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Teachers' Perspectives on Principal Mistreatment
Teacher Education Quarterly, Fall 2006 by Blase, Joseph, Blase, Jo
I dropped a hint to the school accreditation reviewer that all is not well in Camelot. The next day at a faculty meeting, the principal said that something had occurred that was a cloud on our whole school. She said that the reviewer heard that everything they would see at the school was a sham. She reminded us that if we dared speak up about anything that was negative about the school, it was grounds for dismissal. The principal said, ìHow can a Judas betray us like this?!Î She said she would contact the three teachers on the review committee and get them to tell her who it was. Her final words were, ìI want all of you to work to find out who this traitor is!Î The next day she called an emergency faculty meeting, expecting someone is going to cave in and confess. . . . At the beginning and at the end of every faculty meeting, she said she did not get mad, she got even. People learned real quick that if you did talk, there were repercussions.
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This article is based on a larger qualitative study of school principalsí long-term mistreatment/abuse of teachers (teachers in our study used both terms synonymously) and the harmful consequences for them, from teachersí perspectives. A full discussion of our findings and how to deal with the principal mistreatment problem can be found in our book, Breaking the Silence: Overcoming the Problem of Principal Mistreatment of Teachers (Blase & Blase, 2003).
Terms and Constructs
Internationally, a substantial body of research addressing the problem of workplace abuse (excluding physical violence) has been produced by organizational scholars, particularly in Europe, Australia, and South Africa. Concurrently, extensive legislation against workplace abuse has emerged in these countries (Bj rkvist, ÷sterman, & Hjelt-B[per thousand]ck, 1994; Davenport, Schwartz, & Elliott, 1999; Keashly, 1998; Namie & Namie, 2000). In the United States, research on this problem has come more slowly; however, the emerging literature suggests that workplace abuse may lead to seriously harmful outcomes for victimized employees and organizations (Baron & Neuman, 1996; Davenport et al., 1999; Hornstein, 1996; Hornstein, Michela, Van Eron, Cohen, Heckelman, Sachse-Skidd, & Spenser, 1995; Keashly, 1998; Keashly et al., 1994).
Nationally and internationally, researchers have produced a host of conceptual lenses describing the workplace mistreatment/abuse phenomenon including incivility (Andersson & Pearson, 1999), mobbing (Davenport et al., 1999; Leymann, 1990), bullying (Einarsen & Skogstad, 1996; Namie & Namie, 2000), harassment (Bj rkvist et al., 1994); petty tyranny (Ashforth, 1994), abusive disrespect (Hornstein, 1996), interactional injustice (Harlos & Pinder, 2000), emotional abuse (Keashly, 1998), mistreatment (Folger, 1993; Price-Spratlen, 1995), abuse (Bassman, 1992), aggression (Neuman & Baron, 1998), deviance (Robinson & Bennett, 1995), and victimization (Swedish National Board of Occupational Safety and Health, 1993). From a comprehensive review of the workplace mistreatment/abuse literature, Keashly (1998) developed the concept of emotional abuse that subsumes elements of the constructs defined above. Emotional abuse is the ìhostile verbal and nonverbal behaviors Ö directed at gaining compliance from othersÎ (p. 85). Keashly states that individuals will tend to define a superiorís behavior as abusive if there is a pattern of abuse (not a single event), behaviors that are unwanted by the target, behaviors that violate norms for appropriate conduct or an individualís rights, behaviors that are intended to harm the target, behaviors that result in harm to the target, and power differences between the abuser and the target of abuse. We found that Keashlyís concept of emotional abuse is consistent with the perspectives of the teachers who participated in our study.
Studies of Workplace Mistreatment/Abuse
Empirical studies of workplace abuse disclose a wide range of nonverbal and verbal behaviors. Some examples of nonverbal behaviors are aggressive eye contact (e.g., staring, ìdirty looksÎ), snubbing or ignoring (ìthe silent treatmentÎ), and physical gestures (e.g., violations of physical space, finger pointing, slamming objects, and throwing objects). Examples of verbal behaviors include sexual harassment, angry outbursts, yelling and screaming, put downs, lying, public humiliation, threats of job loss, name calling, excessive or unfounded criticism of work abilities or personal life, unreasonable job demands, stealing credit for anotherís work, blaming, exclusion or isolation, initiating malicious rumors and gossip, withholding resources or obstructing opportunities, favoritism, dismissing an individualís feelings or thoughts, unfriendly behavior, not returning phone calls, and behavior that implies a master-servant relationship (Bj rkvist et al., 1994; Davenport et al.,199l; Harlos & Pinder, 2000; Hornstein, 1996; Keashly et al., 1994; Leymann, 1990, Lombardo & McCall, 1984; Namie, 2000; Namie & Namie, 2000; Neuman & Baron, 1998; Robinson & Bennett, 1995; Ryan & Oestreich, 1991).
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