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Title: Completing the affective turn in educational organisational theory:

educational organising as an emotion

Conference Paper · April 2018

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Michael Connolly Chris James

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Title: Completing the affective turn in educational organisational theory: educational
organising as an emotion
Michael Connolly (University of South Wales, UK)
Chris James (University of Bath, UK)
Abstract
In this paper, we argue that educational organising is an emotion. We analyse: the central
aspects of educational organising - leadership and management, and the nature of
emotions. Leadership entails influencing others to achieve desirable goals. Management
entails carrying the responsibility for the proper functioning of an educational system, which
has particular goals. It is a state of mind. In any system for which someone is responsible,
events/activities will occur/be initiated, which may require influencing responses – leadership
actions. In emotions, an individual experiences an event; it is appraised, various changes
are initiated, and the individual acts. These processes are conditioned by the individual’s
affective state. The similarities lead us to conclude that educational organisational practices
can be construed as emotions.
Introduction
Over the last 20 years or so, scholars have sought to bring affect into educational theory
generally, for example, Hargreaves (1998) and Zembylas (2005), and into educational
organisation theory in particular, see for example, James and Vince, (2001); Crawford
(2008); Samier and Schmidt (2009); Berkovich and Eyal (2015) and Crawford, James and
Oplatka (2017). In this paper, we take those efforts forward and in so doing complete the
affective turn in educational organisational theory.
The stimulus for the paper is our recent research analysing the essential difference between
the two major aspects of organising in schools: leadership and management/administration.
That analysis together with an analysis of the nature of emotion leads us to argue that
organising in schools is an emotion. Hence the title of the paper we are proposing.
Following this introduction, we set out: the objectives of the paper; the methods and the data
sources; the perspectives; and the substantiated conclusions and their scholarly
significance. Throughout the article, we use the term ‘educational’ as it is typically used, that
is, to make clear the institutional context for leadership and management, e.g., a school,
college, university, or a virtual learning programme that is a legitimate educational institution.
Objectives
Our objectives are as follows.
1. To draw attention to the affective nature of educational organising
2. To analyse conceptions of leadership, management and administration as the central
aspects of educational organising
3. To analyse conceptions of emotion
4. To compare and contrast conceptions of emotion and organising in educational
institutions
Methods and Data sources
Our method has entailed analysing sources from the relevant literature and synthesising
substantive concepts to develop a coherent argument. In the paper, we will use examples
from our experience as teachers/managers in educational institutions to illustrate our
argument.
Perspectives
Educational leadership and educational management
Arguably, a lack of clarity has emerged over time in the use of the terms ‘educational
leadership’ and ‘educational management’ both by practitioners and academics.
Simultaneously, somewhat regrettably, the notion of educational management has become
neglected and downplayed (Lumby, (2017) and educational leadership narratives have been
favoured (Bush, 2008). In this section, we analyse the two concepts.
The notion of educational leadership
Generally, the term ‘educational leadership’ is used in two ways. First, it is used to describe
those in senior positions in an organisational hierarchy in an educational institution. This
usage has become ubiquitous; thus in England for example, the position of school
headteacher/principal is now a ‘school leadership position’ with the individual holding that
position now often referred to as ‘the school leader’. How this usage came to dominate is
open to debate. However, a perceived need for schools to improve their educational
provision played a key role. It was asserted that for schools to improve, they need to change
and bringing about change is a leadership act/practice whilst management simply maintains
the status quo (Cuban, 1988; Bush, 2008). Such a perspective on leadership and
management has a long history (Barnard, 1938; Peters and Waterman, 1982; Kanter, 1983;
Bennis and Nanus, 1885).
Second, the term ‘leadership’ is used to describe the practice of leading (Raelin, 2016) and
this sense is our interest here. For example, this perspective is central to Cuban’s (1988)
definition of leadership, it is influence for the achievement of desired goals. From this
standpoint, in a school, any member of staff can lead/influence. It is not the sole province of
the headteacher/principal.
The notion of educational management
To clarify the relationship between ‘administration’ and ‘management’ at the outset,
administration is typically used synonymously with management and is usually similarly
defined. Thus the UK-based Institute of Administrative Management (IAM, 2016) define
administration as “the management (our emphasis) of an office, business, or organisation”
(p.1). We will use the terms synonymously in the paper.
As with leadership, the term ‘management’ is used to describe those who have a position of
some kind in an organisational hierarchy. Again, our interest here is not in understanding the
notion (management) on the basis of what those with a particular job title (‘manager’) do but
in understanding its defining essence. Perhaps unusually, we argue that delegation is central
to understanding educational management in this way.
Conceptualisations of delegation typically encompass assigning the responsibility for the
functioning of a system of some kind to another person, see for example, Mullins with
Christy (2016). Educational institutions are no exception here. Thus, in a secondary school
in England, aspects of the headteacher’s responsibility for the daily functioning of the school
is delegated to others for example, the responsibility for curriculum provision, would be
delegated to a deputy headteacher. Parts of the functioning of that system, such as the
provision of the science curriculum are then further delegated to various heads of
‘department’. Responsibility for teaching the students in a teaching department is delegated
to individual teachers. All these different levels of responsibility are connected to educational
systems of some kind: the school; the curriculum; subject departments, and teaching groups.
By beginning with the concept of delegation, responsibility emerges as a fundamental aspect
of educational management. We thus argue that being the manager necessarily entails
carrying the responsibility for the proper functioning of an educational system of some kind
that has particular goals. A very distinct difference between leadership as a practice
(influencing) and management in practice (carrying a delegated responsibility) arises, and a
new/distinct perspective on educational management begins to emerge.
