Leading with/in emotion states: The criticality of political subjects and policy debates in educational leadership on emotions

Abstract

One of the many facets of educational leadership is the emotional aspects of educational leadership itself. Leaders are regularly immersed in emotionally charged broad-based policy debates and political subjects like protests and voting policies. These are policy subjects that politically occur not only in schools where educational leaders practice but also in their interactions with school boards, media, and community members. Such interactions are stressful and contribute to leadership burnout, especially among critical educational leaders. As such, educational leadership needs to address not only the emotionality of their practice but the emotions that result from the interactions they regularly encounter in their practice about societal political subjects and policy debates. Simply, emotions are the reason educators politically advocate for policy subjects in the first place—it’s because of how they “feel” about racial segregation or that they are “pissed” about police brutality. Using textual analysis, this article contends that the scholarship within educational leadership lacks attentiveness to addressing how emotions interact with the societal political subjects that permeate leadership, therefore stifling innovative practices for addressing “controversial” policy debates and political subjects that are, ipso facto, inherently emotional. This view of emotions in educational leadership has the power to change how the field conceptualizes politics and policy subjects. Accordingly, educational leadership that focuses on emotional interactions with political subjects is apt to advance the field of educational politics and policy.

Keywords

Politics subjects policy emotion educational leadership well-being stress

All aspects of our society and life have an emotional gap, both within and outside of organizations. These are spaces embroiled by politicized, problematized, and even devalued emotions. However, emotions, when critically examined, can be sources of empowerment and provide a way to explore important policy and political subject questions. In our particular milieu in the U.S., we are in a highly emotional and heated four-year presidential election cycle where emotional displays are projected to communicate a message intended to empower or disempower certain groups—a key concern for groups that are systematically marginalized (dis/abled, racialized, gendered, classed, etc.). Further complicating this, the world is experiencing the emotional impacts of COVID-19 including the resulting school closures and fears that result. Educational leadership researchers and practitioners experience these emotions, for there are many facets to educational leadership in theory and practice, one of which is the emotional aspects of educational leadership itself. This is why emotional responses to political subjects, such as presidential election cycles, and policy debates have implications for how educational leadership is experienced and practiced in everyday contexts. It is for this reason that this article textually analyze how educational leadership scholarship on emotions takes up issues of policy debates and political subjects, and the theoretical implications for critical/post practices.

The intersection of emotions and political subjects impacts political advocacy, be it voting, protest, dissent, or something else, as these interactions inherently ignite internal/external emotions such as anger, fear, and even excitement. Because emotional responses to broad political subjects happen within and outside of schools, advocacy in educational leadership is not exempt from politicized emotional responses that occur outside of their schools. These emotions affect the everyday lives of educators, especially educational leaders who advocate for political subjects like climate change policy, racial justice, educational equity, gender justice, and human rights, where emotions often run high. Therefore, the intersection between emotions and political subjects is critically important for educational leadership well-being during a time that is not only highly stressful for educators but laden with a tense, and often “felt,” political climate. For this reason, our critical theoretical article on educational leadership uses textual analysis to link emotions in/to political subjects via the body of contemporary educational leadership scholarship on emotions.

Policy subjects occur politically not only in schools and district offices where educational leaders spend much of their time but district-wide and beyond via interactions with school boards, media, legislators, and community members. Emotions are the reason educators politically advocate for general policy subjects in the first place—it’s because of how they “feel” about racial segregation and anti-immigration or that they are “pissed” about police brutality. This is why we build a bridge between two key concepts: emotions in educational leadership scholarship and political subjects. We begin with addressing the crux of our argument on emotions, as emotions are uniquely human, and from there we take up well-being. Our textual analysis revealed that educational leadership scholarship on emotions involves a limited attentiveness to how emotions interact with the societal political subjects that permeate leadership itself, therefore stifling innovative practices on addressing “controversial” political issues and subjects that are, ipso facto, inherently emotional. Since we are concerned about the emotional toll of political advocacy among critical educators, we end this article with implications and recommendations for educational leadership and politics of education scholars concerned with advancing critical theory.

