'Emotional Labour' in the Education Market Place

0 downloads 0 Views 972KB Size Report
Jul 6, 2006 - Place: stories from the field of women in management, Discourse: Studies in the ... Downloaded by [Deakin University Library] at 12:44 14 February 2015 ... are given great value) over the abundance of social goods (love and.
This article was downloaded by: [Deakin University Library] On: 14 February 2015, At: 12:44 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cdis20

Doing ‘Emotional Labour’ in the Education Market Place: stories from the field of women in management Jill Blackmore

a

a

Deakin University , Australia Published online: 06 Jul 2006.

To cite this article: Jill Blackmore (1996) Doing ‘Emotional Labour’ in the Education Market Place: stories from the field of women in management, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 17:3, 337-349, DOI: 10.1080/0159630960170304 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0159630960170304

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/ terms-and-conditions

Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education, Vol. 17, No. 3, 1996

337

Downloaded by [Deakin University Library] at 12:44 14 February 2015

Doing 'Emotional Labour' in the Education Market Place: stories from the field of women in management

JILL BLACKMORE, Deakin University, Australia

This paper explores the interconnections between the market, gender and emotion in 'greedy organisations' (Coser, 1974) such as the self managing school. The issue of 'doing emotional labour in schools' in the education market place emerged out of three research projects1 undertaken in Victoria, Australia. Collectively, these projects focused upon gender, leadership and educational change over a period of radical restructuring of education in Victoria, Australia, since 1992. One case study focused upon the underrepresentation of women in leadership; another project considered the impact of the restructuring of educational work on women educators; and a third project examined the claims of the Schools of the Future program introducing self managing schools from the perspective of how principals, schools and parents 'manage change'. The data was collected in a range of ways: unstructured interviews, documentation and policy, observation, survey, and focus groups. Through stories and critical incidents from the field, I consider how the construction of an educational labour market has intruded into, and indeed shaped, educational practice. In particular, I explore the contradictions and dilemmas confronting female principals, many of whom had sought and gained school leadership positions on the basis of their caring and sharing leadership and organisational skills, when they had to 'deal' with educational quasi-markets. I also reflect upon their 'strategies of coping' with the emotional conflict arising from the dissonance between their approach as 'caring and sharing educational leaders' and their role as line managers implementing state imposed educational reforms premised upon market liberalism.

Postmodern Organisations and the Market A major (but implicit) aspect of the self-governing mechanisms of the post modern organisation confronted with rapid ongoing change is to manage emotions. Individuals internalise to varying degrees their 'corporate identity' in ways which come to govern their emotions as well as their behaviours, at least in the workplace. In that sense, 'greedy organisations' seek to commodify the intellectual (creativity) and emotional (e.g. personal 0159-6306/96/030337-13 © 1996 Journals Oxford Ltd

338

J. Blackmore

commitment to a value position or loyalty) energy for their ends through voluntary means. Hopfl & Linstead (1993, p. 91) state:

Downloaded by [Deakin University Library] at 12:44 14 February 2015

Organisations adopt styles of presentation, motivation and cultural manipulation which are thoughtful, calculated, strategically planned and executed and depend almost entirely upon effective agitation and channelling of emotion for their success. The management guru and advocate of strong corporate culture, Peter Drucker (1992), is well aware that the dilemma for management in flatter, less hierarchical organisations with more autonomous multiskilled workers, is how to tap into the creativity of intellectual labour, the source of productivity, but also how to control them (Waring, 1990). Corporate culture is just a better way of managing the managers by capturing their 'hearts' as well as their minds in ways that make coercive power unnecessary (Hochschild, 1983). The all consuming self managing 'greedy organisation' seeks to 'fuse' the emotions of the worker and the aspirations of management by producing "a culture within which such aspects of social life are noted, rendered into language and reincorporated into modes of self-evaluation, self-presentation and social competence of the members" (Rose, 1992, p. 101). This individualisation of emotion is one aspect of the move towards self management of organisations, but also in the management of the self through new therapeutic technologies (from student disciplinary procedures through to performance appraisal and team work). The notion of team work in the 1990s, for example, has assumed mythical status as a technique of maintaining quality, commitment and enthusiasm. In it, emotion is viewed in highly instrumental ways because the value systems and emotional connections which bind groups together are missing (Sinclair, 1995). The recent literature focusing upon the social construction of the organisation has addressed emotion in "emotionally anorexic terms of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, alienation or stress, of having preferences, attitudes and interests" (Fineman, 1993, p. 9). A 'strong corporate culture' is the social glue which binds together the messiness of change, but fails to address the level of emotional investment in bringing about or resisting change. First, it ignores the superficiality of adherence of many workers to 'strong' corporate cultures. Anxiety and fear in uncertain employment times are readily converted into, and can be read as, work enthusiasm (Flam, 1993). Second, any renewed interest in organisational theory about emotions is largely psychologically oriented and the political, ethical and moral dimensions of emotion are often ignored. Third, it fails to see that the expression of emotion serves a communicative role in developing a sense of community, a tolerance of ambiguity, and greater understanding through empathy. Thus the individualisation of social life is further attenuated to the detriment of a sense of community-on political, moral or social terms. Denial of certain emotions is a form of boundary maintenance work to control workers because it depicts emotion as irrational, subjective and an individual pathology. At a wider level, Lash & Urry (1994, p. 322) argue that the emphasis on emotion is also part of a 'huge institutionalisation of reflexivity' in increasingly service dominated economies and complex services, including the therapy services. The labour market trend in most Western capitalist states has been for growth of the service occupations and therapeutic professions—feminised (numerically) and feminine (traditional female responsibilities) occupations largely managed by men (Pillinger, 1993). Yet the marketisation of education is premised upon a contrary set of assumptions about human behaviours.

