Emotional labor in school administration: Opinions and experiences of Turkish school administrators

Abstract

This paper seeks to examine the views and experiences of school administrators about the emotional labor that they exhibit in the school environment. The study group consists of a total of 30 school administrators. The qualitative method was used and a basic qualitative research design was adopted. The data were gathered through a semi-structured interview form and analyzed through content analysis. The results showed that there were feeling rules in school administration, and the emotions of school administrators are shaped mainly by informal rules such as personal characteristics and professional ethics rather than formal rules. It was determined that school administrators do not reflect their negative feelings, such as anger, sadness, and fear in the school environment and act to display the appropriate emotion (surface acting). In addition, it was understood that as a requirement of being an administrator, they force themselves to feel certain emotions to treat everyone equally and create a positive school climate (deep acting). School administrators indicated that the effort to manage their emotions in their relations with people in the school environment caused negative results such as burnout, weariness, unhappiness, stress, tension, nervousness, headache, regret, insomnia, tension, and restlessness. On the other hand, school administrators expressed that exhibiting emotional labor also had positive results. These include positive communication and school climate, happiness, psychological relaxation, getting to know people better, success, gaining people's trust, being more cautious and foresighted, being accepted, mature and the feeling of being a good person. Regarding the results, the concept of emotional labor and related skills can be integrated to the pre-service and in-service training of school administrators. Also some recommendations are made for the process of the school administrator selection process.