Abstract
Educational change can call up a range of feelings that can pose a number of problems for those experiencing and/or organizing it. This article analyses the processes of educational change from a psychodynamic standpoint. In particular it explores affective containment, which enables feelings to be fully experienced and to be used productively. an aspect of organizing during educational change, known as affective containment, that enables feelings to be fully experienced and to be used productively. In the article, we first review some important and relevant concepts, which include the nature of social affects, projection, introjection, projective identification, and splitting and projection, before considering affect and educational change and the notion of affective containment. We then describe and interpret a case that illustrates what can happen when affective containment processes are not securely in place during educational change. We discuss some of the main issues to emerge, which include: the nature of affective containment at individual and group/organizational levels that can support educational change; the importance of ensuring that boundaries between student and staff systems are secure during educational change; the reparation processes that can be a feature of educational change and their impact on the change process; and the leadership responsibility for providing affective containment during educational change.
Introduction
Educational organizations are places of affective intensity (James et al., 2006). It is a truism that the everyday work of learning, teaching and organizing in schools and colleges calls up and draws upon a range of feelings of various kinds. A number of authors, for example, Hargreaves (1998a, 1998b), Beatty (2000), Zembylas (2005) and Crawford (2009), have drawn attention to the affective aspects of educational organizations and a number of recently published collections have focused on affective experience in schools and colleges, see, for example, Schutz and Peckrun, (2007), Samier and Schmidt (2009) and Day and Chik-Kin Lee (2011).
Changing educational and organizational practices in schools and colleges can increase the affective intensity of these institutions. This ‘affective intensification’ during educational change calls for a particular set of individual, group and organizational processes and strategies to deal with the affective experience, which we refer here to as ‘affective containment’ (Bion, 1961; Menzies Lyth, 1988; Obholzer, 1994). Affective containment is the strategies and processes that enable feelings to be fully experienced and used productively during unwelcome organizational change. Affective containment solves a number of problems for those experiencing and/or organizing educational change. First, managerially controlling the feelings generated by educational change may not be possible. Individuals’ feelings are not amenable to being managed in the way that other aspects of their practice are. Second, feelings experienced by individuals and groups can be an important ingredient in the change process. Without them motivation for change may be lacking, and valuable and much needed improvements in practice would not be implemented. The experience of feelings during educational change can give rich insights into the process and enable it to be managed more appropriately. Third, the feelings associated with educational change may not be pleasant; indeed, they may be very unpleasant. We argue in this article that affective containment processes and strategies enable the sometimes difficult feelings associated with educational change to be understood, accepted and transformed.
Our intention in this article is to analyse an educational change process and to develop and explain affective containment and illustrate its importance during educational change. The structure of the article, which reflects its logic, is as follows. We first analyse some key concepts that relate to the nature of feelings generally and the dynamics of affective experience. Feelings are often expressed by individuals and groups and then experienced by others. Those processes cannot be managed in a conventional sense hence the need for affective containment. In the next section, we explore affect and educational change, specifically focusing on anxiety and educational change and the affective experience of educational change, which provide a rationale for affective containment strategies. We then explore what is known about affective containment from other settings. In the subsequent section, we describe and interpret a case that illustrates what can happen when affective containment processes are not in place during educational change. The case provides a dramatic, albeit exceptional, illustration of the need for affective containment and enables affective containment to be fully understood. We then discuss some of the main issues to emerge.
Key Concepts
In this section, we first analyse the nature of social affects, and then consider various aspects of the dynamics of affects including projection, introjection, projective identification, and splitting and projection. The dynamic nature of feelings is important in the rationale for affective containment.
Social affects are the particular mental conditions we experience and they contrast with sensations which are detected by the senses, such as such as sound and smell. Social affects become apparent in early human development, and three types can be differentiated: feelings, moods and emotions (Forgas, 2000; Fineman, 2003; James, 2010). Feelings and moods can be distinguished on the basis of timescale, intensity, their rationale and the ease with which they can be described and defined (James, 2011). Table 1 summarizes these differences.
A summary of the differences between feelings and moods.