Emotional Labour in the Education Market

339

Downloaded by [Deakin University Library] at 12:44 14 February 2015

Feminist economists criticise neoclassical economic assumptions underlying many educational policies about the rational self-determining individual who only seeks to maximise individual gains through choice as emphasising independence over interdependence, rationality over emotionality, self interest and greed over altruism, and scarcity of material goods (which are given great value) over the abundance of social goods (love and care which are given no market value) (Ferber & Nelson, 1993; Kuiper & Saps, 1995). The market, they suggest, is not a unitary/unifying mechanism, but merely a series of contingent relationships or ideas about how such relationships should rather than do operate.

Managing Emotions in the Educational Market Market relationships have come to shape and inform the management of state schools in Victoria since 1992. The market orientation in Victorian education commenced with the dezoning of school intake areas in the late 1980s under a Labor government, and the shift to self managing schools under a Liberal-National government in 1992 with Schools of the Future. The 'radically conservative' program of the Liberal—National government in Victoria, Australia, has restructured state education—school organisation, teachers' and principals' work, curriculum and assessment practices—through a raft of policies centred around the self managing school and market liberalism. Since 1992, teachers' work has been redefined with a 20% reduction of teachers in public education; new career structures based upon perfomance appraisal and individual short term contracts. Principals have assumed increased managerial and financial responsibilities, as have School Councils. Schools now prioritise goals within reduced financial constraints of global budgets determined by enrolments and a School Charter. As is characteristic of most devolved systems of educational management, there is a tension between the centralising tendencies of the state through policy and accountability mechanisms (performance management, standardised assessment, national curriculum), and their decentralising tendencies as responsibility for making decisions about limited resources is devolved to principals (e.g. Moller, 1993; Ball, 1995). There is an uneasy coexistence between seemingly competing discourses of individual parental choice and community, competitive individualism and team work, line management and school flexibility, teacher compliance and professional autonomy, efficiency and equity, embedded in self management (Marshall & Peters, 1996). This leads, as Gewirtz et al. (1995) argue in the case of English schools, to a significant value shift away from a more 'comprehensive' to a 'market' view of education as economic rationalism is the bottom line (see Lauder, 1994 for New Zealand). In Victoria, the power of the market is exacerbated due to the existence of a strong private sector (over 30% of students attend either Catholic or elite private schools in Victoria). Image and reputation are now critical because a school's existence is dependent upon its capacity to attract and retain students. Public schools increasingly compete with each other as well as with the traditional private schools who service an 'elite niche' market for students. Principals are simultanously entrepreneurial and educational, line managers and community leaders. Paradoxically, the Victorian Liberal—National Coalition government, which calls upon traditional values (e.g. family) while simultaneously promoting radical change, also made a considerable investment in women and educational leadership professional development programs. The success of this 'initiative', in appropriating the cumulative effects of

340

J. Blackmore

the previous decade's equal opportunity policies under Labor governments, was to capture a pool of enthusiastic and highly skilled women applicants at a time of restructuring. This 'initiative' also fed off increasingly popularised discourses about women's special contribution to leadership as communicators, facilitators and collaborative managers (e.g. Limerick & Lingard, 1995), and new management discourses imported in Australia about 'managing diversity' (e.g. Karpin Report of the Working Party on Management Education, 1995; Victorian Ministerial Review of Employment Equity for Women

Downloaded by [Deakin University Library] at 12:44 14 February 2015

Teachers, 1996). Many women are now being appointed as the 'new leaders' in self managing schools for their caring and sharing attributes. This produces significant dilemmas for many such women. Going to Market In the self managing school in Victoria there are a number of market relationships to which principals must now attend—the student market, the leadership market, and the teaching market (see Gewirtz et al, 1995 for similar categorisation in England, p. 91). Principals are now in the business of marketing curriculum and pedagogy, school culture, best practice and leadership. These 'markets' are interrelated, interdependent but often in conflict. Furthermore, these market relationships articulate in socially differentiating ways on the demand side with their 'clients' and on the supply side with the 'radicalised gendering' of the labour market. 'The market' and gender interact in terms of how women are socially constructed by the market as workers and represented in discourses of the market. In turn, gender is constituted and is constitutive of labour markets but is simultaneously framed by personal narratives and collective histories (Brah, 1994, p. 153). The Student Market Story 1

