Jane Wilkinson

Stress and burnout due to increasingly complex social conditions and workload intensification is leading to an exodus of Australian school leaders and a reluctance from teachers to apply for the principalship. Drawing on 298 critical incident testimonies collected as part of a nation-wide Australian Research Council survey of Australian public school principals, the testimonies reveal how the intensified emotional labour of the principalship is impacting the nature of their work and wellbeing. Defined as the management of one's own and others' emotions, principals' emotional labour is becoming more complex and intense because of increasing system accountabilities and social volatilities. This chapter brings together the theory of practice architectures with feminist theories of emotional labour to reconceptualise emotional labour in educational leadership as a social practice, with a built-in emotional dimension. We utilise this dual lens to examine how specific practice architectures in dialectical interplay with “lone ranger” leadership practices can orchestrate workplace conditions that may exacerbate burnout in the principalship. We conclude with implications for principals' sustainability in the role.

Recognition of increasing student diversity highlights the limitations of standards-based models of teacher professionalism. These frameworks often struggle to accommodate complexity, and risk reducing ethical and relational work to technical compliance and measurable outputs, thereby overlooking crucial qualities like care, autonomy, and situated judgement. This paper proposes the capability approach, initially developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, as a human-centred and justice-sensitive alternative for redefining teacher professionalism in superdiverse contexts. The capability approach shifts the evaluative focus from prescribed standards and outcomes to the real freedoms and opportunities (capabilities) teachers possess to be and do what they value as professionals. We argue for the normative and practical appeal of a capability-oriented model that would involve: (1) identifying valued professional functionings through participatory processes; (2) evaluating teachers’ real capabilities; and (3) understanding the personal, social, and environmental conversion factors affecting whether resources translate into substantive freedoms. This article contributes a conceptual model of capability-oriented teacher professionalism that integrates the capability approach’s normative and evaluative dimensions. The model offers a compelling theoretical shift away from universalising, outcomes-based models by centring teacher agency and reframing capability deprivation not as individual failure but as a result of interacting systemic barriers. Adopting this approach calls for policy and leadership to move away from standardisation towards plural, context-sensitive, and agency-enhancing professional trajectories.

Research spanning decades has drawn attention to the intensities of emotional labour defining the work of principals. In this research, emotions are generally understood as shaped by the institutio...

To what extent can the work of school principals be regarded as care work? Most people can recount stories about engaging with principals as students or parents, but how many would describe these i...