Methodological review of studies on educational leaders and emotions (1992-2012). Insights into the meaning of an emerging research field in educational administration
| Published date | 07 August 2017 |
| Date | 07 August 2017 |
| Pages | 469-491 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-07-2016-0078 |
| Author | Izhak Berkovich,Ori Eyal |
| Subject Matter | Education,Administration & policy in education,School administration/policy,Educational administration,Leadership in education |
Methodological review of studies
on educational leaders and
emotions (1992-2012)
Insights into the meaning of an emerging
research field in educational administration
Izhak Berkovich
Department of Education and Psychology, The Open University of Israel,
Ra’anana, Israel, and
Ori Eyal
Division of Policy, Administration and Leadership in Education,
The Seymour Fox School of Education, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, Israel
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to do methodological review of the literature on educational leaders
and emotions that includes 49 empirical studies published in peer-reviewed journals between 1992 and 2012.
Design/methodology/approach –The work systematically analyzes descriptive information, methods,
and designs in these studies, and their development over time.
Findings –The review suggests that scholarly interest in educational leaders and emotions has increased
over time, and identifies methodological patterns in this body of research. The results are compared with
methodological data from other syntheses in the disciplines of educational administration (EA) and
organizational behavior for the purpose of using the findings to produce broader insights into the meaning of
an emerging research field in EA.
Originality/value –The findings of the methodological review are interpreted from two conceptual
perspectives: functionalist and critical. Together, they offer a holistic portrayal of the meaning of producing
scientific knowledge in an emerging research field in EA.
Keywords Emotions, Leadership, Emerging research field, Methodological review
Paper type General review
The present study is inspired by prior published reviews of research in the educational
administration (EA) communit y addressing or focusing on method ological issues
(e.g. Bridges, 1982; Hallinger, 2011). The present review complements the authors’
narrative systematic review of the content of research on educational leaders and emotions
published in peer-reviewed journals during 1992-2012 (Berkovich and Eyal, 2015).
The present review does not focus on the contents of the studies, but limits its focus to
methodological issues related to studying educational leaders and emotions in the last two
decades. Following Hallinger’s (2013) claim that “reviews of research play a critical role in
the advancement of knowledge”(p. 127), we argue that methodological exploration of an
emerging research field in EA may be informative about the practices and norms of the
EA community that underlie the production of research knowledge in EA.
In this paper, we adopt two perspectives on scientific knowledge production:
functionalist (i.e. the scientific work operates as an integrative arena) and critical (i.e. the
scientific work operates as a conflictual arena). Apparently, the systematic approach is more
functional in nature, and the critical perspective is at odds with it, but is not necessarily
the case. Hallinger (2013) acknowledged that a systematic review is never value-neutral and
recognizes the possibility of critical perspective as the lens used in the systematic review.
Journal of Educational
Administration
Vol. 55 No. 5, 2017
pp. 469-491
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0957-8234
DOI 10.1108/JEA-07-2016-0078
Received 12 July 2016
Revised 4 March 2017
4 April 2017
Accepted 4 April 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0957-8234.htm
469
Studies on
educational
leaders and
emotions
He argued, however, that a systematic review should be always objective in its analytical
procedures. Therefore, we paid special attention to ensure objectivity in the systematic
procedures of this methodological review, and confined the critical perspective to the
interpretation of results in the discussion.
Educational leaders and emotions as a domain of EA research
The scholarly interest of the EA community in educational leaders and emotions cannot be
addressedwithout a broad discussionof the changing status of emotionresearch in the field of
organizational behavior (OB)[1], a field that has influenced the EA community greatly
(Oplatka, 2014).Until the 1990s, emotions were considered as an illegitimate focus of research
in OB (Ashkanasy et al.,2002). This marginalizationof emotions as a field of research may be
viewed as linkedwith the dominance of a specific manifestation of managerialrationality that
could be termed “masculine”(Domagalski, 1999). At the same time, there has been a rise in
non-rational approaches in management –the growing legitimacy of qualitative research
(Brinkmann et al., 2014) has inspired the interpretative stream led by influential scholars
(e.g. Weick, 1995). As a result, the “cold shoulder”shown to the topic of emotions bythe OB
community has been“reevaluated”as emotions becamenot only a legitimate focus, butalso a
highly popular one, particularly with regard to leadership (Gooty et al., 2010).
A recent review of leadership theory and research published in 2000-2012 in ten top-tier
management journals identified emotions and leadership as a leading area among the
emerging fields concerned with leadership, second in scope of scholarly interest in the new
millennium[2] only to team leadership and leadership development (Dinh et al., 2014).
Research on emotions and leaders focuses on various facets including (Gooty et al., 2010):
leaders’emotions –intense mental responses to events that are linked with psychological,
physical, and behavioral changes; leaders’self-emotion regulation –the ability to control
emotional processes in order to shape the timing and type of emotions experienced and how
these are expressed; leaders’emotional labor –in a workplace context, leaders often invest
effort to alter their affective experience or maybe expression to accommodate norms or
expectations; leaders’interpersonal emotion regulation –the ability to influence and control
emotional processes of other people, specifically of their followers; leaders’empathy –the
ability to understand and experience other people’s emotions; leaders’emotional intelligence
(i.e. set of emotion-based capacities) –abilities to perceive emotion, use knowledge about
emotions in rational thinking, understand emotions, and manage emotions in oneself and
others; and the emotional nature of leader-follower interactions –how leaders’emotions,
and behaviors shape their followers’emotions. In the present work we use the phrase
“emotions and educational leaders”to describe the range of aspects noted above, which are
related to this field of research.
The research of emotions has become a central topic in transformational leadership
theory (Gooty et al., 2010), which is one of the leading leadership conceptualizations in
education. Acknowledgment of the vital role of emotions in effective leadership is reflected
also in the EA literature, which suggests that transformational leadership is likely to
influence student learning through its effects on teachers’emotions (Sun and Leithwood,
2015). We contend that emotions are vital for understanding educational leaders for several
reasons: emotional experiences and displays represent educational leaders’reactions to
social reality, and provide insights into their authentic motives and fears (Blackmore, 2010);
educational leaders’behaviors influence teachers’emotions, which in turn shape teachers’
attitudes and practices (Sun and Leithwood, 2015); educational leaders’emotion-based
abilities are antecedents of their emotions and behaviors (Cai, 2011); and in many countries,
common policy changes and reforms foster a post-bureaucratic context that alters the
nature of administration work in a manner that amplifies leaders’need to rely on emotional
influence to motivate others (Bush, 2014).
470
JEA
55,5
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