A group of female government primary school principals had formed a collegial network to provide professional and personal support in their jobs. They also colluded to undermine the emerging local educational market by agreeing to distribute a joint statement to parents in feeder kindergartens so as not to 'compete' against each other for students. This was motivated out of survival, but also was an overt commitment to maintaining a strong public education sector. One principal in the collegial group 'infringed' the agreement by promoting her school as providing something 'the other schools didn't'. There was a strong sense of betrayal felt by the other women, although they were fully aware of the pressures she was undergoing with a declining school population, to 'market' the school independently. This was exacerbated by the 'seeming willingness' of her school council to host a promotional night for prospective parents by an elite private school. This symbolised complicity in the marginalisation of public education. Yet parent members of council, in the majority, of the 'offending' school council regarded such information nights as merely a 'service' to their parents to give them 'choice' between public and private education. The language of choice propagated by the market has shifted parental attitudes to public education. Whereas public education was previously viewed as a public good, it is increasingly positioned through a range of educational policies and discourses as a

Downloaded by [Deakin University Library] at 12:44 14 February 2015

Emotional Labour in the Education Market

341

private good as the state withdraws its services and promotes user pays. The corollary is that many parents, particularly those: with material and cultural capital and therefore the capacity to do so, increasingly expect to exercise their consumer rights to make 'choices'—between public and private schoolings—in order to purchase some form of competitive advantage for their child(ren). Parents are positioned as clients to be serviced on the basis of their individual rights and not as citizens who have an active role in constructing some sense of communal social life which involves both responsibilities and rights. This shift from community to individual is exemplified in the revised legislation on School Councils which states that parents are elected as individuals. Parent organisations with a clear and active parent constituency (largely women doing voluntary labour) were no longer represented on school councils in Victoria after 1992. Gewirtz et al. (1995) refer to how the market leads to social differentiation in demand for schooling between the 'privileged/skilled chooser', the 'semi-skilled chooser' and the 'disconnected chooser'. In turn these choices are powerfully informed by their position in the social network. In the 'rogue' school with a largely 'professional middle class school council', the language of choice was strong amongst the 'privileged and skilled choosers' because they had access to such a market due to their cultural and material capital. Indeed, the discourse of parental choice which has supplanted the post-war democratic discourses of public education and equality, positions state education systems as residual and, by default, lesser. It taps into parental desires about 'guaranteeing' the futures of their children through their capacity to purchase competitive advantage, but also produces for many parents feelings of guilt. There are those parents, 'successful' products of public schools themselves, who now feel guilt about 'fleeing' the public sector. And there are those parents who have no choices but who also feel guilt because the language of choice argues that "if you really care for your child you would send them to a private school". The market also interpellates into the everyday practices and priorities of schools which leads to a revaluing. Paradoxically, the market exacerbates differences between schools (and individual students) on the basis of class and ethnicity and even gender, but does not encourage diversity in image, clientele, organisation, curriculum or pedagogy. The dominant image of a successful school in the market is increasingly modelled on private school images of the well uniformed, well disciplined, well resourced and academically successful student. Thus policies focusing upon gender equity or social justice (socioeconomic disadvantage, integration, students of non English Speaking background and Aboriginality) (unless there is a particular niche market in a locality, such as single sex girls schools for middle class clients) do not have the same promotional value as a marketable commodity as do gifted children policies. While competing claims are made by different groups on increasingly limited funds in schools, the pressures of the market bias a shift in resource allocation to more marketable activities. This leads to considerable personal pressure upon principals to redirect their energies away from issues of social justice, or at least to minimalise them, in ways which work against their professional priorities and personal values. Many women principals spoke about the distress they felt and how the external demands of the market and the image of the school they promoted often did not reflect what they saw as important educational needs and values of care, community and co-operation. The 'rogue school' principal was under considerable pressure from her council to act in the interests of her individual school rather than of the system. To do so meant the rejection of her own and her collegial groups' educational values. She was loath to make

