Affecting education globally. The emotional shaping of educational politics, leadership and innovation.
Emotions shape the current, global transformation of education. Emotions shapes educational politics, and emotions are at the core of educational leadership practices, because human beings are currently viewed as innovative sources of national competitiveness and organisational change in a globalised future. We do not know the impact of this emotional agenda on educational politics, and we know little of how emotions are cultivated and about the drawbacks and contradictions that arise when the quality and intensity of emotions are used for fuelling human development. The aim of this project is to create new knowledge on: 1) how globalised educational politics, leadership, organisations and learning bodies are shaped by emotions, and 2) conversely, how educational politics, leadership, and innovation approaches invoke and transmit emotions. This is done by combining concepts of affectivity, globalisation and governmentality and applying them to a comparative and multi-sited ethnography conducted in Denmark and Singapore. This will provide a new, original and research-based foundation that contributes with theoretical insight, including critical and reflexive foundation for evaluating and grappling with counterproductive effects of affective interventions in the Danish education system and thereby equips Denmark to meet the challenges of globalisation