A number of theorists working from different perspectives, for example, Hochschild (1983), Oatley and Jenkins (1996), Goleman (1995), Zembylas (2005) and Niedenthal et al. (2006), use the terms ‘feeling/mood’ and ‘emotion’ synonymously. Other authors, such as Forgas (2000), Fineman (2003) and James, (2010), and ourselves in this article distinguish between feelings/moods and emotions on the basis that feelings/moods are affects that are experienced, whereas emotions are affects that are displayed. Examples of emotions include crying, blushing or grimacing. Emotions communicate feelings to others, although the feeling being displayed may not be obvious and may need to be ascertained. Emotions may be controllable but not in every circumstance, especially when the feelings and/or the desire to display them are experienced powerfully. The distinction between feelings/moods and emotions is helpful analytically as it establishes emotions as particular kinds of actions that have an affective rationale. Importantly, however, other actions can also have an affective rationale (James, 2011). Thus, feelings can be made apparent to others as actions of different kinds, some of which would not normally be considered to be emotions (James, 2011).
Feelings of all kinds are dynamic in nature; they appear to move within individuals and between individuals (Diamond, 1993; Obholzer and Roberts, 1994; James et al., 2006; James, 2010). Displayed feelings may be projected towards individuals or ‘launched’ more generally among a group. For example, a teacher crying as he tells the headteacher about a significant and recent bereavement is an example of projection. A more generalized projection would be a headteacher advocating a change in practice on the basis that it is required by school inspection guidelines and that ‘We wouldn’t want to lose our outstanding status would we’. The headteacher is in effect projecting his feelings into the staff group.
Projected feelings may be ‘taken in’ by others, which is a process known as introjection (Obholzer and Roberts, 1994; Diamond, 1993; James et al., 2006). The essence of the feelings and what the feeling represents become part of the recipient and develop into an internal object (Diamond, 1993). When feelings have been introjected, recipients may be unable to distinguish between them and their own feelings – those that have originated within them (James and Vince, 2001). The recipients may begin to experience the projected feelings as if they were their own, a process that creates a state of mind referred to as counter-transference (Halton, 1994). Recipients may begin to ‘unconsciously identify with the projected feelings’ (Halton, 1994: 16) in such a way that their own feelings are affected. An important issue here is the readiness of the recipient to take in the projections, which is likely to vary. For a range of reasons, some people will be more vulnerable to introjection than others.
When an individual introjects the feelings of others, the projected feelings may be used by the individual as rationales for her/his own actions. This process is known as projective identification and was first identified by Melanie Klein (Likierman, 2002). In projective identification, the actions of individuals are controlled by the projections of others, albeit perhaps unintentionally. The recipients of the projections may not be aware that their behaviour is being controlled. In the example above, the headteacher experiencing the teacher’s extreme distress may himself be moved to tears. An individual who is the consistent recipient of projected negative feelings from others may become an organizational ‘bad object’ and through projective identification, take on the role of scapegoat (Dunning et al., 2005). In these circumstances, the recipient of the negative projected feelings – the bad object – eventually leaves the organization. He/she takes the difficult feelings with her/him, much to the pleasure and relief of those left behind. Because of projective identification, the scapegoat also feels that leaving is the appropriate course of action.
Splitting and projection is a defence against unbearable feelings, particularly contradictory ones that generate painful or threatening internal conflicts (Halton, 1994). Individuals and groups may protect themselves from these inner struggles by splitting their feelings into different elements. This process is often accompanied by projection where the problematic feelings are located in other individuals, inanimate objects, groups, or institutions (Likierman, 2001). The projection of feelings may be supplemented by behaviours that reinforce the projection. The condition resulting from splitting and projection is known as the ‘paranoid-schizoid’ position. The individual (or group) who projects troublesome feelings may, as a consequence of shedding the negative feelings, experience idealization, acquiring ‘an aura of perfection…stripped of all undesirable and negative qualities’ (Gabriel, 1999: 298). The paranoid-schizoid position contrasts with the so-called ‘depressive’ position in which the contradictory elements are held together and retained within the individual. In this integrated state, the individual gives up the security and simplicity achieved through splitting and projection and accepts the confusion, inconsistency and conflict created by contradictory feelings (Likierman, 2002).
In summary, feelings may be projected to individuals and groups who may introject them and start acting on the basis of them. Feeling that are unbearable may be split from more acceptable ones and projected.
