| This thesis is a concerted attempt to understand the emotional dimension of leaders' and teachers' experiences of educational leadership. It employs an interpretivist perspective using qualitative data gathering methods in two phases. The recollections of 50 Ontario teachers were studied from transcribed interviews about their positive and negative emotional experiences with administrators. In the second phase, over a seven-month period, 25 school leaders from New Zealand, Australia, the United States, Canada, England and Ireland logged into an anonymous, asynchronous, private, online forum to discuss the emotional dimension of their leadership experiences. Findings from the teachers' phase of the study were shared with the online leaders, providing a direct link between the two data sources. All data were analyzed using grounded theory techniques and where sample sizes would allow, were submitted to a supplementary statistical analysis for further descriptive and interpretive purposes. For the teacher data, the first level of analysis considers domains of convergence and concern: career, students, leadership style/type and emotional climate, organizational procedures, colleagues and parents. The second level of analysis considers leader provocations in conjunction with teachers' emotional inferences and generated three categories: respect, care and professional support. The third level of analysis considers communication patterns: medium and level of engagement. The findings help to reveal the causes, configurations and consequences of leaders' emotional significance in teachers' working lives. The leader data are considered under two broad categories: 'leaders and others' and 'leaders and the self'. Patterns of conflicting pressures from a variety of sources put strains on the leaders' self and are associated with both the problems and the positive potential in relationships with teachers and others. Additionally, the online experience had transformational effects for the leaders. An incipient theoretical framework of emotional epistemologies is proposed. The thesis underscores the emotional and professional value of creating safe spaces for leaders to consider together, the emotional dimension of their work. Implications for theory, research, policy and practice are discussed. |
