the affective needs of teachers into consideration. Kenneth Leithwood and Brenda Beatty draw on theory and empirical evidence to show how teachers′ emotional well-being can affect their performance in the classroom. This invaluable resource provides principals and other school leaders with specific practices to positively influence teacher perspectives, and examines teacher emotions in five key areas: Job satisfaction and morale Stress, anxiety, and burn-out Sense of individual and collective self-efficacy Organizational commitment and engagement Willingness and motivation to improve their practices When educational leaders create conditions that support teachers in their work, schools can experience higher teacher retention rates, improved climate and culture, and increased student achievement.
In private life, we try to induce or suppress love, envy, and anger through deep acting or "emotion work," just as we manage our outer expressions of feeling through surface acting. In trying to bridge a gap between what we feel and what we "ought" to feel, we take guidance from "feeling rules" about what is owing to others in a given situation. Based on our private mutual understandings of feeling rules, we make a "gift exchange" of acts of emotion management. We bow to each other not simply from the waist, but from the heart. But what occurs when emotion work, feeling rules, and the gift of exchange are introduced into the public world of work? In search of the answer, Arlie Russell Hochschild closely examines two groups of public-contact workers: flight attendants and bill collectors. The flight attendant’s job is to deliver a service and create further demand for it, to enhance the status of the customer and be "nicer than natural." The bill collector’s job is to collect on the service, and if necessary, to deflate the status of the customer by being "nastier than natural." Between these extremes, roughly one-third of American men and one-half of American women hold jobs that call for substantial emotional labor. In many of these jobs, they are trained to accept feeling rules and techniques of emotion management that serve the company’s commercial purpose. Just as we have seldom recognized or understood emotional labor, we have not appreciated its cost to those who do it for a living. Like a physical laborer who becomes estranged from what he or she makes, an emotional laborer, such as a flight attendant, can become estranged not only from her own expressions of feeling (her smile is not "her" smile), but also from what she actually feels (her managed friendliness). This estrangement, though a valuable defense against stress, is also an important occupational hazard, because it is through our feelings that we are connected with those around us. On the basis of this book, Hochschild was featured in Key Sociological Thinkers, edited by Rob Stones. This book was also the winner of the Charles Cooley Award in 1983, awarded by the American Sociological Association and received an honorable mention for the C. Wright Mills Award.