Affect and Educational Change
In this section, we discuss affect and educational change beginning with a discussion of the special significance of anxiety in relation to change. We then discuss different forms of change and relate them in particular to loss in order to develop a framework that facilitates an analysis of the affective aspects of educational change.
Anxiety and educational change
According to Brown (1972: 32) anxiety is a response to an internal and unknown threat and is thus distinct from other social feelings. It can be distinguished from fear which is ‘a response to a known and external danger’. (Gabriel, 1999) adopting topographical, and dynamic perspectives on the mind, asserts that anxiety is generated by internal threats to the ego, which represents reason and common sense in the mind (Rycroft, 1995). One threat is that the forbidden and powerful desires that are repressed in the unconscious and the id, the mass of largely unconscious and highly energized desires and passions may overwhelm the ego and destroy the individual’s relations with others. A second threat is that the ego will not meet the requirements set by the super-ego, the part of the mind that is concerned with self-observation and self-criticism. At the same time as arbitrating between these two forces, the ego also has to mediate between the individual’s internal world and the environment. The ego’s task is thus a difficult one. Very importantly, when there is a change in the ‘external sphere’, the ego needs to re-balance. The potential for failure in this task may arise and anxiety may result. Organizational change, including educational change, is an alteration to the external sphere which is why it may be associated with anxiety. The experience of anxiety may call up other problematic feelings, which may be difficult to bear. Individuals and groups experiencing such unbearable feelings may seek to defend themselves against them for example by projecting them elsewhere.
The Affective Experience of Educational Change
Educational change can take many forms and the affective experience of it may be complex. Making sense of that complexity is challenging. Drawing on Marris (1974), James (2010) argues that the experience of educational change can be categorized on the basis of the extent of the change and whether it is welcome or unwelcome. The relationship between the different forms of organizational and personal change is shown diagrammatically in Figure 1.
The relationship between the different forms of organizational and personal change.
The educational change may be relatively minor and be experienced as welcome, for example, the re-introduction of a long forgotten aspect of practice, the extension of, or adding to, something familiar or the development of new and useful skills and expertise. More substantial educational change that is nonetheless welcome may require a radical reorientation or re-organization of practice. However, such a change may be viewed as appropriate and may therefore not disrupt the individual’s sense of well-being or call up a strong sense of loss. Even though it may disturb significant attachments to ways of working, the change may at the same time initiate an exciting new venture of some kind and may also be experienced as revitalizing, energizing and empowering.
An educational change may be unwelcome, for example, because its purpose is unacceptable, it disrupts well-established defensive behaviours, or it involves the loss of significant attachments that cannot be reinstated. During substantial unwelcome change, internal conflicts and the loss of meaning may generate considerable anxiety and other affects (Marris, 1974). The feelings engendered may become unbearable and may need to be expressed or projected onto others.
The Nature of Affective Containment
Affective containment is the name given to the structures and processes that enable the effective and authentic receptiveness of feelings, give opportunities for reflection on affective experience and learning, and enable feelings to be harnessed and the insights gained from affective experience to be used productively. Importantly, containment processes enable projected feelings to be re-owned and re-integrated. The reconnection with these difficult feelings in a more comfortable form helps to create the depressive position (see above) which in turn provides a basis for authentic and authorized practice (James, 2011).
The concept of containment was developed by Wilfrid Bion (1961) to describe the creation of appropriate conditions for psychoanalysis. The idea of the container relates to Winnicott’s (1958, 1965) notion of a holding environment, which he developed to conceptualize the conditions provided by the mother for the infant. Thus from infancy, we may come to understand and expect that an other or others will enable us to deal with our difficult feelings, and arguably that understanding and expectation may continue into adulthood. Just as in childhood, the hope may remain that a recipient of projected distress will be able to bear what we cannot stand, and enable those unbearable feelings to be transformed and returned.
In work settings, potentially any member of staff can provide affective containment for colleagues but arguably those in leadership and management positions in educational and other settings should be ready to take on the role (James, 2011). Many senior members of staff do so naturally. They will probably have experienced more junior colleagues ‘sounding off’ to them about an incident without any expectation that the senior colleague will do anything specific to alleviate their distress other than to ‘hear’ it. The aggrieved colleague simply wanted the difficult feeling to be taken by another (James, 2011), in colloquial terms, ‘to get something off their chest’. Groups in work settings including schools may also provide this kind of affective containment as they do in the wider social world (James, 2011).