Downloaded by [Deakin University Library] at 12:44 14 February 2015

342

J . Blackmore

the decision but felt that she had no choice given the competitive relationships between schools forced upon principals. She felt deeply her colleagues' disappointment, disapproval and dismay and the loss of collegial support upon which she had relied professionally and personally. It was emotionally intense and embittering for her, this act of betrayal, not only to her colleagues, but also to her own educational values and to public education. It caused her considerable personal stress as well as undercutting the sense of trust and community between local schools. Indeed, the market orientation had changed relationships between schools and principal collegial relationships—'little information given and much held back' was one comment. Another female principal reflected: "We used to share our problems and talk about it, now we keep our problems to ourselves as it can be dangerous as others can exploit our weaknesses or use our ideas to gain some advantage". A third commented: One used to form the networks because you had a particular educational philosophy—the reorganisation of schools used to be based upon the question: 'What did kids need? What was best for this community overall?' ... So schools and communities took up different views about how public education should best provide for the community. We no longer have even that. We get chaos and crisis responses. A fax comes down the line and I go 'Shit—what am / going to do about this. I carry the can'. No longer is there any participation and community. Collegiate networks are based on survival and not based upon philosophical or educational beliefs. Principals are all very nice to each other because we can't be on our own out in the cold. A market orientation intervened not only in important collaborative relationships based on shared experience, resources and information, but it actively undermined key principles of professional development premised around collegiality, trust and open communication (Iieberman, 1990; Hargreaves, 1994, 1996). It was doubly difficult for women principals who felt excluded from more formal, institutionalised forms of collegiality (such as male dominated principal associations) (Blackmore, 1995). As the 'rogue' woman principal reluctantly 'went to market', her sense of isolation and despair was reinforced as her personal support networks disintegrated.

The Leadership Market Principals are expected not only to market their schools, but also to market themselves as leaders. In a professional development publication to female aspirants, the curriculum vitae was likened to a 'marketing package'. 'Leadership', as well as 'school culture' and 'student achievement', is now a marketable commodity. Particular images are equated to 'successful' leadership and 'good schools'. One principal commented that a 'good principal' is seen by the Department to be one "who can control their teachers and their council". Dominant images of leadership promoted by Schools of the Future of strong, entrepreneurial leadership tap into an equation between good leadership and those modes of masculinity closely identified with rationality, control and authority (Coombe et al., 1993; Distant, 1993; Blackmore, 1997).

Emotional Labour in the Education Market

343

Downloaded by [Deakin University Library] at 12:44 14 February 2015

Story 2

At a primary school, the school council president remarked how a letter received from a parent thanking the school for "doing such a great job in teaching their child until Grade 5 and preparing her so well for private school" devalued public schooling and teachers because students are withdrawn no matter how good a state school is. The Principal commented that this was an inappropriate political statement from the chair. Later, the Principal reflected upon her desire to reduce dissent in Council. "I am trying so bloody hard keeping this community together. Why shouldn't a president of school council in a public education system not talk about how the loss of children to private schools impacts on public education. And yet, to avoid division and debate on council, I tried to stop that debate. It is the type of pressure that the Department places on me which controls social relationships. So much damage has been done to our system ... you try and protect what you know is good. You are so busy keeping everyone together you try and shut everyone up ... don't talk about issues as it might hurt someone's feelings ... The president spoke correctly and with passion. I had sleepless nights over this ... It is to do with what the school believes and how the school runs ... It is about a changed mindset and set of assumptions about how we work in schools and a role of education. That is now the tension within me". She was not only angry with herself, but also distressed, despairing and disillusioned as she felt complicit in controlling dissent against a range of educational policies with which she also had strong disagreement. At the same time, all principals spoke of their need 'to be seen to perform' to survive in the market. This re-focused their priorities away from educational leadership to management, and from the core work of teaching and learning towards public relations and image in order to 'sell their school' (Blackmore et ai, 1996).2 One said: "I used to pride myself in spending time in a classroom each week. This did a lot for teachers' views of me as well as the impact on how the kids saw me ... now it is an administrative not an educational leadership position". There were tensions between line management demands, 'client' demands, and professional identity.

Story 3

The Learning Assessment Program (LAP) was introduced for the first time into Grade 3 and 5 levels in Victoria in 1995 despite strong opposition from some principals and many teachers, academics and parent organisations. It was opposed for its cost, excessive administrative demands, duplication of existing school based assessment practices as well as its potential as a standardised and universal test to encourage teachers to 'teach to test', reduce professional autonomy and to rank students, teachers and schools in a 'league ladder' against each other competitively. One primary School Council chose to inform parents of their rights to ask their child to be exempted. All students not exempted sat the test, although the teachers not administering the test took industrial action to signal opposition. In 1996, school principals were directed by the Department not to send information to parents informing them of their choices. Indeed principals were directed to become advocates of the LAP, now required to personally contact all parents who sought exemption and inform them of its benefits. The School Council independent of the principal again informed parents of their rights. Throughout discussions on the LAP in Council, the principal remained