Theoretical perspective: Emotion and the educational leadership psyche

Since our article aims to bring theories of emotion and well-being in educational leadership to bear on political subjects and policy debates that leaders encounter in their everyday lives, we offer a background of our theoretical contexts. Interactions between educational leaders and political subjects are often stressful and contribute to leadership burnout, especially among those who advocate for critical change. This is one reason that we are especially concerned with emotions and the educational leadership psyche as it relates to well-being, burnout, and the spirit of the everyday educator. Instead of relying on peer-reviewed scholarship that engages words like “hope,” because words used to describe emotions are subjective, we instead engage analyses of emotions themselves broadly, their internal and external states, and their interactions with political subjects. Also, we do not take up specific emotion words because we want to engage all emotions regardless of how they “show up”—not just ones like fear, hope, and courage—but instead the full range of human experience. Emotions are guideposts to what needs creative attention. We further explain the theoretical background that guided our inquiry.

Emotion states

To make meaning of emotions textually in educational leadership scholarship, we start with a working understanding of emotions. Our goal is to discuss how the text is deployed in relation to emotion(s) and political subjects as a way to theorize how educational leadership might take up political subjects and policy debates. In the context of our textual analysis of emotions, we examined for presentations of emotion to describe states of being (regret, fear, happiness, tears, sweating, lip biting, etc.). Examining the use of emotion textually is key for our analysis because, in concurrence with Crawford (2007), emotions are critical to educational leadership since emotional relationships are central to any school-related work and pivotal to the concept of educational leadership. Also, consider how often educational leadership is expected to take on everyone else’s emotion and “must be prepared to contain teachers’ anxieties, meet their emotional storms with courage and bring into conversation the emotional significance that can be discerned from anxiety and emotional storms” (Pitt and Rose, 2007: 337). However, as Pitt and Rose (2007) question, what if emotions cannot be known, managed, or made intelligent? Although we agree that emotions are unknowable, it is nonetheless imperative to focus on the role of emotion in critical educational leadership during these uncertain politically amplified times.

Apt, for the purposes of this article, is a discussion of affect, feeling, and emotion interpretations. Although our article does not seek to theorize or determine what is or is not an emotion, a discussion of emotion is relevant. We turn briefly to Shouse’s (2005) argument that affect is a relationship with our bodies and is not a personal feeling but a nonconscious prepersonal intensity that cannot be fully realized with language. Comparatively, feelings are personal and biographical, and emotions are social displays of feeling that can be transferred between bodies (Shouse, 2005). In educational leadership specifically, the argument is similarly made for the differentiation of concepts (e.g., emotion, affect, feeling), but affect is privileged (James et al., 2018). Although there is something to be said about these perspectives, in this article, we take up a conceptualization of affect in the generic sense, in that it engages all aspects of affect, emotion, feeling, and other types of constructions (Cvetkovich, 2012; Grosland, 2013, 2018; Zembylas, 2014). We go so far as to use “affect,” “feeling,” and “emotion” interchangeably (Cvetkovich, 2012; Grosland and Matias, 2017, Grosland, 2019) because, as in any language, these words are constructed and may or may not be embodied; and rather than analyze the differences in terminology, we are interested in the role of power in experience—regardless of how the feeling, affect, or emotion is displayed, because definitions change in context and over time.

Educational leadership psyche

We draw from aspects of the psyche (well-being, burnout, and spirit) in educational leadership for our textual analysis because emotions reside within the psyche. Indeed, this is where social reality constructs what one even begins to consider is an issue or debate. Critical awareness plays a role in this because the social reality in praxis is rooted in the Freirean concept of conscientization—the essence of purpose, values, and spirituality in educational leadership (Boyd, 2012; Dantley, 2003, 2010). For Dantley (2003), spirituality is “that part of our lives and community through which we make meaning and understanding of our world. In fact, it is the spiritual dimension of humankind that gives us the motivation as well as the technique” involved in “the esoteric exercise of conscientization” (Dantley, 2003: 274). As critical educators, we agree that conscientization and critical spiritual self-awareness are assets in educational leadership when addressing political subjects. Operating spiritually is the ability to “move one out of one’s inner life to a sense of solidarity with others and a commitment to improv[ing] upon the world as it is, be it through individual acts of compassion or corporate efforts to establish justice” (Boyd, 2012: 764). Solidarity, an emotion itself, for the educational leader is key because being a leader is to influence and develop others to advocate for justice in their communities and broadly.