Isobel Menzies Lyth was one of the first theorists to develop the idea of affective containment in organizations (Menzies Lyth, 1988). In the 1950s and 1960s, she studied nurses working in very challenging contexts such as intensive paediatric care and explored the ways the practice setting was constructed to enable those working there to handle the difficult feelings they experienced. Organizational features that enabled affective containment included: a relatively stable staff group with a low level of turnover; an integrated staff group characterized by cooperation, mutual trust, a shared understanding of an individual’s strengths and weaknesses and a concern for each other’s welfare; secure and well-managed role boundaries; a calm working environment; the creation of ‘spaces’ for reflection ‘to have a quiet think or read’; (Menzies Lyth, 1988: 182); a recognition that having difficult feelings is understandable and acceptable; and a talking culture where ‘important issues could be aired, confronted and sometimes, though not always, resolved’ (Menzies Lyth, 1988: 188).
Obholzer (1994) suggests a number of ways in which the containing role of the whole organization can be sustained during organizational change:
clarity and continual discussion about the task in relation to changes required by the external environment;
consideration of the value of the proposed change, the reasons for resistance, and the relationship of any change to the organization’s main task;
clarity of authority structures, systems and processes;
ensuring clear and open communication between all parties;
providing forums for debate;
ensuring meetings have secure boundaries, are effectively chaired and have a non-judgemental tone;
and making sure work-related staff support systems are in place.
Menzies Lyth’s (1988) and Obholzer’s (1994) analyses clarify the features of organizations that provide affective containment in times of both stability and change. Here, we seek to explore affective containment in educational organizations and during educational organizational change. Arguably, the nature of ideal containment processes and their value becomes very apparent when they are not in place. That is the rationale for reporting the case study in the following section, which graphically illustrates what can happen when affective containment is not provided during educational change.
The Case Study
The case we describe is a critical incident during an educational change in a further education college in England, which took place in 2007. Unfortunately, very unusually and potentially tragically, the case culminated in an incident of arson, involving a wooden structure at the college – the deer hut. In the following sections, we describe the further education system in England and the college where the case was located. We then describe the methodology and the case including the events leading up to and following the fire.
Further Education in England
The further education sector in England comprises: general further education and tertiary colleges; sixth form colleges; specialist colleges, mainly in horticulture, agriculture, drama and dance, and adult education institutes (DBIS/Data service, 2012). There are 370 further education colleges of the kind where the incident occurred. The sector provides a range of courses for students most of whom are over 16 years of age: apprenticeships, which are paid jobs incorporating training and lead to nationally recognized qualifications; education and training, which cover courses provided mainly in a classroom, workshop, or through distance or e-learning; workplace learning, which includes a range of training at various levels; ‘skills for life’ qualifications that are intended to enhance everyday life-skills in reading, writing, mathematics and communication; and community learning, which are informal courses. Approximately 25 per cent of students participating in further education are under 19 years of age (DBIS/Data service, 2012).
The then New Labour government’s focus on efficient delivery and transformation of the public sector in the period when the case study critical incident occurred required the further education sector to improve student success rates and be more efficient (Nash et al., 2008). The sector had to cope with many government interventions and initiatives and arguably is now subject to more statutory regulation than any other education sector in England. Government policy requirements resulted in colleges reconsidering the curriculum offered to students and its affordability within the funding available, emphasizing the improvement of teaching quality and managing staff performance (Nash et al., 2008). Further education colleges are subject to inspection by Ofsted, the school inspection service in England.
The Case Study Setting
The setting for this critical incident case study was a campus of a further education college in a rural shire county in England. The college provided land-based and environmental education programmes on this campus in the subject areas of agriculture, countryside and animal management, horticulture, arboriculture and equestrian studies. Approximately 800 full-time students aged between 16 and 19 years and approximately 500 part-time adult students were taught on this site. Some of the full-time students were resident on the campus. About 200 full-time and part-time staff worked in this part of the college.
