Principals’ emotional labor in volatile times – a genealogical policy analysis

This article examines how policy discourses have constituted changing emotional and professional expectations placed on Swedish principals from 1974 to 2024. Drawing on practice theory, emotional labor, and Bacchi’s What’s the Problem Represented to Be? (WPR) framework, the study analyzes how principal training programs are constructed as policy solutions to shifting representations of principal leadership as and educational problem. The analyses shows that although the policy problem changes over time, from democratization to professionalization, accountability, and equity – emotional labor is never constituted as a policy problem in its own right. Instead, it is variously naturalized as a gendered disposition, individualized as professional competence, and embedded as an implicit expectation of effective leadership. The article argues that these changing problem representations contribute to shaping what becomes understood and legitimized as principal leadership, while rendering emotional labor institutionally invisible. By combining genealogical policy analysis with practice-theoretical perspective, the study contributes to understanding how policy shapes conditions under which educational leadership is enacted. The findings point to need for sustainable and equitable policy frameworks that recognizes emotional labor as an organizational and structural dimension of educational leadership.