Principals’ environmental suffering in schools with poor indoor-air quality

ABSTRACT

The environmental suffering of contaminated communities has been analysed in depth. However, there is a lack of knowledge about the environmental suffering of such communities’ leaders. Our study aimed to shed light on this issue through interviews with 20 principals working in schools with poor indoor-air quality in Finland. Based on reflexive thematical analysis, we identified three themes: (1) being burdened and powerless; (2) being on a knife-edge; (3) being worried in the face of the unknown. These themes were organised by three interpenetrating key factors: power, uncertainty, and responsibility. Although our principals shared the same experiences as members of contaminated communities in general, their environmental suffering also differed from those. Altogether, leading a school with poor indoor-air quality was a highly burdensome and stressful task. Research so far has mainly concentrated on contaminated communities in contexts of large-scale technological hazards and disasters. Researchers should pay closer attention to the everyday environmental suffering in schools and other workplaces and especially to their leaders since leaders play important roles in supporting well-being of followers in environments that are perceived as a threat.

KEYWORDS:

• Indoor-air quality
• school
• contaminated community
• leader
• environmental suffering

Key findings

• There is a lack of knowledge about the environmental suffering of contaminated community leaders.

• Leading a school with poor indoor-air quality is a highly burdensome and stressful task.

• Leaders of contaminated communities should be supported, and their workload shared.

1. Introduction

As the extensive literature on slow-moving toxic environmental hazards has shown, human-made environmental threats can erode a community’s social relationships and change the mental state and worldview of its members. Indeed, they can do so to such an extent that Michael Edelstein (2018) famously calls such communities ‘contaminated’.

By the concept ‘contaminated community’ Edelstein refers to a group of people who must live their everyday lives in close contact with an exposure agent. The community may comprise a large number of people inhabiting a neighbourhood, town or larger area (e.g. Edelstein, 2018; Kroll-Smith & Couch, 1990; Levine, 1982), or it may be limited to one family living in a detached house (Seppälä et al., 2022) or a single work team in an office building (Finell et al., 2018; Murphy, 2006). Regardless of the community’s size, the type of pollutant, or whether the pollutant is observed or merely suspected, the ‘environmental suffering’ of the community’s members seems to be broadly similar (Edelstein, 2002). The concept ‘environmental suffering’ denotes a special form of suffering that is ‘the product of agents’ position in the social space’ that is (at least partly) located in a polluted place (Auyero & Swistun, 2009, p. 16).

In our qualitative study, we focus on the environmental suffering of these community leaders. Specifically, we analyse the environmental suffering experienced by school principals in Finland who lead and manage school communities in buildings whose indoor-air quality the school community considers to be poor.

We start this introduction by reviewing previous literature on the interwoven layers of environmental suffering in contaminated communities. Then we explain why school principals are an interesting group to investigate in this context, both socially and theoretically. Finally, we introduce what we mean by indoor-air problems and how they are manifested in Finland. After that we answer our research questions: what kinds of themes organize our principals’ environmental suffering and what are the themes’ underlying dimensions. Our data comprises interviews with 20 principals working in schools with poor indoor-air quality.

1.1. Environmental suffering in a contaminated community

Pervasive uncertainty is a common feature of environmental suffering in contaminated communities (Auyero & Swistun, 2009; Cline et al., 2014; Edelstein, 2018; Levine, 1982; Vyner, 1988). Since exposure agents are typically invisible (e.g. chemicals) or out of sight (e.g. indoor mould behind walls), and their health effects often do not appear until some time has passed, the causal relationship between contaminants and symptoms can be difficult or even impossible to prove. Therefore, ‘medical invisibility’ is a characteristic feature of contamination (Vyner, 1988, p. 1097). Combined with the fact that the scientific community or authorities may disagree over the consequences of exposure, this can make it difficult to get help, be diagnosed, or place responsibility on those whose actions or omissions have led to the problem (Auyero & Swistun, 2009; Edelstein, 2018). Potential consequences of this situation include the silencing the voice of exposed people and the distortion of their experience, leading to frustration, confusion, fatigue, and loss of control over one’s own body and lives (Auyero & Swistun, 2009; Edelstein, 2018; Finell et al., 2018; Finell & Seppälä, 2018; Vyner, 1988).