Solidarity and compassion are emotionally driven ethea for the critical educational leader. Hence, accepting oneself as a leader has a powerful influence on emotions like self-confidence and hope (Somech and Miassy-Maljak, 2003). However, critical leadership in all of its complexity will take an emotional toll. This is where we find an emotional cocktail of stress, burnout, and emotions that have potential consequences for ethics (Somech and Miassy-Maljak, 2003). From this place, even the most intent critical educator will find their advocacy practices stall or cease (Grosland 2019). Stress and emotion drive decisions that can at times seem unreasonable (Steward, 2014). It is from this “unreasonableness” that critical educators, since they are already going against the grain, need to center wellness. For example, it is emotions, like care and self-renewal, that can be used during times of “accountability” to interrupt power (Gunzenhauser, 2008); especially important when power systematically marginalizes groups underserved in schools. Linking “controllability” within a Foucaultian criticism of discipline, it is crucial that care toward oneself manifests as resistance against the norming practices of “reform” (Gunzenhauser, 2008) likened to school “reform.” Care involves the freedom to be ethical, genuine, and creative regardless of the implementation of external standards such as those in schools (Gunzenhauser, 2008). Emotion in the context of implementation, such as care toward self and others, indicates what in particular educational leaders find important about certain initiatives and how these initiatives evolve.

Concepts rooted in emotions like spirituality and awareness are critical to the psyche of educational leadership. This psyche humanizes educators in a profession that painfully strives for “standardization” and sameness through politics (as power) and policy (syllabi, school improvement plans, strategic goals, implementation). Education systems, tertiary and otherwise, strive for “sameness” not only in students but in the educators as well, which leads to stress, conflict, and tension. No matter, emotions make the human, but emotions are a place from which humans strive for a better world and take up causes—hence the need for the relationship of emotions to political subjects. From the theoretical of emotions and psyche, our article turns to how we narratively framed our analysis of how educational leadership scholarship takes up emotion states textually with a lens toward the role of explicitly stated political subjects and policy debates (animal rights, pay inequality, racial justice, LGBTQIA+ equality, climate change, homelessness rights, amnesty, etc.).

Emotion in educational leadership: A narrative framing

Using our theories on emotions and the psyche in educational leadership provided us with analytic tools to explore peer-reviewed journal literature for this article. For our textual analysis, we used narrative theory as our theoretical framing, specifically a post-structuralist narrative theory hybrid. As we further explain, contextualizing literature narratively is the best way to explore this body of text because the text is a cultural artifact of life and society: these texts represent their times. We first explain narrative, then specifically post-structural narrative. Narrative research, in general, is used to create understanding, but by-products also include change or solutions to problems (Elbaz-Luwisch, 1997). Although we offer implications to conclude this article, our main goal is to create an overall understanding of how political and policy subjects are taken up in scholarship educational leadership on emotions. We therefore address two basic types of narrative: according to Elbaz-Luwisch (1997) these are analysis of narratives and narrative analysis. Attending these approaches, in an analysis of narratives, we collected and analyzed narratives to arrive at generalizations about the role of political subjects and policy debates. Second, in narrative analysis, we queried about emotions in a bounded case—that of peer-reviewed kinds of literature on emotions in educational leadership—collected these texts, and formed a storied account to collaboratively make them meaningful for our inquiry.

