School Reform and The Emotional Demands of Princip

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School reform and the emotional demands of principals: Lorna's story
Article in School Leadership and Management · March 2014

DOI: 10.1080/13632434.2013.856295
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School reform and the emotional

demands of principals: Lorna's story
a b
Martin Mills & Richard Niesche
a
School of Education, The University of Queensland, Brisbane,
QLD, Australia
b
School of Education, The University of New South Wales, Sydney,
NSW, Australia
Published online: 16 Dec 2013.
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To cite this article: Martin Mills & Richard Niesche (2014) School reform and the emotional
demands of principals: Lorna's story, School Leadership & Management: Formerly School
Organisation, 34:2, 120-135, DOI: 10.1080/13632434.2013.856295
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School Leadership & Management, 2014
Vol. 34, No. 2, 120–135, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2013.856295
School reform and the emotional demands of principals: Lorna’s story

Martin Millsa and Richard Niescheb*
a
School of Education, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia; bSchool of
Education, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
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
*Corresponding author. Email: r.niesche@unsw.edu.au

© 2013 Taylor & Francis
School Leadership & Management 121
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,
122 M. Mills and R. Niesche
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 collabora-
tively 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).
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School reform and the emotional demands of principals: Lorna's story

Article in School Leadership and Management · March 2014

Martin Mills Richard Niesche

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

*Corresponding author. Email: r.niesche@unsw.edu.au

communities (Blackmore 2010; Zembylas 2010). As such there is a need to understand

Emotions and educational leadership

Emotional demands on the principal

And ‘… an effective mission statement is compelling. It engages the emotions of people’

Her reference to corporate managerialism picks up on the perception that organisations

department. In discussions about the state department’s commitment to pedagogy and to

She also stated that:

the other teachers’ achievements.

within the school provides a counter-narrative to many common leadership discourses.

meeting these systemic expectations because of their alignment with behaviours

European Journal of Cultural Studies 5 (4): 407–426. doi:10.1177/1364942002005004294.

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