POLITICAL CONTEXTS OF EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP

ISLLC STANDARD SIX

Chapter 2: School Micropolitics in Improving Teaching and Learning

Misconceptions

Vocabulary for Chapter 2

  • Emotional Labor
  • Emotional Meaning Making
  • Intrapersonal power
  • Interpersonal power
  • Micropolitics
  • Performativity
  • Positional power
  • Professional perspective

Pre-Reading Questions

As you read, look for specific quotes (page and paragraph numbers) to answer these questions:

  • What causes emotional labor in the work of school professionals?
  • What is a decision protocol and how can it enhance decision making in a collaborative manner?

Post-Reading Questions

Use evidence from the text or the reference list to support your answers to these questions:

  • What makes positional power a less effective approach to leadership than intrapersonal and interpersonal powers?
  • What steps can a school leader take to address emotional labor and its micropolitical consequences in schools?

Activities to Extend Learning

  • Click the following citation http://jel.sagepub.com/content/10/1/22.full.pdf+html to read the case:

    Maninger, R. M. & Powell, D. (2007). The Lincoln Middle School paradigm shift. Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership, 10(1), 22-31. doi: 10.1177/1555458906297712

  • Interview a school principal about a recent decision that generated conflict among different groups of stakeholders. What was the principal’s point of view? What did teachers want? What did parents want? Were other stakeholders vocal? About what? Who received what they wanted? Who didn’t? What was the reaction? Describe the variety of emotional reactions and emotional labor using evidence from the interview.

Chapter 2 Misconceptions:

School Leaders Should not be Emotional or Political.

The first problem with this notion is that school leaders are not human beings. The next problem is that both emotions and politics are avoidable in schools.

All schools include youth and adult human beings, and all human beings have emotions. The development of students requires explicit opportunities to teach appropriate social behaviors even while they experience their emotions. Given this instructive role, the adults who work with students also need to adopt and adapt their behaviors in light of many situations that exhaust and exacerbate their emotions. Working with groups of students and adults requires a great deal of intrapersonal awareness as well as interpersonal awareness and skills.

When conflicts arise in schools, school leaders need to be aware of the political underpinnings of these conflicts. School leaders need to access, understand and apply intrapersonal and interpersonal power to ameliorate these conflicts to create the necessary emotional and political climate that enhances learning and student success.