Methodology
The aim of the research was to analyse a significant educational change in a further education college in England using organizational psychodynamic theory with particular reference to affective containment. An instrumental case study was undertaken ‘to provide insight into an issue or refinement of theory’ (Stake, 1994: 237) using qualitative methods. The case was in effect a critical incident (Flanagan, 1954; Cassell and Symon, 2004). We adopted a psychoanalytic research perspective (Gabriel, 1999) and were thus ready to accept that experience has aspects that cannot be taken at face value and were inclined to doubt straightforward explanations of experience (Dunning et al., 2005). This stance contrasts with humanistic traditions in qualitative research in which experience is typically viewed as the ultimate mediator of truth (Gabriel, 1999). In psychoanalytic research: seeking out clues, for example, odd events and explanations; being wary of simple explanations; and guarding against drawing immediate conclusions are important. Very significantly, in psychoanalytic research in organizations, interpretation is fundamental (Gabriel, 1999).
Data were collected in January 2011 by semi-structured interviews with the five members of staff who were centrally involved. Relevant documents were also scrutinized. The interviewees were invited to recall: the deer hut fire incident and the period around it; individual and team behaviours at the time; and their responses to the incident, especially their affective responses. The interviews were recorded for subsequent analysis. The interviews were not psychoanalytic encounters; we simply (sic) enquired about the incident and their experience of it. The five members of staff who were closely involved, and who were interviewed, were: the then newly appointed senior manager (A) who was resident on the campus and responsible for the leadership of the land-based curriculum area; a newly appointed middle manager (B), who was responsible for a substantial part of the land-based curriculum; a junior manager (C); the student warden (D); and the farm manager (E). (C), (D) and (E) had all worked at the college for many years and were responsible to new senior manager (A) and the new middle manager (B). Junior managers, including (C), had responsibility for the daily classroom activities. The student warden (D) was a pastoral supervisor who was responsible for the care of the students in residence on the campus when they were not in lessons. The farm manager (E) ensured that the animals, land and equipment were appropriate for the practical activities which complemented classroom-based study. The research followed ethical guidelines of the British Educational Research Association (BERA, 2011) and conventions regarding participation and confidentiality were explained to the interviewees.
The Case
A narrative was developed from the data collected, and we summarize it in this section. We describe the events leading up to the deer hut fire and what happened subsequently. In writing the account, we have deliberately sought not to take an evaluative or judgmental stance.
Those interviewed, describing the context of the case and the background, recalled that educational and professional standards had declined over time and that members of staff had not been managed appropriately. The middle manager (B) felt that: ‘Staff hadn’t been performance managed; there was no history of it. They took the attitude that none of the underperformance (of the students) could be attributed to them. There was very little self-reflection’. Inspection evidence indicated that educational provision on the campus was satisfactory at best, and in substantial areas, teaching was unsatisfactory and resources were inadequate. Importantly, the organizational culture – the norms, values and assumptions which underpinned and were implicit in practice – were not appropriate for an educational institution. The new middle manager (B) felt that before the changes were implemented: ‘The relationship between staff and students hadn’t been professional’ adding, ‘For example, they (the students) had gone to the pub with the previous members of staff.’
The college had undergone a period of change leading up to the critical incident. In the year preceding the fire, the staffing structure had been substantially re-configured. Approximately one-third of the longest serving members of staff had retired as part of the re-structuring and temporary staff covered their classes while vacancies were filled over time. New leadership team members, such as the senior manager (A) and the middle manager (B), had been appointed with a brief to improve the curriculum and teaching.
The senior manager (A) recalling the interview which was part of the process when he was appointed, said:
I think I gained sufficient insight at the interview to know what I needed to do in principle, so right from day one I kind of knew what I was up against. I knew it was going to be about changing culture and changing practice and setting a higher standard for nearly everything. It was difficult to come in and not be seen as someone who was fighting with the whole of the team.
The senior manager (A) felt he had a ‘strong curriculum focus’ and had gained considerable leadership experience in his previous post. He took an early decision to introduce a new curriculum area, deer husbandry. Following a rapid resource reallocation in the early part of June towards the end of the academic year, a field was fenced off and some 30 deer were purchased and installed in August during the college summer vacation. At the same time, a brand new wooden deer hut was erected for the purpose of observing the young deer.
Members of staff returned from vacation in the September to find a herd of deer and the deer hut in situ. Also in place was a proposal to significantly change the way the curriculum was to be provided. The new senior manager (A) issued clear instructions to the new middle manager (B) and the junior managers including (C) on cost-effective delivery of the curriculum. He also informed them that the year-long work placement following the first year of the course, during which students worked unpaid on local farms to gain work-based experience before returning for their second year at the college, would be removed from the programme at the start of the next academic year.
