Abstract
Amid the increasing digitisation of schools, relatively little work has examined the ways in which digital technologies are reconfiguring the work of school principals. With an approach based on the sociology of work, this paper draws on 19 in-depth interviews with Australian school principals to examine their everyday experiences of digital work—with particular attention paid to the enduring influence of email as a key work tool. On one hand, email was seen as a constant and unremarkable feature of ‘modern’ school leadership. Yet, these accounts also highlighted how the intensification and extension of individual principals’ labour practices were being exacerbated by multiple layers and technologies of surveillance, expectations of constant availability, and increased accountabilities imposed through email. Of particular significance were the detrimental ways in which email-based work was described as reshaping the affective dimensions of principals’ work. Against this background, the paper considers what steps might be taken to mitigate such pressures, and perhaps move towards alternate forms of digitally-supported work that are more sustainable.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Armstrong, P. (1989). Management, labour process and agency. Work, Employment and Society, 3(3), 307–322.
Blackmore, J. (2010). Preparing leaders to work with emotions in culturally diverse educational communities. Journal of Educational Administration, 48(5), 642–658.
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101.
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2019). Reflecting on reflexive thematic analysis. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 11(4), 589–597.
Brennan, M., Zipin, L., & Sellar, S. (2015). Negotiating with the neighbours. In B. Lingard, G. Thompson, & S. Sellar (Eds.), National testing in schools (pp. 199–211). Routledge.
Cambier, R., & Vlerick, P. (2020). You’ve got mail: Does workplace telepressure relate to email communication? Cognition, Technology & Work, 22(3), 633–640.
Chesley, N. (2014). Information and communication technology use, work intensification and employee strain and distress. Work, Employment and Society, 28(4), 589–610.
Döveling, K., Harju, A., & Sommer, D. (2018). From mediatized emotion to digital affect cultures. Social Media+Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305117743141
Findlay, P., & Thompson, P. (2017). Contemporary work. Journal of Industrial Relations, 59(2), 122–138.
Fitzgerald, S., McGrath-Champ, S., Stacey, M., Wilson, R., & Gavin, M. (2019). Intensification of teachers’ work under devolution: A ‘tsunami’ of paperwork. Journal of Industrial Relations, 61(5), 613–636.
Franke, F. (2015). Is work intensification extra stress? Journal of Personal Psychology, 14(1), 17–27.
Gregg, M. (2018). Counterproductive. Duke University Press.
Gregg, M., & Andrijasevic, R. (2020). Virtually absent. Feminist Review [forthcoming]
Heffernan, A., & Pierpoint, A. (2020). Autonomy, accountability, and principals’ work: An Australian study. Australian Secondary Principals’ Association.
Heffernan, A. (2021). Retaining Australia’s school leaders in ‘challenging’ contexts: The importance of personal relationships in principal turnover decisions. International Journal of Educational Research, 105, 101716.
Heffernan, A. (2018). The principal and school improvement: Theorising discourse, policy, and practice. Springer.
Hillis, K., Paasonen, S., & Petit, M. (Eds.). (2015). Networked affect. MIT Press.
Hochbein, C., & Meyers, C. (2021). Incorporating time demands into studies of principal time use. School Leadership & Management, 41(3), 175–193. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2020.1851671
Hogan, A., Thompson, G., Sellar, S., & Lingard, B. (2018). Teachers’ and school leaders’ perceptions of commercialisation in Australian public schools. The Australian Educational Researcher, 45, 141–160.
Huws, U. (2013). Working online, living offline. Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation, 7(1), 1–11.
Keddie, A. (2013). Thriving amid the performative demands of the contemporary audit culture. Journal of Education Policy, 28(6), 750–766.
Kickert, W. (1995). Steering at a distance. Governance, 8(1), 135–157.
Kostogriz, A. (2012). Accountability and the affective labour of teachers: A Marxist-Vygotskian perspective. Australian Educational Researcher, 39(4), 397–412.
Lawrence, D., Loi, N., & Gudex, B. (2019). Understanding the relationship between work intensification and burnout in secondary teachers. Teachers and Teaching, 25(2), 189–199.
Levy, D. (2016). Mindful tech: How to bring balance to our digital lives. Yale University Press.
Mahfouz, J. (2020). Principals and stress. Educational Management Administration and Leadership, 48(3), 440–458.
Manolev, J., Sullivan, A., & Slee, R. (2019). The datafication of discipline: ClassDojo, surveillance and a performative classroom culture. Learning, Media and Technology, 44(1), 36–51.
Marwick, A., & Boyd, D. (2011). Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience. New Media and Society, 13(1), 114–133.
Maxwell, A., & Riley, P. (2017). Emotional demands, emotional labour and occupational outcomes in school principals. Educational Management Administration and Leadership, 45(3), 484–502.
McCloskey, D. (2018). An examination of the boundary between work and home for knowledge workers. International Journal of Human Capital and Information Technology Professionals, 9(3), 25–41.
Mullan, K., & Wajcman, J. (2019). Have mobile devices changed working patterns in the 21st century? Work, Employment and Society, 33(1), 3–20.
Mustosmäki, A. (2018). The intensification of work. In M. Tammelin (Ed.), Family, work and well-being (pp. 77–90). Springer.
Pollock, K., & Hauseman, D. C. (2019). The use of e-mail and principals’ work. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 18(3), 382–393.
Pollock, K., Wang, F., & Hauseman, D. C. (2015). Complexity and Volume. Societies, 5(2), 537–565.
Reid, A. (2003). Understanding teachers’ work. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 24(5), 559–573.
Riley, P., See, S-M., Marsh, H., & Dicke, T. (2021) The Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing Survey (IPPE Report). Sydney: Institute for Positive Psychology and Education, Australian Catholic University.
Russell, E. (2017). Strategies for effectively managing email at work. Acas Research Report (06/17).
Schiller, J. (2003). Working with ICT: Perceptions of Australian principals. Journal of Educational Administration, 41(2), 171–185.
Selwyn, N. (2021). The human labour of school data: Exploring the production of digital data in schools. Oxford Review of Education, 47(3), 353–368.
Selwyn, N., Nemorin, S., & Johnson, N. (2017). High-tech, hard work: An investigation of teachers’ work in the digital age. Learning, Media and Technology, 42(4), 390–405.
Stich, J., Tarafdar, M., Stacey, P., & Cooper, S. (2019). Appraisal of email use as a source of workplace stress. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 20(2), 2.
Thomson, P., & Hall, C. (2017). Place-based methods for researching schools. Bloomsbury.
Thompson, G., Mockler, N., & Hogan, A. (2021). Making work private: Autonomy, intensification and accountability. European Educational Research Journal. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474904121996134
Wajcman, J. (2015). Pressed for time: The acceleration of life in digital capitalism. University of Chicago Press.
Williamson, B. (2019). Digital policy sociology. Critical Studies in Education, 62(3), 354–370. https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2019.1691030
Williamson, J., & Myhill, M. (2008). Under ‘Constant Bombardment’: Work intensification and the teachers’ role. In D. Johnson & R. Maclean (Eds.), Teaching: Professionalization, development and leadership (pp. 25–43). Springer.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Heffernan, A., Selwyn, N. Mixed Messages: The enduring significance of email in school principals’ work. Aust. Educ. Res. 50, 255–273 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-021-00486-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-021-00486-0