Leadership in schools and the impact of emotional literacy

Apart from classroom instruction, the nature and quality of school leadership is one of the most significant contributions to student learning. High-quality school leaders will know which type of leadership to use when and will exhibit high levels of emotional literacy to set the school direction, develop people and their specific competencies, build effective teams and ensure that the organisation is effective. Emotional literacy can enhance relationships in a school and it can be used to effectively develop staffs' abilities. In turn this can increase enthusiasm and optimism, reduce frustration, convey school goals, enable people to feel valued and indirectly increase performance. On the basis of early research work this paper will set out to show that emotions are an important source of information and therefore need to be incorporated into the every day work of school leaders. Professional capacities have been identified across five interrelated domains. These include emotional intelligence, way of thinking (conceptual approaches), application of diagnostic maps, profession specific skills and knowledge and generic skills and knowledge. Given that each domain involves emotional literacy in terms of how it is enacted and two of the five domains are based purely on emotional literacy it therefore warrants a high profile. When emotional literacy is applied with an eco-systemic approach across the whole school students can gain most benefit.