Attending the crux of narrative theory, we took the texts as they were presented in print; however, in order to propose potential implications for power in critical theory, we were inspired by what Clandinin and Raymond (2006) term post-structural narrative inquiry. According to Clandinin and Raymond’s (2006) conceptualization, post-structural narrative inquiry is an analytic process engaged by post-structural cultural theorists because narratives, as powerful as they are in and of themselves, are limited due to the way that individuals lack awareness of their social conditioning and the role of power. The need to highlight politics, therefore, is key because power dynamics and social oppressions obscure narratives and create ambivalence (Clandinin and Raymond, 2006). Since narrative creates results in ways other representation cannot, we emphasize the rhetorical value of narrative in our textual analysis while attending to politics and emotional and moral responses to topics in narratives (Clandinin and Raymond, 2006). Inspired by these ideas, we term our analytic process post-structural narrative theory, and it is a fitting approach for our textual analysis of educational leadership scholarship on emotions, as it allows us to focus on the instability of emotion in the context of political subjects and policy debates.

Experiential particulars

Due to our lived experiences and interest in the intersection of politics, policy, and well-being, as well as our role both as educators active in local affairs and as politics researchers, we have a deep interest in how educators experience emotions in politics and policy; this article is an extension of such. Grosland has a background in political science, and both authors have extensive backgrounds as leaders and educators who take up these issues in their practices. These practices began early in our careers, long before we became professors, and have continued during our tenure. Furthermore, as racially underrepresented female educators (i.e., former grade school educators who are now education researchers), we regularly notice the role of power, policy, and politics in our lives inside and outside of our profession. Therefore, it is particularly noticeable to us when internal and external emotions become more dynamic during discussions about political issues and (in)justices. Due to our critical/post-theoretical perspectives and our commitment to practicing in contexts typically underserved in schools, we are fully aware of how we are situated in spaces of both privilege and oppression. As a result, we continually seek ways to advocate for justice and address ever-shifting social, political, and policy issues and how these operate within systems of oppression. We are critically aware and conscious about these positionalities, as well as the challenges and possibilities we face in our practice of taking up “controversial” political subjects.

We regularly take up issues related to policy debates and political subjects (Grosland, 2013; Radd and Grosland, 2016; Grosland and Matias, 2017). Long before working in higher education, when Grosland was a teacher leader in public schools, she engaged in practices that took up the intersection of policy and politics (e.g., amnesty and homelessness) in ways that allowed her students to come to their own conclusions and relevant action. In her grade level, for example, by anonymously polling students about who they would vote for in the election, her grade level team used the presidential race as a teachable moment about voting. With fidelity, their students—preteens—always predicted the next president. During the Bush and Gore presidential election, the Grosland’s team displayed shock and awe at the poll results (the students were nonchalant about the results): an exact split for Bush and Gore votes. We later learned, with even more shock, that the students’ votes had forecast, exactly, the future of the political subject of a contested presidential election. Using this as a teachable moment, students understood the importance of voting – regardless of how they “feet” about the candidates because the results were unexpected.

We continually find that in our college classrooms there is a range of emotions, from the disappointment that political debates were not discussed in their undergraduate program, to excitement to explore political topics further themselves. Educational leaders have told us how various political and policy subjects (besides education) have impacted their work. One principal shared with Grosland, for example, that upon arriving at her primary grades campus for her day’s work, she shockingly found her campus grounds littered with 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign posters. Due to our own experiential experiences as educational leaders, researchers, and developers, we understand how the emotional world of political subjects and policy debates impacts everyday leadership practices, and these very experiences affected our interactions with the texts used in this article and informed our analytic process and conclusions on emotion and political subjects. These concerns reflect the larger political climate beyond schools into communities, thus the need to focus on emotions in educational leadership and how they intersect with these issues.