The junior manager (C) felt that those leading the change: ‘Made a point early on of trying to uncover all the skeletons in the cupboard and dealing with them rather than hide from them.’ Nonetheless, he and all the interviewees were aware that the leadership and management of the change was very directive. As (C) made clear: ‘It wasn’t a consultation.’
The directive nature of the change process called up a great deal of resentment and even hostility among the staff. (C) felt that ‘Some staff didn’t like it’ and the middle manager (B) recalled that: ‘A lot of them (the members of staff) resented what (the senior manager) and I stood for’. There was also considerable resistance. The senior warden (D) again reporting the standpoint of many members of staff felt that: ‘It was appreciated that change was needed but it was still resisted.’ (B) felt that: ‘Staff had an attitude of “we’ve never done it like that, that’ll never work”’. Some members of staff and local farmers protested to the head of the college about the proposed removal of the placement year. Local farmers also complained to those members of the college’s governing body with agricultural interests or connections about the proposed curriculum changes. The changes on the campus were the subject of much discussion in the local farming community. Undaunted, the new senior and middle managers, (A) and (B), continued with ‘the modernization’ as (A) referred to it. They made themselves very visible in the teaching areas and initiated the monitoring of teaching. They also appointed a number of lecturers who were much younger and ‘more dynamic’ (A) than those already in post.
These changes strained relationships between some members of staff, which became such a concern that the matter was reported to the college’s human resources department. The student warden (D), who had pastoral responsibility for students in residence, became aware of significant feelings of discontent among the students. The interviewees were clear that the new members of staff appointed to fill the vacancies created by the re-structuring related to the students in a way different from the staff members who had left. The new lecturers were more focused on getting students to behave appropriately and submit work by the required deadlines. The new middle manager (B) thought that: ‘Student ill-feeling was associated with the fact that staff they liked weren’t there anymore, so things were different.’ The senior manager (A) agreed: ‘Students lost what they had.’ The junior manager (C) shared those views: ‘I think with their (the students’) previous relationships with tutors who left at restructure, the boundaries were blurred between staff and students, it was almost on a friendly basis and they wanted that to continue.’ Some members of staff who had left the college continued to see some students socially. The senior manager, referring to an ex-member of staff was aware that a number of students were: ‘Still seeing him at his house which was totally unprofessional.’
The respondents were aware of the negative feelings emerging and that these were being expressed away from the main location of the change – the college campus. Soon the parents of some students began to complain that staff changes had not had not been beneficial. In order to deal with complaints the senior manager (A), the middle manager (B) and the junior manager (C) invited the parents in to the college and explained the raised expectations of students, the proposed curriculum changes and the reasons behind the new staffing restructure.
Relationships between the students and the new staff and between the new managers and some existing managers continued to be difficult. Ill-feeling began to escalate and at the student Christmas party, there was a violent incident and some students were disciplined. Within a few days the new deer hut was burnt down. Members of staff and students were shocked. For the senior manager (A): ‘It was very frustrating because it (the deer hut) was one of the few new things and suddenly it was all charred and smouldering.’ In the subsequent investigation, three students were identified as the perpetrators and were immediately expelled.
The respondents had their own explanations for the motivation for the attack. The senior manager (A) said: ‘I suppose at the time I had a strong inkling that it was directed at me.’ The junior manager (C) had a similar view: ‘I think many staff saw it as a personal attack on someone who had brought in the deer.’ Interviewees themselves commented on negative feelings from staff being in some way passed on to the student body. Referring to the students’ motivation for the attack, the junior manager (C) felt: ‘They may have been influenced by what was being said.’ The senior manager (A) felt that: ‘Students had become pawns in something not of their making in the proposals to reform the curriculum and modernize.’
The expulsion of the students appeared to create a turning point. From that moment on, the behaviours and approach to study required of the students began to change for the better and previously resistant staff began to embrace the new ways of working. The senior manager (A) felt that:
Expelling them subsequently shocked everyone, students and staff, the whole group was affected and sensible of the risk and what they had done. Expelling the perpetrators sent a huge message and supported culture change at the campus. By the end of the year the whole group (of students) apologized.