The essence of management - carrying a responsibility - is actually a metaphor for the
depiction of an ‘internal state of mind’. Thus, we talk of: ‘carrying the weight of responsibility’
or ‘shouldering a burden’ of some kind, a burden which headteachers have depicted as
carrying “invisible rucksacks on their backs” (James and Vince, 2001, p, 312). These
metaphors seek to portray an inner condition, which has cognitive aspects (one knows one
is responsible for the functioning of a system) and affective aspects, which are arguably
more significant. It is how carrying the responsibility feels that is important.
This internal state of carrying a responsibility may condition actions which have varied
degrees of appropriateness. Arguably, the affective burden results from being accountable,
the expectation of being required to account to oneself and others for the functioning of the
system for which one is responsible. Such an expectation may provoke anxiety, the threat of
an internal unbearable mental collapse (James, 2010).
Various activities are associated with carrying the responsibility for the functioning of a
system, as the person doing so, the manager, ensures the system is functioning as it should.
Here a confusion with leadership begins to arise because management – being responsible
for the functioning of a system – becomes synonymous with managing as a practice of some
kind. Thus standard texts, such as Mullins with Christy (2016) and many theoreticians, view
management as a set of activities - co-ordinating, directing, and guiding. But these activities,
and here we do include delegation, are influencing actions and are therefore leadership
actions (Cuban, 1988).
Organising in practice – a summary
Leadership entails influencing others in order to achieve desirable goals. Management
entails carrying the responsibility for the proper functioning of an educational system of some
kind, which has particular goals. It is an internal state of mind. In any system for which the
system manager is responsible, events/activities will occur/take place which as appropriate
may require influencing responses – leadership actions of some kind.
Affects
In this section, we explore the nature of affects focussing in particular on the nature of
emotions.
In the literature, three types of affect are typically differentiated: feelings, moods and
emotions (Forgas, 2000). Feelings and moods are descriptions of affective states.
Feelings are temporary, intense, and have an identifiable rationale and a definable
content. Moods are persistent, of relatively low intensity, and may be hard to explain and
to define. Definitions of emotions typically refer to physiological, psychological and social
responses to events that are intended to protect and secure an individual’s continued
existence and interests, see for example, Smith and Lazarus (1990); Sander et al. (2005)
and Scherer (2009). Thus Matsumoto and Ekman (2009, p.19) assert that:
“Emotions are transient bio-psychosocial reactions designed to aid
individuals in adapting to and coping with events that have implications
for survival and well-being”.
Importantly, an individual’s emotion will be conditioned by their affective state.
Two main emotion theories/models can be identified: basic emotion theory and cognitive
emotion theory, although given the complexity of emotion arguably the two theoretical sets
overlap.
Basic emotion theory is underpinned by the assumption that emotions are natural,
distinct, involuntary and instinctive responses to emotion-evoking events (Ekman, 1992;
1999; 2003; Ekman and Codaro, 2011). Six types of basic emotion are typically identified:
happiness; anger; fear; disgust; sadness; and surprise. Advocates of this perspective
argue that each basic emotion: has a unique ‘physiological signature’; particular and
distinctive changes in mental activities and attention; subjective experience; reliable non-
verbal signals; and is neurologically hard-wired, instinctive and universal. Aspects of these
assertions are open to critique.
The cognitive theory of emotions is based on the notion that emotion is a process in
which an individual who faces an event or situation, focuses attention on particular
aspects of it, and appraises and makes sense of the event in various ways that generate
physiological, psychological, and behavioural/social responses (Sander et al., 2005;
Scherer 2009; Smith and Lazarus, 1990). The changes experienced include changes to
autonomic physiology (heart rate etc.); action tendencies, which are the internal motive
states that are hypothesised to underlie the urge to act (Arnold, 1960; Frijda, 2009); motor
expression – actions of various kinds; and importantly subjective feelings. Componential
theories seek to model these various appraisal components (Sander et al., 2005; Scherer
2009) and understandably, component models are very elaborate. Scherer’s model
identifies these components.
 Attention and memory – concerned mainly with relevance.
 Motivation – the implications are appraised.
 Reasoning – relates mainly to coping.
 Self – mainly concerned with significance.
Four issues are important here.
First, the emotion process will be grounded in and shaped by an individual’s current
affective state, their personality traits (Scherer, 2009), such as agreeableness and anxiety
(Lee and Ashton, 2010) and the general context. all of which add complexity to the
emotion process.
Second, the interaction between any components is likely to be considerable and the
components may change as a result of those interactions.
Third, feelings can be made apparent in an enormous variety of ways as actions, some of
which would not be considered to be emotions (Crawford and James, 2015).
Fourth, sense-making capability (James, James and Potter, 2017; Carr, Gilbride and
James, 2017) is clearly significant in the emotion process
The nature of emotions – in summary
In emotions, an event is experienced; the event is appraised in a way that may or may not
generate physiological changes, psychological changes such as subjective feelings,
action readiness, and the motivation to act; and behavioural/social responses – the
individual acts. All these processes will be conditioned by the individual’s affective state.
Substantiated conclusions
From the preceding analyses of the nature of the central aspects of organising in
educational institutions, and the nature of emotions, broad similarities emerge. From an
organisational standpoint, an individual carries the responsibility for the functioning of a
system; he/she experiences an event in that system, he/she appraises/makes sense of
the event, and acts accordingly in order to influence matters. From an affective/emotional
standpoint, the internal state of same individual will be configured by the responsibility for
the functioning of a system he/she has been assigned and carries. He/she experiences an
event in that system, appraises/makes sense of the event, an appraisal conditioned by her
internal state, and acts accordingly. Thus organisational practices in educational
institutions can be construed as emotions.
Scholarly significance
The paper is scholarly significant because it brings affect fully into educational
organisational theory. The argument we have set out opens up a range of issues which
have substantial theoretical and practical implications.
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