Leading with/in emotion states: Contemporary observations of educational leadership emotions sans policy debates and political subjects

The purpose of our critical theoretical article is to bring together emotions in educational leadership and political subjects. We did this by conducting a textual analysis of how emotions are interwoven in educational leadership scholarship. Because we are interested in implications for critical theory, we were particularly drawn to texts where a critical/post lens is used to take up emotions. This, therefore, precludes us from considering relevant literature on “emotional intelligence,” for example, that fails to deconstruct “intelligence” through a lens of critical/post theory. It is from this place that we conducted our theoretical analysis by analyzing journal publications on educational leadership in the 2000s where emotions from a lens of power, criticality, and post perspectives were advocated as text foci. Our analysis indicated that this educational leadership scholarship on emotions has paid only limited attention to how emotions interact with societal political subjects and policy debates in particular. This is problematic because, as it is well noted per our analysis, emotions permeate leadership itself, and a disregard for political subjects and debates, which are emotional at their roots, stymies innovation on how to engage “controversial” subjects. In this section, we further explain our theoretical explorations.

Educational leadership as an emotional stance

In the U.S., educational leadership is usually linked to a job title (e.g., principal, teacher leader, district office staff); we attend to the notion that educational leadership may be less linked to job title, and more to larger affective concerns (Crawford, 2007). Therefore, we use educational leadership literature to denote this stance, as we see this role as something more encompassing and sometimes outside of a job title. Educational leaders are not only leaders in their workplaces but are influencers who serve as leaders in their communities and elsewhere. True leadership is a disposition, and those in educational leadership (e.g., teacher leaders, cabinet members, administrators) are influential and therefore accustomed to occupying leadership ways of being, which is basically why these educators become leaders in their organizations in the first place. Therefore, using educational leadership scholarship as a textual case offers ample opportunity to examine emotion vis-à-vis educational leadership while keeping leadership as a disposition relatively stable. This stability is key because emotional states among leadership relay how “emotional context is a fundamental key to life lived” in schools (Crawford, 2007: 531).

Educators make leadership decisions regarding how to engage or disengage in a political subject based on how they “feel” about an issue (e.g., whether the issue is worth the emotional investment or not, hence potentially choosing to withhold an emotion—which is an emotional decision itself because it is rooted in emotions). Emotional concerns in educational leadership are connected to values, principles, and judgments—concepts that “lend texture or emotional color, passion and individual purpose” to schooling (Crawford, 2007: 533). Despite their powerful role, issues of emotions in decision making are continually underplayed in educational leadership (Crawford, 2007).

The current emotional state of educational leadership

Although there is significant scholarly text in educational leadership on emotions from different theoretical backgrounds, educational leadership that integrates emotions and activism on political subjects from a critical theoretical lens needs robust theorizing. While emotions are central to the role of educational leadership, unfortunately, it “is not always readily apparent in the educational leadership literature” (Crawford, 2007: 531; Wallace, 2010). This is especially the case concerning political subjects. Hence, the contemporary (the 2000s) educational leadership scholarship shows potential promise in political subjects and emotions. Advancing this domain of practice improves critical education in general, and critical educational leadership specifically, because these groups of educators often suffer starkly from burnout and stress because they think, feel, and act according to quite vigorous ideals of justice.

Examinations of emotions in educational leadership without a critical lens on the intersection of emotions and political subjects are, therefore, remnants of everyday life in educational leadership. In our explorations, narrative findings in educational leadership scholarship take up emotions in ways such as desire (Radd and Grosland, 2019), emotional intelligence (Ingram and Cangemi, 2012), emotions of school improvement (Beatty, 2007), emotional “training” (Schmidt, 2010), individual emotions among school leaders concerning managing tasks (Brennan and Muaric, 2011), and “balancing” emotions (Geijsel et al., 2007). We also considered topics where school leaders’ emotions were a focus of study during curriculum change (Ittner et al., 2019) and emotions in dynamic socioeconomic contexts (Brennan and Muaric, 2011).