Reflecting on the response by many members of staff to the changes that were implemented, the senior warden (D) thought that: ‘People such as (A) probably weren’t given the chance that he deserved.’ The junior manager (C) defended the change that had been implemented and felt that over time the staff: ‘came to feel that it had been of benefit’. Since the incident, the campus has become one of the highest performing areas within the college.
An Interpretation of the Case
In this section we seek to make sense of and explain the case using the key concepts we developed earlier in the article. The change being implemented appears to have been experienced by many members of staff as radical and unwelcome. Thus, referring to Figure 1, the change had high affective content and it generated feelings of anger, resentment and enmity. Members of staff and indeed students were required to change well-established ways of working. These established practices may have had a defensive purpose and perhaps protected them from engaging fully in the task of teaching (James, 2010). Further, the meaning of and attachment to old ways of working were lost as those practices were replaced as a necessary part of the educational change being implemented. Members of the local farming community with whom the college, students and staff had close connections also begrudged and opposed the change.
Interpreting the accounts of the interviewees, the change generated negative and unbearable feelings in the staff and perhaps the wider community. These feelings were displayed and projected. From the staff interviews, the students too were experiencing unwelcome change. More was being demanded of them, as expectations of the quality and approach to their work were raised. The restructuring had necessitated the loss of attachment to, and the breaking of the affectional bonds (Fonagy, 2001) with, members of staff who had left the college as part of the re-structuring. The students were being required to relate to staff in a very different and perhaps more distant way than previously, which they may have experienced as a lack of care as the difficult feelings they experienced were perhaps not acknowledged. The students were thus vulnerable to the projections from the staff. They introjected those negative feelings, which supplemented the difficult feelings they were experiencing. On the basis of those feelings the students attacked the architect of their distress, staff discomfort and local community resentment – the new senior manager. They did so in part on their own behalf but also perhaps on behalf of the staff and the community through projective identification, by destroying the symbol (the deer hut) that represented the changes that were being implemented.
A crucial part of the explanation of why this unusual event occurred is that affective containment processes appear to have been weak. In terms of the organizational aspects of affective containment referred to by Menzies Lyth (1988) and discussed earlier, the staff group was not stable and there was a high level of turnover. Moreover, the members of staff recruited were not wholly similar to the staff they replaced; they had a different approach. Arguably, the staff group was thus not integrated in the sense that Menzies Lyth describes it. The relationships between staff and students suggests that staff–student role boundaries may not have been appropriate. Negative feelings expressed by the staff in the students’ presence may have been introjected by the students. The educational environment, which in many ways would have been similar to a working farm, was perhaps not a calm teaching and learning setting that facilitated affective containment. In addition, ‘spaces for reflection’ may have not been available. Interestingly, there may not have been the kind of ‘talking culture’ that Menzies Lyth refers to. The discussion of the changes may have been peripheral, incidental and un-managed, and occurring in student rooms, in the homes of members of staff and students, and in the wider community. The discussion may have stoked resentment rather than enabling it to be understood and transformed. The characteristics of the context perhaps explain why such an extreme incident of arson occurred.
As regards providing affective containment at an organizational level during the change process referred to by Obholzer (1994), the data points to a lack of discussion, certainly of a clear and continual nature about the task of the organization and the requirements of the external environment. There is a sense that directives, albeit clear and arguably valid were issued but an on-going dialogue, particularly about the value of the proposed changes was apparently not a feature of the change process. The reasons for the resistance to the change do not appear to have been discussed at an early stage and with all the stakeholders. The staff re-structuring may have undermined the clarity of authority structures systems and processes. Ensuring clear and open communication between all parties by providing forums for debate and well-managed meetings did not feature in the data. Importantly, work-related staff support systems that staff members felt happy with and willing to use were not in place.
Discussion
The analysis of the concepts relevant to the case, the account of the case and the way the events can be interpreted, give rise to a number of issues for discussion.
First, we recognize that in this article we are seeking to make sense of and explain a very unusual occurrence. We have used various psychoanalytic concepts to explain the events and argue that the deer hut fire occurred because of the affective experience of an unwelcome radical change and the lack of affective containment, in a context where ensuring such containment was difficult. Other explanations could have been used. For example, a micropolitical analysis would have argued that the event was simply part of a struggle for supremacy between those in favour of the change and those against it. We do not think such an analysis would have explained why the deer hut fire occurred. It would simply have described it another way. That mode of analysis, and others, may not have enabled a full explanation, an elucidation of why the events took place and importantly would not have enabled us to better understand organization theory in relation to educational organizations.