Downloaded by [Deakin University Library] at 12:44 14 February 2015

344

J. Blackmore

'neutral', other than putting the 'official' line. At the same time, all members of Council were fully conscious that the principal vehemently opposed the LAP as it was in direct opposition to her long held educational philosophy and that of the school. The principal commented: "I will follow government policy. I will offer the LAP to give parents a choice. But don't ask me to become an advocate or to try and hood wink the community that they don't have any rights. Some things really shake me. I had to sit back because if I act in anger I will neck myself in public. And I am not on about being a martyr. But there are those types of things we have to think around more. Once they take democracy out of schools, that is the bottom line ... It is divide and rule". Her credibility as a professional as well as her long held educational and ethical values and mode of leadership was at stake. There were a range of parental opinions voiced. Some parents expected teachers and principals to 'do the bidding of their employer' uncritically. One depicted the teachers' industrial action as 'intimidatory' and made parents 'feel bad' about exercising their choice to take the test. Others thanked the teachers and School Council for their professional stance in providing information and choice and the principal for providing good educational leadership by addressing diverse local community needs. And other parents opposed the LAP vehemently, preferring a school boycott because of its 'competitive' implications and possible inequities if market choice dominated over the 'public good' and social justice. Their preference was united public opposition. The top down imposition of this policy created significant divisiveness amongst a previously consensus driven community of parents. The principal was left with significant emotional management work in mending community relations. She felt that overall she had maintained her public credibility but at some personal loss. Principals work in an ambiguous relationship as line managers implementing the policies of the Department and as seemingly autonomous schools principals with a responsibility to the school councils. In reality, the level of professional autonomy for many principals, as in the case of the LAP, was quite limited. One primary school principal commented: "I think that we have been sold a rhetoric which makes people believe that I have more power than I actually have". As attested to by these principals, emotion as a manifestation of moral and political issues is central to understanding why people become teachers and seek educational leadership. The market is reductionist in that principals are expected to respond uncritically to its demands without regard to social, moral and political agendas. Leadership is reduced to technique and not purpose, passion and desire; uncertainty controlled by mission statements and visionary leadership (Hargreaves, 1995). When survival rests upon image, public relations take precedence over how educational practices constitute the social as well as the moral, political and ethical dimensions of leadership. The Teacher Market Story 4

In a secondary school, the principal was faced with the issue as to whether she would apply to the Department for flexibility of staffing. This allowed her the capacity to employ contract staff to meet the specific needs of the school, and was therefore good for the school. At the same time, she was hesitant because she realised the wider implications in that many teachers still employed by the Department in other schools were seeking

Emotional Labour in the Education Market

345

Downloaded by [Deakin University Library] at 12:44 14 February 2015

redeployment because of shifting enrolments. While these teachers may not have the specific specialisms her school required, their failure to gain a position could lead to being made redundant. She confessed, that in seeking to gain flexibility to meet the needs of the school and increasingly employing contract staff, she felt she was complicit in the demise of the profession more generally. The dynamics of the 'market' and gendered power relations in the context of workplace restructuring during the 1990s has led to a re-gendering of the educational labour market. The pyramid style rule-governing and relatively hierarchical bureaucracies of the 20th century have been radically restructured and educational work redefined. A new core-periphery model of the labour market is emerging with the hollowing out of middle management and devolution to self managing schools. The effect has been in Victoria of the re-masculinisation of the centre or core where financial management and policy maintain a strong steering capacity for the state, and a flexible peripheral labour market of increasingly feminised, casualised and deprofessionalised teaching force as central wages awards are replaced by individual contracts in the deregulated market (Blackmore, 1996). While this creates flexibility for the system, it does so at the expense of teachers as a profession. It also means that women principals are being encouraged to assume leadership at the level of middle management 'just in time' to oversee the decline in the 'public' in public education and the 'de-professionalisation' of their profession while being lauded for their superwomen capacities in doing the emotional management work of education in handling the stress and low morale within the profession this has created. In Victoria, there has been a re-defining of the social relationships between principal and teachers in more hierarchical ways. Now principals control the professional development, job location, performance pay and allocation of resources in schools. Teachers are now more susceptible to an individual principal's whim where previously more representative and collegial modes of decisionmaking had provided some protection and buffer from the one to one personal relationship. This works against strong traditions in primary education of non-hierarchical and collaborative career paths where principals often taught (Acker, 1995). The gap between teaching and administration has widened. Indeed, school based management which is principal not teacher centred is less democratic and more hierarchical. One female primary principal spoke despairingly of "the real wedge that has been put between school management and teachers". Given that many of these women had applied for the principalship and been appointed on the basis of their collaborative and personal skills, this reassertion of hierarchy was antithetical to their preferred modes of leadership. Another female primary principal commented: I try to be as collaborative a possible in my decisionmaking. It has become more and more difficult to do that ... You are often pushed into a decision which has to be made immediately and there is no time to consult. Or you try to get the best out of the system by being devious. You have to do that quietly. I will always tell teachers what I have done but they still do not feel as included as they did before in decisionmaking. This effects their sense of commitment. Many principals in our studies were fully aware of their new and more powerful position. One secondary principal referred to how principal-staff relationships changed with Schools of the Future. I am fully aware that I cannot be seen to associate with any particular teacher or group of teachers as friends because it would 'smack of favouritism' and 'the