These textual analyses can help us glean promising directions to enable a “richly theorised understanding of the effects of emotion on the work of school administrators” that include psychoanalytical, sociocultural, and post-structuralist (feminist) analysis of emotions (Wallace, 2010: 602), as some of these texts do not engage these critical theories. Needless to say, there are few studies in education that actually accomplish this in ways that help inform leadership (Radd and Grosland, 2016; Grosland and Matias, 2017; Radd and Grosland 2019; Jansen, 2006, 2009; Mills and Niesche, 2014; Zembylas, 2010; Zorn and Boler, 2007). Analysis such as this mirrors how leadership alone is an emotional process, but emotions committing to social justice and equity are even more so due to disappointment, frustration, and inadequacy (Zembylas, 2010) and a possible contributor to the underutilization of emotions in educational leadership scholarship that take up political subjects and policy debates critically.

In contexts of power and sensemaking, emotions are an inherent aspect of educational leadership. It stands to reason that emotional responses are a core aspect of leading for socially just change. Yet, emotion shifts in educational leadership are indeterminate in the context of power, uncertainty, and education surveillance (Wallace, 2010). Therefore, engaging emotional praxis may be a way for educational leaders to expose the invisible thread of emotions in their practices (Wallace, 2010). We contribute to this argument by advocating that the topics of surveillance as a policy debate and power as political subjects are taken up, for example, by educational leaders in critical praxis. As it concerns leadership surveillance, surveillance happens as a result of policy debates concerning “accountability” where checkboxes are used to cast surveillance onto individual educational leaders, especially those working in so-called turnaround schools. Bringing up policy, like surveillance, in the context of a political subject creates emotional responses, hence the need for the criticality of political subjects and policy debates. With a stance such as this, the question then becomes, “Who is surveilled?” Particularly in the context of anti-Black and anti-Brown racism, for example, Black and Brown educational leaders will be surveilled more frequently, therefore, making the policy of surveillance a political subject, and part of a racial justice study on emotional safety and well-being a much-needed shift.

Also among our textual analysis was Bolton and English’s (2010) acknowledgment that although educational leadership is laced with emotionality, it is largely absent or ignored in the preparation of educational leaders. Due to our theoretical background, we make a particular note in understanding that the text argues that the absence in education leadership is due to how emotions do not “fit” in the marketplace discourses of predictability (Bolton and English, 2010). We use this notion to go so far to theorize and connect to how, as emotions are not related to capitalism, emotions are often positioned in educational leadership as unfit for the practice itself and therefore dismissed in practice and scholarship. Also, we take note of how Bolton and English challenge emotion-logic binaries by proclaiming that emotions need recasting as normal because “emotionality is the underlying phenomenon in leadership” (Bolton and English, 2010: 562). Similar to others mentioned in this article, and because of the examination of emotions in the context of power, we found this text to be promising in casting our argument for the role of emotions in political subjects within educational leadership. We further argue that the body of educational leadership scholarship needs further contributions related to “(un)fit” emotions and challenging what is considered “fit” concerning political subjects and policy debates. For example, is anger and disappointment about racial injustice “fit” for the educational leadership workplace? Or if a teacher leader gets excited about advances in climate justice policy in a school board meeting, is that “fit”? Educational leadership scholarship needs contributions that focus on the emotional dynamic of political subjects that permeate leadership itself. Without this, educational leadership practices concerning “controversial” political subjects and policy debates fall short of advancing the field.

Emerging political subjects and debates with an emotional focus

By contrast, there are texts in our theoretical analysis that offer particularity on political subjects. One is Jansen (2006, 2009), who examines emotions among South African principals committed to a social and racial justice transformation and who “worked against the grain of public expectation” (Jansen, 2006: 38). This text focused on transforming schools into racially diverse schools and impending emotions: fear, love, and courage. Here the textual intersection is race, a political subject, and emotions. Another finding was from Rusch and Horsford (2008) likewise noting emotional responses to social justice subjects in the educational leadership classroom: disturbed, uncomfortable, awkward, apprehensive, nervous trepidation, and unwilling resistance. Thereupon, emotions persist as a way to advance educational leadership on political subjects where criticality is core.