Psychoanalytic analysis and the interpretation helps to clarify the essence of affective containment as individual, group and organizational practices that acknowledge the experience of sometimes difficult and powerful feelings, enable those feeling to be accepted and transformed into an acceptable form and to assist those experiencing the feelings to re-own and re-integrate them. There are two related forms of containment. One is the work undertaken by individuals and groups who can act as ‘containers’ for those experiencing unbearable feelings in the way that Bion (1961) and Winnicott (1958, 1965) describe. These individuals and groups were not readily available to those affected by the change in the case we have described. The other form is the containing work of secure tasks, systems, processes, boundaries and structures in educational organizations as articulated by Menzies Lyth (1988) and Obholzer (1994), which create an environment where difficult feelings can be experienced and worked with. Arguably, this kind of secure ‘educational organization in the mind’ fulfils a similar purpose to the containing individual or group. It is a ‘secure place’ that will accept the experience of difficult feelings, allow them to be expressed appropriately, and enable them to be transformed and to be re-integrated.
We were struck by the effect of the way that many members of the teaching staff had before the case interacted with the students, and the way some of them continued to do so. Arguably, they were unduly close to the students, apparently colluding with them in accepting low quality work. Menzies Lyth (1988) refers to a number of characteristics of the staff group that enable affective containment, for example, the importance of well-managed and secure role boundaries. Many of the characteristics of the practitioners she describes are those that would be used to define professional work in many educational settings, for example, in professional learning communities (Dufour and Baker, 1998; Roberts and Pruitt, 2003). From this research, a secure role boundary between the staff and the student systems, especially during times of change, emerges as a key aspect of professional practice. Arguably, the students should have not been the recipients of the projections of negative and unbearable feelings being experienced by the staff. The students did not appear to have the resources to deal with those projected feelings appropriately and may have been struggling to cope with their own feelings resulting from the changes demanded of them. The interpretation of this event points to the importance of the management of the boundary between the staff group and the student group during organizational change in educational settings.
The response to the staff and students to the deer hut fire incident is of interest. Clearly, there was a degree of shock but other feelings were experienced too. The incident appeared to expunge the difficult feelings; it may have had a cathartic effect. Perhaps the fantasy in the minds of the perpetrators may have been that the destruction of the deer hut would also destroy the reason for the difficult feelings – the educational change – or even the initiator of the change. However, feelings of guilt may have been experienced by those who were not the miscreants who carried out the attack but who nonetheless contributed perhaps unwittingly to the circumstances that resulted in the fire. The desire of those involved to ‘repair the damage’ in its widest sense after the incident may have been the outcome of managerial authority; they had simply lost the battle and sought to ‘make the best of a bad job’. We would however argue that reparation behaviours (Hirschhorn, 1997) on the part of members of the organization following the deer hut fire also played a part as they sought to make good the damage done.
Finally, there is a strong case for arguing that ensuring affective containment during times of change in educational settings is a leadership task. Those with leadership responsibility, for example the headteacher/principal may be ‘containing individuals’ who ideally provide a containment function for members of the organization. Ideally, they should also make sure that the organization provides a containment function during educational change, so that, as far as possible ‘the containing organization’ described above remains in the mind of those affected by change.
In summary, this article has sought to analyse the affective experience of change and the importance of affective containment in educational change, which enables feelings to be expressed and to be used productively in education change processes. We have attempted to clarify key concepts in the affective experience of change in educational settings and describe and interpret a case where adequate affective containment processes were not in place. In particular, we have drawn attention to an important aspect of boundary management in educational change and affective containment – managing the boundary between the staff group and the student group, and the importance of protecting the student group from the unwanted outcomes of the affective experience of radical educational change. We have also analysed the nature of containment and drawn attention to the leadership responsibility of providing affective containment during educational change. While not all radical unwanted change in educational settings without appropriate affective containment processes will have such extreme outcomes. We are however arguing that affective containment can help those involved in significant unwelcome change to cope with the experience and bring their full energies to bear productively on the change process.