However, environmental suffering does not only affect symptomatic individuals and their families. It affects the whole community. Slow-moving technological hazards are often accompanied by a spiral of negative group processes that corrode social relationships (Cline et al., 2014; Edelstein, 2018; Freudenburg, 1997; Kroll-Smith & Couch, 1990). Different people have different degrees of physiological sensitivity to environmental exposures, their financial links to their environment may vary (e.g. if they own a detached house), and their perceptions of risk may diverge. All of this means that exposed communities can sometimes split into ‘believers’ and ‘non-believers’ (Fowlkes & Miller, 1982), leading to social conflicts, experiences of injustice, and lack of support (e.g. Cline et al., 2014; Finell & Seppälä, 2018; Kroll-Smith & Couch, 1990). Combined with institutional delegitimation (Schmitt et al., 2021), these ‘secondary stressors’ may ultimately produce higher levels of stress than the primary stressor (i.e. the suspected or observed contamination itself) (Kroll-Smith & Couch, 1991).

If we add in prior socio-economic vulnerabilities – environmental contamination often especially affects disadvantaged social groups – and the practical problems caused by contamination (e.g. the inability to use tap water or to work with colleagues), it is unsurprising that members of contaminated communities often report worry, stress, anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (see for reviews Neria et al., 2008; Schmitt et al., 2021). Moreover, increased stress can interact with the physiological effects of exposures, creating a vicious circle that further reduces people’s health (McEwen & Tucker, 2011). It is clear that in such situations, the community leader’s role is essential.

1.2. The special role of school principals

Teachers and students form the core of a school community. In many countries, the principal is a school community’s pedagogical and administrative director (Cruz-González et al., 2021). Principals play an important role in maintaining and supporting its health, well-being and functionality (Hameiri & Nir, 2016; Collie et al., 2020). For example, principals’ management styles, behaviours, and well-being influence teachers’ job satisfaction (Cansoy, 2018), organisational commitment (Dou et al., 2017) and self-efficacy (Cansoy & Parlar, 2018). Principals also have a strong impact on students’ academic performance (Leithwood et al., 2020), school absences and dropouts (Şahin et al., 2016).

It is widely recognised that principals have a particularly important role to play when a school faces challenges (Harris & Jones, 2020). Due to their special position in the school community being between the school community and the society (Crow, 2006; Crow et al., 2002), principals can act as a buffer between societal realities (e.g. the school’s socio-economic background) and pedagogical objectives (Berkovich, 2018; Naicker et al., 2013). Furthermore, when a school community faces a pandemic or a sudden catastrophe such as an earthquake or flood, principals can act proactively with the authorities, prioritising the care and safety of students and taking extra responsibility for the psychological well-being of the whole school community in addition to the practicalities (Beabout, 2010; Smawfield, 2013; Fletcher & Nicholas, 2016).

However, there is very little knowledge about school principals’ or other leaders’ roles and experiences in contaminated communities. The contaminated communities studied so far have typically been non-hierarchical, and their members have not usually had official authority over or legal responsibility for other members (except their own children). The position of principals is different. On the one hand, they are members of the school community, using the same spaces as others and being exposed in the same ways. On the other hand, they are responsible for the well-being of the community, and they must follow and implement the instructions of the authorities. For example, in Finland, where our study was conducted, principals are responsible by law for the safety and well-being of students and school personnel, including their study and work environments (Hietanen-Peltola & Korpilahti, 2015). In addition, they have relative ability to control others (Keltner et al., 2003) and to use this power to foster desired behaviour of followers (Hogg, 2001). Thus, analysing the environmental suffering of principals in schools with poor indoor-air quality contributes at least to two kinds of literature. First, it opens an interesting window onto the experiences of people who lead and manage everyday task-oriented groups in the face of complex and human-made environmental threats. In the Anthropocene epoch in which we live, it is critical to understand such people’s experiences.