346

J. Blackmore

Downloaded by [Deakin University Library] at 12:44 14 February 2015

boys' club' which I hated so much as a female teacher. I no longer just drop in for a drink to my old female friends on staff like I used to prior to these changes ... I miss the collegiality and mutual support. Leadership is often described in terms of personal isolation and exclusion. But for women principals, usually in the minority, and, particularly in small rural communities, they are also excluded from male social/professional networks (Blackmore, 1995). Marshall (1993) talks about the politics of denial where many women principals down play their isolation and the sexism of the system and their colleagues in order to survive. An internal labour market also is emerging in schools premised around competitive individualism and reward systems. These produce a culture of competition, compliance and performativity. Teachers present curriculum vitaes for even the smallest job and are promoted for their public 'performances' in administrative or activities outside classrooms. They closely adhere to the preferences of the principal upon whom they are increasingly dependent for rewards. They spend less time together as colleagues due to the intensification of labour resulting from increased class sizes, administrative and record keeping. This undermines the collegial culture of schools, often centred around the social milieu of the staffroom, the outlet for the exchange of stories which not only allows teachers to better understand their work but also acts as a form of emotional release. Previous collegial relationships which work around humour, emotion and engagement as a form of professional self are fragmented, and morale is low—constructing another form of emotional management work for principals. These stories tell us that leadership, particularly in a period of rapid change, is about emotions—desire, fear, despair, caring, disillusionment, pain, anger, stress, anxiety and loneliness. They point to how organisational and personal change is about understanding the emotional investments of different individuals and groups in changing (or not changing). Yet these are the aspects of leadership which tend to be neglected, played down, even denigrated in the literature, largely because emotionality has been cast in opposition to, and lesser than, rationality, in highly gendered ways. The Coping Strategies: resistance, controlling, distancing, exit The women principals in these projects were therefore faced with both managing their own and other people's emotions. They developed social defence systems to face the anxiety that threatened to overwhelm them. Common strategies include reducing familiarity by increasing space between themselves and their staff; by depersonalisation through the quantification of personal data; by developing a rhetoric of detachment and coping; by doing checks and counterchecks with regard to who makes the final decision; and through rituals such as task lists, thus regulating relationships as routine (Fineman, 1993, pp. 29-30). Most women called upon all of these strategies at particular moments. One defence for the inner conflict arising from the dissonance between felt and displayed emotion was disengagement or distancing. A typical response of many of these principals when expected to act in ways which they found antithetical, even repugnant, to their personal values was: 'We have been directed to do this'. One secondary school .female principal commented: I guess the thing at a philosophical or value level that I have found most difficult is lack of acknowledgment by this government that students who have traditionally been seen as disadvantaged ... probably don't deserve anything different ... I guess what you do is to try and make the best of what you can.

Emotional Labour in the Education Market

347

If I had that decision I couldn't have morally made it. But given that it was put upon me, you make the best you can of it ... I guess it is a coping mechanism, because if you get angry about this you lose your effectiveness, and it is not good to the kids or staff.

Downloaded by [Deakin University Library] at 12:44 14 February 2015

One middle manager in education spoke about how she had come to survive through frequent restructuring: "the cardinal rule was not to cry or show emotion as this was judged to be a weakness". Emotion is viewed as antipathetic to management, a private and personal matter. Gray comments: The plea for objectivity is often a way of blocking the confrontation of the affective realities and preventing a personal reflective process. Women may be as ready to block as men, and the ethos of school management has been one that encourages Heads to perceive themselves as the most objective and least emotional members of staff. (Gray, 1993, p. 109) While this 'distancing of emotion' temporarily shifts the immediate responsibility from principals, many speak of how over time its begins to make significant inroads into their sense of self and professionalism. For some it is too great and they exit. It is a form of protest which is seen to be less disloyal and dangerous than speaking out. After forty years, eighteen of them as a principal, one woman left the department because she felt that there was increasingly close surveillance and that "the rules implicit in the profession were becoming more rigid-about being rational, objective and efficient". For some who sought to adapt their styles of management to the centralist demands of a system undergoing rapid restructuring, the impact was equally great. Many principals found little pleasure left in their work. One confessed that "the only pleasure left is in pulling off a good performance, doing things 'right' rather than doing the 'right' things". It meant not being critical of the policies or the substance of the change. It was easier in the short term, but led to disaffection, alienation and loss of collegial respect and lack of trust between them and staff over time as they 'had bought the system'.

