Emotions “out of the closet” and into the graduate classroom

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this end piece, framed in aesthetic and critical theory, is to review the author's own approach with graduate students regarding the omnipresence and significance of emotion in organizational leadership, and to comment on the contributions to emotional theory found in this volume of the Journal of Educational Administration. The objective in the author's own research is to assist students, through aesthetic awareness, in moving beyond “one‐dimensional” thinking and the “iron cages” of organizational experience.

Design/methodology/approach

As personal affect and perspectives of meaning were of primary importance in the author's research, she employed participatory action research methods. Qualitative data were drawn from students over a ten‐year period as they responded to a question about connections between aesthetic presentations – given by their colleagues as short introductions to each class – and organizational life as they experienced it personally and theoretically.

Findings

Aesthetics, understood not only as appreciation, but also as action, brings to students the illuminating power of multiple forms of expression. Through expression, that is, students named feeling, affect, and begin to understand the nature of emotion. The arts provide ways of expression apart from, and including, the spoken word.

Originality/value

The arts, and an understanding of aesthetics, opens a rarely travelled route whereupon students may engage in organizational theory as a humane science.

Citation

Harris, C.E. (2010), "Emotions “out of the closet” and into the graduate classroom", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 48 No. 5, pp. 659-667. https://doi.org/10.1108/09578231011067794