Second, it provides novel information about the external stressors school principals may face in their work. Principals operate within a broad socio-material context. However, education leadership literature has mainly focused on socio-cultural and institutional factors (Hallinger, 2011; Robinson et al., 2008; Cisneros-Cohernour & Merchant, 2005), and the impact of pollution or other human-made environmental threats on principals’ well-being and leadership has rarely been studied. To analyse such threats is important since the principal turnover is at a high level in some countries (Aravena, 2022; Snodgrass Rangel, 2018) and recruiting qualified principals has become difficult (Lee & Mao, 2023). The working conditions of principals are associated to both challenges (Lee & Mao, 2023; Sun & Ni, 2016; Tekleselassie & Villarreal lll, 2011). The principal turnover can negatively influence the whole school community (Bartanen et al., 2019; Béteille et al., 2012; Miller, 2013).

1.3. Indoor environmental problems in Finland

We use the concept ‘indoor-air problem’ to denote a situation where indoor-air conditions are perceived to be harmful to the building’s users (Salmela et al., 2019). The close concept ‘indoor environment’ refers to both indoor-air and indoor temperature (Salmela et al., 2019). Our respondents use the concept ‘indoor-air problem’ in a very broad way and usually do not make difference between indoor-air and indoor environments.

In Finland, approximately 18% of school buildings’ total area has significant problems with indoor-air quality (Salmela et al., 2019). Various factors can contaminate indoor-air, including, for example, biological agents (e.g. mould), chemicals (e.g. volatile organic compounds), carbon dioxide and fine particle matter (Mainka & Fantke, 2022; Viljoen & Claassen, 2023; Tsai, 2019). These exposure agents can predispose school students and staff towards symptoms and illnesses, the most typical of which are mucosal irritation, respiratory problems, headaches and fatigue (Azuma et al., 2018; Fisk et al., 2019; Zhang et al., 2019). These symptoms typically disappear after the person leaves the building and re-emerge when the person returns. Depending on the exposure agent, most symptoms are mild, but occasionally they can reduce the person’s ability to function (e.g. with severe headaches), and in the worst cases the person can become permanently ill (e.g. with asthma).

In Finland, awareness of the health risks associated with poor indoor-air quality is relatively high (e.g. Nissilä et al., 2019), and a number of processes have been developed to resolve these situations effectively. For example, if there are problems in a school building, the principal is required to contact the body responsible for its maintenance and repair. In most cases, this body is the municipality (Salmela et al., 2019), for whom school buildings therefore constitute a large expenditure item (Kero et al., 2021). In total, 98% of Finland’s lower secondary schools are public schools (Official Statistics of Finland, 2022). In addition, authorities are required by law to monitor schools’ indoor environments every third year (Hietanen-Peltola & Korpilahti, 2015). In the event of problems, it is common to form an indoor-air-related group (sisäilmatyöryhmä). These groups are multi-professional, involving people from different fields, including school principals. The groups aim to increase cooperation between the parties, foster trust and share information (Salmela et al., 2019).

Despite far-reaching legislation, strong public awareness and the existence of indoor-air-related groups, the health effects of the indoor-air are still a topic of debate in Finland. As with other toxic environmental hazards, medical invisibility is an issue here. For example, the Current Care Guidelines (2017) – independent, evidence-based clinical practice guidelines that play an important role in the Finnish healthcare system – state that there is insufficient scientific evidence to establish a causal relationship between mould/dampness and health. Patients who attribute their symptoms to indoor-air problems report delegitimation, experiences of injustice, and social conflict (Finell & Seppälä, 2018; Seppälä et al., 2022), and compensation for occupational asthma is rarely awarded (around 50–100 cases a year) (Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, 2023).

