Navigating Emotional Discomfort in Developing Equity-Driven School Leaders: A Conceptual-Pedagogical Framework

Given that K-12 schools necessitate leaders who can advance equity and justice, preparation programs in higher education institutions have prioritized the development of equity-oriented school leaders. However, there has been relatively limited exploration of pedagogical approaches that equip educational leaders to navigate adverse emotional responses and utilize their discomforting emotions as a source of transformation toward equity-oriented principles. When negative emotions are suppressed and/or unexplored within leadership development programs, adult learners will likely miss crucial opportunities for personal growth and transformative change. This theoretical article aims to enhance and expand existing scholarship on the pedagogies of emotional discomfort by developing a conceptual-pedagogical framework for preparing equity-driven school leaders. We explore the role of emotions in/as learning, drawing insights from the learning science literature, and analyze empirical studies in leadership education to unravel how and why discomforting emotions are triggered and operationalized when learning about racism and inequities. We present a framework, the pedagogy of discomfort toward critical hope, drawing on scholarly work bridging emotional discomfort and critical pedagogy, and exemplified by various examples of pedagogies of discomfort. Building on this foundation, we introduce an emotional scaffolding design centered around three concepts: generating discomfort to make oppression and privilege visible, guided emotion participation for engaging critical reflection and dialogue, and appraising emotions with metacognitive and meta-affect tools. This article extends the scholarship on teaching and learning for developing equity leaders by bridging insights from learning science and critical pedagogy.