Lastly, this analysis revealed quite impressive text corroborating the intersection of political subjects and emotions with educational leaders using theater. Here Katz-Buonincontro (2011) wrote about using a theatrical forum to discuss political subjects and to explore the impending emotional experiences that help leaders in education link their personal and professional lives to a place where intense discussions and emotions occur. The documentation of using political theater links creativity to emotion, particularly care per Gunzenhauser (2008). Emotions are deeply linked to how we develop and expand as humans, and how we emote and create in the context of politics and policy dictates how these issues evolve.

Although all of these are very significant works, we note that these pieces are dated. Yet our current political milieu is not free from issues like hyper-racial segregation/redlining, voter suppression, and gun violence in schools that we faced ten years ago; instead, these are ongoing subjects that educational leadership continually needs to take up through a critical lens of emotions. Without this, critical education practices in leadership will continually be scholarly underdeveloped in the space where critical theorizations of emotional well-being are lackluster in complexity. While we will make claims about the literary future of political subjects in educational leadership on emotions in peer-reviewed journals, we will argue that the current state of emotions in educational leadership and political subjects in this space is limited. These observations informed our conclusion that emotions on political subjects and policy debates in educational leadership need additional scholarly focus to advance what we know about the politicization of subjects, which are emotional themselves, and to curtail advocacy burnout in educational leadership.

Leadership possibilities: Cueing up educational leadership for politicking

For our theoretical article, we considered text from educational leadership articles using critical perspectives that specifically took up emotions. With this exception of self-authorship, it is well noted that these texts are nearly a decade old. This tells us there is an urgent need for such critical scholarship, empirical, theoretical, or otherwise. We argue not only through these critical lenses but on the political subject itself. We realize that naming changes over time and in context, but naming the political subject—e.g., racism, sexism, anti-immigration—creates an intellectual home and a discourse for critical educators in leadership to operate. Educational leadership scholars and practitioners committed to political justice will need to address not only the emotionality of educational leadership practice but also the emotions that result from interactions about societal political subjects they regularly encounter in their leadership and policy practices. As critical theorists who study emotions and well-being in educational leadership and policy, we find these issues compelling.

Much of what happens in educational leadership, as in any form of education, is in the psyche, and emotional psyche drives what critical educational leadership considers political subjects and policy debates important enough to engage. In such a matter, we believe “depathologiz[ing] negative feelings so that they can be seen as a possible resource for political action rather than its antithesis” (Cvetkovich, 2012: 2) is possible for educational leadership to take up political subjects and policy debates. These happenings are as important as the other aspects of leadership; indeed they are the root of what makes a leader a leader. These concepts are critical to our argument for advancing emotional aspects of political subjects. Engaging theories on emotions and psyche in educational leadership is what is the crux and the implications for critical educational leadership are many.

As such, a suggestion for educational leadership scholarship on emotions is to inquire and document pedagogical protocols for taking up the political subject in critical educational leadership contexts. As mentioned earlier, one pedagogical possibility for this, among many, is political theater. We will expound on this briefly here. Since the body is a strong expression of emotions, in political theater, the body and self-awareness are engaged through sounds and movement as creative resources for transformational change in oneself and thus the world (Boal, 2008). Political theater is viable not only because all participants are involved in some way—making everyone subjects rather than objects—but also because extensively action-based, emotional responses are of focus, and taking up human activity, be it theater or otherwise, is all political (Boal, 1970, 2008).

Likewise, a particular type of political theater can also use facilitation called Jokering, where a facilitator is called the Joker (Boal, 1995). Basically, the Joker is described as a master of ceremonies (Boal, 2000). As a system, the Joker System is both political and aesthetic, in which all participants are both agents and objects engaging in adapted stories of political and social situations (Boal, 1970). Particularly noteworthy here is that an example of what forms from creativity is a joke. A joke is a form of creative bodily expression intended to elicit emotion. Exercises, games, and methods can be used to engage all types of social and political subjects regardless of the complexity of these subjects (Boal, 1997). As a pedagogical framework, the emotionality of political subjects and the action inherent in them is a characteristic of political theater and viable in addressing emotions at the intersection of politics and policy conflict.