Dealing with Emotion While all principals are positioned ambiguously and in contradictory ways by recent reforms, the issue is still highly gendered. Conventional wisdom constructs both men and organisations as unemotional. The public is also constructed as an un-emotional field of activity compared to the emotional domains of the private and family on a masculine/ feminine bipolar divide. These stories demand that we theorise emotion better. First, we need to make emotion explicit in organisational theory. Organisational theory, with its guise of rationality and its driving instrumentalism, has "treated emotion as irrelevant, as part of the private expressive life of individuals, as disruptive, inappropriate, illogical, biased, weak and value laden" (Putnam & Mumby, 1993, p. 36). There is already work beginning in this direction (e.g. Hearn, 1993). Second, we need to understand both the upsides and downsides of emotionality, and their differing implications for educational change. When change management literature concentrates on emotion—it is in the positive sense of passion, enthusiasm, verve, zest and empathy. Little is said about how "feeling individuals worry, envy, brood, become bored, play, despair, plot, hate, hurt and so forth ... Yet embarrassment, shame and guilt are central to many aspect of organisational order. They are the emotional springs to self control... they are emotions which relate to how we think others are seeing us, or how our performances are judged"

Downloaded by [Deakin University Library] at 12:44 14 February 2015

348

J. Blackmore

(Fineman, 1993, pp. 10, 17). So while emotion has the susceptibility to be both productive or non productive for organisations, repressing 'negative' emotion is a major aspect of organisational control. Finally, we need to develop more sophisticated theories about emotional labour and care as being more than nurturance (extension of mothering) or 'just helping others'. Even within the feminist literature on women in educational administration upon which the popularised discourse of 'women's styles of leadership' about caring and sharing has drawn, emotion has not been well theorised (e.g. Beck, 1992). The women principals in the above stories were entrapped by the discourse of 'caring and sharing' as they were expected to display only the positive and nourishing emotions of care, warmth patience and calm which maintain the 'greedy organisations'. To display despair, disillusionment and anger, "emotions which are portrayed as fiercer, more negative, intensive, regressive and unruly in nature" (Hargreaves, 1995, p. 47) was their downfall. Women who dsiplay anger are depicted as 'being manipulative' or 'bitchy'; male anger is socially acceptable (Court, 1995). The feminist discourses about caring and sharing which refer only the upsides—trust, service, dedication, patience, and love—and not the downsides in which the nurturing principal must remain silent "deny the contributions of and reinscribes the invisibility of women's work" (Acker, 1995, p. 40), thus maintaining the male-female dualisms between rationality and emotionality. Nancy Folbre (1995, pp. 74-75) refers to caring labour. While caring is about responsibility and altruism, it is also about reciprocity and mutually satisfactory reciprocal relations (e.g. collegiality). It can be learnt. Reciprocity does not exist in a system where trust, a valued aspect of care, is at risk. So while all principals are expected to do the emotional labour of the self managing school as it goes to market, women principals are more vulnerable to the exigencies of the market and emotions. At the same time, economics positions emotions in opposition to the 'rational' processes of the market, yet 'the market' relies for its very existence upon exploiting emotions such as greed and desire, pleasure and envy.

Correspondence: Jill Blackmore, Deakin Centre for Education and Change, Faculty of Education, Deakin University, Geelong 3217, Australia. Email: [email protected]. NOTES 1.

2.

3.

I wish to acknowledge the support of the Australian Research Council in all these projects as well as my colleagues at the Deakin Centre for Education and Change, Jenny Angwin, Chris Bigum, Louise Laskey and John Hodgens, the research assistance of Ann Davies andjanine Collier, and editorial advice from Jane Kenway and Marie Brennan. Market oriented devolved systems of educational governance in Sweden, Norway, England amd New Zealand also reflect tension in principal centred school based management (Whitty, 1996 for UK, US and New Zealand; Moller, 1993 for Norway). Similar core-periphery patterns have emerged in Sweden, Israel and New Zealand (Blackmore, 1996).

REFERENCES ACKER, S. (1995) Carry on caring: the work of women teachers, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 16(1), pp. 21-36. BALL, S. (1995) Educational Reform (Buckingham, Open University Press). BECK, L. (1992) Reclaiming Educational Administration as a Caring Profession (Columbia, Teachers College Press).

