Principals’ emotional labour in volatile times

The project aims to deepen the knowledge of Swedish elementary school principals´ work in times when aggravating aspects in schools such as principal turnover, threats, high population mobility, comprehensive lingusitic and knowledge diversity, and a dense flow of exceptional incidents in and around the schools, require principals´ emotional resilience.

Further, it aims to provide an innovativ multimethodological research design and theory package to explore site sepcific conditons and the emotional labour - how to handle one´s own and others emotions - of school principals.

The project utilises the project members´ shared expertise in research on principals´ work, teacher profession and practice theories and the teams´ established collaborations with the principal community and school organisers in Sweden.

It builds on two Swedish pilot-studies and a collaboration with scholars in an ongoing research project in Australia (Austalian Research Council Project Id: 38163), to which this proposed project is a parallel study.

Employing a multimethod research design utilising a) testimonies (webbased survey) b) four case studies (in low socio-ec. comm.) and c) stakeholders workshops (e.g authorities of education, school organisers, principal union), the project provides authentic accounts of principals´ work and their needs.

The project readress the gaps in knowledge of school principals´ work, the evidence-base to build a collective repsonse to policy change and princpal´ practice.