Philanthropic emotional work: Papering over the cracks of unprecedented public education reform

Abstract

Chile is undertaking an ambitious public education reform, re-centralising the administration of municipal schools in larger territories. This reform is unprecedented, both for the size of the new intermediate-level services ( Servicios Locales de Educación Pública) and the escalation of their bureaucratic complexity, facing widespread organisational problems that cause high stress and labour suffering. We argue that improving emotional working conditions is necessary to accomplish pedagogical goals, but this dimension has received little attention. This article presents a follow-up study focused on school principals and professionals’ emotional and occupational experiences that have worked in the initial two-and-half years of one of the first Servicios Locales de Educación Pública created in the country. The qualitative analysis of interviews reveals how they make sense of organisational dilemmas while crafting solutions for facing structural shortcomings of new institutions. We understand their extraordinary commitment as ‘philanthropic emotional work’, driven by genuine care for children and the nation's future. However, in this effort, they also experience labour suffering and work overload, which may compromise their well-being and the long-term accomplishment of this reform's goals. These observations highlight the need for a reflexive improvement of this reform, recognising emotional work as a valuable resource but unsustainable without appropriate institutional support.

A narrative review of the research on school leaders’ emotional labor: a typology inspired by Habermas’s cognitive interests

“…The performative auditing discourse, therefore, brings up the second discourse, namely the competence discourse in which school leaders’ emotion management is regarded as an individualized attribute or skill. This was especially the case when school leaders faced work failure or underperformance because it was taken as the head’s personal inadequacy; however, few acknowledged the systematic flaws or the unreasonable policies (Blackmore, 2011; Sanfuentes et al. , 2021) which are highly likely to elicit school leaders’ high levels of heart suffering and burnout.…”

“…The performative auditing discourse, therefore, brings up the second discourse, namely the competence discourse in which school leaders' emotion management is regarded as an individualized attribute or skill. This was especially the case when school leaders faced work failure or underperformance because it was taken as the head's personal inadequacy; however, few acknowledged the systematic flaws or the unreasonable policies (Blackmore, 2011;Sanfuentes et al, 2021) which are highly likely to elicit school leaders' high levels of heart suffering and burnout. In this situation, they turned to heroism to normalize their helplessness and find a way to fuel themselves by trying to be like heroes or heroines with a strong image in front of others while hiding a heavy fear of not doing well and sacrificing their private lives (Pratt-Adams and Maguire, 2009;Steward, 2014).…”

“…Concerning the agentic roles of school leaders' emotional labor, school leaders' emotional labor is regarded as a site for conscious awareness, self-reflection, and transformative actions resisting the taken-for-granted unequal power relations, which goes further than studies following the practical interest. This role is especially crucial for female school leaders as they are disadvantaged by the gendered emotional rules (Sachs and Blackmore, 1998;Sanfuentes et al, 2021). There are particular gender scripts about emotional behavior (Zikhali and Smit, 2019).…”

Relación contractual en servicios locales de educación pública: análisis desde la teoría de agencia

“…Sumado a lo anterior, el año 2014 comienza a diseñarse un nuevo sistema para la educación pública; en este contexto, durante el año 2017, mediante la Ley N°21.040, el parlamento chileno da paso a la formación de la Nueva Educación Pública (NEP). De este modo, se inicia una forma de gestión y administración diferente para la educación pública chilena (Donoso-Díaz, 2021; Sanfuentes, et. al., 2021;Yeomans-Cabrera, 2022).…”