BLACKMORE, J. (1995) Towards a post masculinist politics of education?, in: B. LIMERICK & B. LINGARD (Eds) Gender and Changing Educational Management (Sydney, Hodder & Stoughton)

Downloaded by [Deakin University Library] at 12:44 14 February 2015

Emotional Labour in the Education Market

349

BLACKMORE, J . (1996) T h e re-structuring and re-gendering of educational work, Keynote address to the 9th World Congress of Comparative Education, Sydney, 1 July. BLACKMORE, J., BIGUM, C., HODGENS. & LASKEY, L. (1996) Learning to change in a devolved system: the case of Victoria, Working Paper (Geelong, Deakin Centre for Education and Change). BLACKMORE, J . (1997) Feminism, Leadership and Educational Change (Buckingham, O p e n University Press). BRAH, A. (1994) 'Race' and 'culture' in the gendering of labour markets, in: H. AFSHAR & M. MAYNARD (Eds) The Dynamics of 'Race' and Gender: some feminist interventions (London, Taylor & Francis). COOMBE, K., COCKLIN, B., RATALLICK, J . & CLANCY, S. (1993) Women Principals in Rural Contexts, paper presented to AARE, Perth, 22-26 November. C O U R T , M. (1995) Good girls and naughty girls: rewriting the scripts for women's anger, in: B. LIMERICK & B. LINGARD (Eds) Gender and Changing Educational Management (Sydney, Hodder & Stoughton). COSER (1974) The Greedy Institution: patterns of undivided commitment (New York, The Free Press). DISTANT, G. (1993) Self Managed Schooling and the Disempowerment of Women Teachers, paper presented to AARE, Perth, 22-26 November. DRUCKER, P. (1992) Managing the Future (New York, Dutton). FERBER, M. & NELSOX, J . (1993) Beyond Economic Alan: feminist theory and economics (Chicago, University of Chicago Press). FINEMAN, S. (1993) Organisations as emotional arenas, in: S. Finman (Ed.) Emotion in Organisations (London, Sage). FLAM, H. (1993) Fear, loyalty and greedy organisations, in: S. FINEMAN (Ed.) Emotion in Organisations (London, Sage). FOLBRE, N. (1995) 'Holding hands at midnight': the paradox of caring labour, Feminist Economics, 1(1), pp. 73-92. GEWIRTZ, S., BALL, S. & BOWE, R. (1995) Markets, Choice and Equity in Education (Buckingham, Open University Press). GRAY, H. (1993) Gender issues in management training, in: J . O Z G A (Ed.) Women and Educational Management (Buckingham, Open University Press). HARGREAVES, A. (1995) Development and desire, in: M. GUSKEY & T. HUBERMAN (Eds) Professional Development: new paradigms and practices (New York, Teachers College Press). HEARN, J. (1993) Emotive subjects—organisational men, organisational masculinities and the (de)construction of 'emotions', in: S. FiNEMAN (Ed.) Emotion in Organisations (London, Sage). HOCHSCHILD, A. (1983) The Managed Heart (Berkeley, University of California Press). HOPPL, H. & LIXSTEAD, L. (1993) Passion and performance: suffering and carrying out organisational roles, in: S. Fineman (Ed.) Emotion in Organisations (London, Sage). KARPIN REPORT (1995) Enterprising Nation. Ministerial Working Party on Management Education (Canberra, AGPS). KUIPER, E. & SAP, J. (1995) Out of the Margin: feminist perspectives on economics (London, Routledge). LASH, S. & U R R Y , J . (1994) The Economies of Signs and Space (Cambridge, Polity Press). LAUDER, H. et al. (1994) The Creation of Market Competition for Education in New Zealand (Wellington, Smithfield Project). LIMERICK, B. & LIXGARD, B. (Eds) Gender and Changing Educational Management (Sydney, Hodder & Stoughton). MARSHALL, C. (1993) The politics of denial: gender and race issues in administration, in: C. MARSHALL (Ed.) The New Politics of Race and Gender (London, The Falmer Press). MARSHALL, J . & PETERS, M. (1996) Individualism and Community: education and social policy in the postmodern condition (London, The Falmer Press). MCLAUGHLIN, M . & MARSH, M . (1990) Staff development and school change, in: A. LIEBERMAN (Ed.) Schools as Collaborative Cultures; creating the future now (Lewes, The Falmer Press). MOLLER, J. (1993) Restructuring in the Norwegian context: a combination of efforts towards decentralisation and centralisation, paper presented to OISE. NiCHOLLS, P. & OZGA, J. (1994) Manufacturing Consent in Primary Schools, paper presented to AARE, Newcastle. PUTNAM, L. & MUMBY, D. (1993) Organisations, emotion and the myth of rationality, in: S. FlXEMAX (Ed.) Emotion in Organisations (London, Sage). ROSE, N. (1992) The Governing of the Soul (Newbury Park, Sage). SinCLAIR, A. (1994) T h e seduction of the self managed team and the reinvention of the team-as-group, Leading and Managing, 1(1), pp. 44-62. VICTORIA (1996) Ministerial Review of Employment Equity for Women Teachers (Melbourne, VGPS). WEIXER, G. (1995) A question of style of value? contrasting perceptions of women and leadership, in: B. LIMERICK & B. LIXGARD (Eds) Gender and Changing Educational Management (Sydney, Hodder & Stoughton). W H I T T Y , G. (1996) Creating quasi-markets in education: a review of recent research on parental choice and school autonomy in three countries, Review of Research in Education, 22 (in press).