To conclude, intertwined social, economic and medical factors are related to schools’ indoor-air problems, in the same way as they are related to many other slow-moving toxic environmental hazards. This makes schools with indoor-air problems an excellent context in which to study the environmental suffering of leaders in contaminated communities.

2. Material and methods

2.1. Procedure and respondents

2.1.1. Interviews

We collected our interview data as part of an ethnographic study that seeks to analyse how indoor-air problems influence everyday life in lower secondary schools (i.e. with students aged 13–16 years). To find principals in schools where the indoor-air quality was perceived to be low, we used a large nationwide survey of more than 500 lower secondary schools in Finland. The survey included information about students’ evaluations of their schools’ indoor-air quality. The first author contacted these principals and requested interviews. The respondents were informed about the purpose of the study and asked to sign written consent agreements. Using Microsoft Teams, the first author conducted a total of 20 online semi-structured interviews between April and June 2020. To secure respondents’ anonymity, we do not report how many principals declined to take part. For the same reason, we use gender-neutral Finnish pseudonyms for those who did take part. The research received approval from the Ethics Committee of the Tampere Region, Finland.

During the interviews, the respondents were asked for to outline the history of their school’s indoor-air problems, to think about how poor indoor-air quality influenced their school community’s everyday life and social relationships, and to describe the situation of their school’s symptomatic members. In addition, they were asked about the challenges the poor indoor-air quality posed for the principals and whether they had symptoms themselves. The interviewer encouraged respondents to express their feelings and reflect on their experiences. The interviews were conducted in Finnish, except for one that was conducted in both Finnish and Swedish. The duration of the interviews ranged between 41 and 95 minutes, with a mean of 66 minutes.

2.1.2. Respondents and their schools

Altogether, 12 female and eight male principals participated in the interviews. They all had a minimum of six years’ teaching experience, and they had been principals for between one and 20 years. One principal did not report how long one had been a teacher until one started as a principal. Fourteen respondents reported at least one symptom that they linked to their previous or current workplace. The reported symptoms included asthma or other respiratory illnesses or symptoms, skin and eye irritation, rash, chronic fatigue, headaches, infections, nosebleeds and loss of voice. Three respondents had also previously worked in other schools with indoor-air problems.

All the principals’ current schools had problems with indoor-air quality. The most typical problems were bad odour, poor ventilation, moisture and temperature problems, and microbes. The schools’ size varied from small (about 70–150 students) to relatively large (about 700–900 students). Some schools also included primary-school students.

Various special teaching arrangements were in place due to the indoor-air problems since some symptomatic teachers and students could not work or study in the school buildings. In four schools, some of the teaching took place in small temporary buildings that had been built nearby. In 11 schools, some of the teaching took place in other temporary facilities, such as former office blocks or other schools. Two schools worked entirely in separate temporary school buildings, but problems related to indoor-air quality were also reported in these buildings. Six schools did not use temporary facilities, but the principals had found alternative spaces inside school buildings for symptomatic teachers and students. Some of the schools used more than one of these special arrangements. There were or had been symptomatic students and teachers in all the schools. More information about the schools is presented in Table 1.

Table 1. Schools’ background information (N = 20).

	N^a
Location:
City	4
Conurbation	6
Small town	5
Countryside	5
Duration of indoor-air problems (years)	1–30^b
Construction plans made for a new school	10
Corrective measures taken	18

^a N = number of schools, unless otherwise stated.

^b Unknown N = 4.