Broader recommendations for political subjects in educational leadership scholarship on emotions is researching and documenting praxis that focuses on emotions and then finding supportive peer-reviewed outlets for the text. For example, such praxis involves documenting how simply asking questions rooted in emotions, without an immediate response—as when leaders simply ask questions—can lead to powerful responses. This is because although one may not know the answer, dropping the question positions the mind to look for instances of these occurrences, and whatever you tell the mind to look for it will find it. If you tell it to look for emotions, it will find them. Adversely, and what a lot of critical educators find in their leadership practices working with faculty, is that when certain faculty tell their minds to look for ways that cultural responsiveness doesn’t work, these faculty find ways to disprove cultural responsiveness, often blaming the students or students’ families. However, more inspiring questions are the goal of critical educators’ leadership practices. Thus, in documenting praxis, they could ask themselves in the second person, “How can you connect with your faculty on income inequality in a way that fosters emotions of safety and vulnerability?” Just asking the question, and not knowing the answer, is risky for some critical educational leaders who feel the need for certainty and the need to know the “right” answer—the need for this is an emotional condition itself, potentially fear of failure. However, here the question takes up specific emotions, safety, and vulnerability; yet, sometimes the emotion state words are not easily accessible at the moment and the visualization of emotional states can be an option. The point is not to get emotionally overwhelmed by thinking of an emotional state word, but rather the feeling regardless of the word chosen. Emotions cannot always be captured in words.

Conclusion

Leadership that uses critical thought to create fairer and more just policy and politics can be emotionality taxing for critical educators. Fortunately there exists educational leadership scholarship on emotion states that examines emotion in critical and post ways. Overall, despite the exemplar artifacts exhibited here, peer-reviewed journal literature largely dismisses or glosses over the role of political subjects and policy debates (e.g., racial equity, desegregation policy, LGBTQIA+ safety, amnesty, and policing inequalities). We began our article sharing critical theoretical conceptions of political subjects in educational leadership scholarship on emotions by suggesting the need for an increased focus on the intersection of emotion, political subjects, and/or policy debates. Consequently, there are expansive possibilities at this intersection for critical theorists and thinkers. Taking up the emotions related to being involved in the political process (letter writing, campaigning, volunteering, and protests) and, as we argue in this article, documenting them for scholarly purposes, will advance the field in ways yet to be discovered.

Engaging political subjects at the intersection of emotions is gravely important as educators navigate contexts of hyper-politicization in their communities, something that is emotional in and of itself, but more so for critical educational leaders who are living and working in these tense communities. Some leaders may have real internal fear, for example, when political subjects and policy debates are discussed because of the uncertainty of how the emotions will escalate. Acknowledging the emotion when policy subjects are discussed, emotion of care is why someone engages with the subject in the first place, humanizes the political subject, and makes it real and not just a lofty ideal. It is from this place one can address the emotions that inherently come with advocating for just social policy and politics.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Tanetha Grosland

Tanetha Grosland is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in the College of Education at The University of South Florida, USA Her study on classroom experiences in higher education remains the cornerstone of her scholarship. She uses critical/post theories to focus on how politics and policy impact urban education leadership, particularly teacher leaders and administrators. She has a special interest in how emotions relate to political subjects and policy debates, and the theoretical implications for well-being that advance critical education leadership. She has published in the Journal of Education Policy, Race Ethnicity & Education, and has a co-edited book on Feminism and Intersectionality in Academia: Women’s Narratives and Experiences in Higher Education.

LaSonja Roberts is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership, Research and Technology at Western Michigan University, USA, specializing in educational leadership. She earned her PhD in educational leadership and policy studies at the University of South Florida, her MA in educational administration from UCLA, and her BAs in English and Dance from Loyola Marymount University, all USA. Her research agenda focuses on leader preparation and retention, specifically a leader’s ability to create environments that foster learning and well-being for educators and students.

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