Leading Educators: The Emotional Work of Managing Identities

Abstract

This chapter explores the experience of being a newly appointed senior manager. Central to the analysis is the construction of identity in the senior management role and how this may be shaped, constrained and facilitated through broader discourses related to new managerial-ism, market ideologies and the incorporation of an enterprise culture in education. Such discourses it is argued increasingly set the context within which senior appointees work, requiring them to modify and adapt their behaviour in line with performative neo-liberal ideals. The chapter draws on data predominantly from interviews with the newly appointed senior appointees, supplemented by data from interviews with assessors, where appropriate. The analysis presents a complex picture of the construction and formation of senior manager identity across education, as newly appointed principals/managers seek to survive and thrive in the educational organizations in which they are positioned as leaders. In this sense the chapter considers the ethical dimension to the everyday life of leaders in education and of how this is intertwined with the construction, performance and management of self and identity.KeywordsHigh Education InstitutionSenior ManagementEducation SectorPastoral CareEducational LeaderThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.