2.2. Analytic approach

To analyse the principals’ environmental suffering, we conducted a reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2019, 2021). First, after careful familiarisation with the data, the first author coded all the accounts that described principals’ experiences related to schools’ indoor-air problems and pasted them into Excel. Next, the second author individually recoded all these data, focusing on the accounts that discussed principals’ environmental suffering (see Auyero & Swistun, 2009). From here onwards, the analysis was an inductive and highly reflective process conducted in close cooperation between the two authors. The aim was to generate coherent, clear and distinctive themes from the codes in their wider textual context and to identify the dimensions that interpenetrated them. Following Braun and Clarke (2021), we understood a theme as a multifaceted pattern of meanings that captured a core experience. We worked with these themes until the end of the writing process, at which point we decided on their names (Braun & Clarke, 2021). Finally, drawing on the understanding that talk is always also social action that is influenced by intention, context, and the symbolic system (e.g. language) that mediates it (Shotter, 1990), we supplemented the analysis with an analysis of the rhetoric used (Comrie, 1976).

3. Results

To manage and lead a school with poor indoor-air quality was an unpleasant task for the respondents. Principals felt that the indoor-air problems had made them ‘carriers of an extremely heavy burden’ and exposed them to exhaustion (‘I burnt out during that project’). This environmental suffering was organised around three intertwined themes, which we discuss in detail below.

3.1. Theme 1: being burdened and powerless

As we explained in the introduction, principals in Finland are in charge of their school community’s physical environment. This meant two things for our respondents: responsibility for the school building, and responsibility for the community’s health. Meeting these responsibilities took up large amounts of time.

When asked about the challenges these problems posed for principals, Paju replied:

Paju:

Well, I don't know … working hours, working hours were such that there was not enough time, and, I don’t know, if I’ve been working as a principal for [10–15] years now, it hasn’t been that often that I have thought it’s unpleasant to go to work in the morning, but yes, always, sometimes, when poor indoor-air quality was an issue, then at that point you always think that oh well, I guess I have to go to work again, so at that point I was really drained.

[…]

 

Paju:

That the working hours were completely exploding […].

Interviewer:

Yeah.

Paju:

[…] Yes, it’s just that, the working hours are exploding horribly.

Interviewer:

Yeah.

Paju:

That you just have to be prepared to work long hours and give it your all […].

As if to ensure that the listener had really understood how time-consuming it was to lead a school with a long history of indoor-air problems, Paju uses the adverb ‘horribly’ and the verb ‘explode’, repeating the latter twice. By using this verb, Paju described how the environmental problems consumed so much time and commitment that working hours ballooned and became pointless. As result, Paju was ‘drained´.

Paju went on to explain in more detail what the most time-consuming tasks were:

Well, all of this comes on top of the usual work, so if I have a normal job where I should be able to do the usual work, and then when there are issues with indoor-air quality, every single indoor-air-related group meeting, every single meeting with a guardian, every time we are looking for a new space for these small groups, hiring a new employee, having new meetings with the teachers about the topic, it’s all that kind of extra work, while your regular tasks remain.

For Paju, the ‘normal job’ seemed to be manageable, but the work related to indoor-air problems was over the odds. There was plenty of extra work to do. The principal had to arrange, participate in and report on an indoor-air-related group. The principal had to have meetings with symptomatic teachers and the guardians of symptomatic students, and to find new facilities where they could teach and study if necessary (‘looking for a new space’). In addition, if a teacher decided to leave the school, the principal needed to hire a new one, and this could be difficult if the school had a reputation as a mouldy school (homekoulu). All of these tasks came on top of pedagogical work, and as Paju explained later: ‘All development initiatives are completely left out’.

Of course, the tasks described by Paju might vary somewhat according to the size of the municipality and how it organised its management of indoor-air problems. All in all, however, these tasks were very much alike in all schools, with high levels of added work. So it was paradoxical that amid all this talk of high workloads, respondents repeatedly said that they had very little power to influence the root cause of this burdensome work – the environmental problems themselves (‘I am responsible for this building even though I am not responsible for what is done in this building’). The true economic and executive power was held by the municipality, as Havu explained. Havu worked in a school where indoor-air problems had ‘always’ been present:

I'm kind of powerless in terms of how quickly all the repair processes proceed. They proceed very slowly. If a year-long assessment concluded that we have serious shortcomings in the condition of the building, as soon as the school year started I got to sit in on those meetings where we went through reports the size of a phonebook, where the contractors have carefully marked all the specific parts with a highlighter, and I’m taking notes and asking questions, and then again nothing happens. A year goes by. So it’s kind of like the process is shockingly slow.

Here Havu depicts how slow the inspection and repair processes were. As if to underline the discrepancy between Havu’s action and the municipal’s inaction, and how recurrent this experience was, Havu uses the words ‘as soon as’ and mainly uses the present tense to describe in detail how active participation in meetings had led nowhere. Thus, while the principals tried to manage their workloads, their hands were tied. They could only wait for the municipality to solve the environmental problem at some uncertain future date and to hope that the school community’s symptoms would be taken seriously enough.

Valo, a principal of a school community with huge number of symptoms, crystallised this environmental suffering:

The principal is at the centre of things in the sense that they then have to create the big picture and communicate it to those who are actually making decisions. The technical department, the education department, then the political decision makers, but, in a way, it’s kind of like building Saint Isaac’s Cathedral, so it, as a whole process, it takes many years […]. So, the role of the principal is very central, and because the principal has practically no decision-making power in these matters, it is often frustrating, and if I didn’t sleep as well as I do, I would probably stay up all night, as there is pressure from so many directions, but you really have such a helpless feeling […].

Here Valo underlines the unequal distribution of power and responsibility by comparing two categories: principals, who were ‘at the centre’, and those ‘who are actually making decisions’. Valo uses the words ‘whole process’ to refer to the cooperation with the municipality, comparing it to the construction of Saint Isaac’s Cathedral in Saint Petersburg – a Finnish expression indicating a process that is very slow. All of this frustrated Valo, produced stress (‘stay up all night’) and a sense of helplessness. This kind of environmental suffering was shared by many of our respondents.

3.2. Theme 2: being on a knife-edge

While the first theme concerned environmental suffering arising from the combination of responsibility, large workloads, and little power, the second theme described suffering related to the contaminated school community and the principal’s (fear of) losing control of it.

When respondents described teachers’ and parents’ actual or potential reactions, they often used expressions such as ‘panic’, ‘avalanche’, ‘epidemic’ or ‘hysteria’. For example, Aalto used the word ‘flood’ to describe the reaction after major repairs to the school had failed:

And then all of a sudden you have so many symptoms that you have to keep the windows open at all times, and the front doors wide open, so that you can be there. And the absolute flood that came from both the guardians and the staff […].

To face these reactions could be an extremely stressful experience. Joa, who had previously worked in a school with many symptomatic students, described such experience at parents’ evenings:

But then, once you have experienced the parents’ flood of questions gushing in, but you don’t have information to give them, then of course the situation escalates really fast, and you can sort of feel the mistrust, and then, at least I have experienced it as really distressing that parents demand answers that I haven’t been able to give.

To emphasise the huge and reactive nature of parents’ worry for their children, Joa used the words ‘gushing’ and ‘flood of questions’, very much as Aalto did above. To stand alone in the middle of this flood was stressful, since Joa could not properly answer the parents’ questions because ‘there has been such a line that these [things] are not told’ as the principal explained later. The lack of information rapidly exacerbated the situation and made these parents’ evenings highly upsetting for all parties. Joa returned to these parents’ evenings several times during the interview, underlining the extreme distress they had caused (‘yeah, they have been really horrible, the events where there have been hundreds of parents’).

The experience that environmental threats created social conflict was familiar to Runo too. Only a few teachers in Runo’s school had building-related symptoms, and it was unclear what was causing them. This aroused suspicion among the non-symptomatic teachers:

[…] those who are not symptomatic, it is sometimes difficult for them to understand those who are […]. There have been conflict situations that I have then had to sort out. And it’s burdensome. Sometimes I get the feeling that I’m also being blamed for it […].

Here, Runo depicts a classic example of conflict between believers and non-believers, in the midst of which it was difficult to appear neutral (‘I’m also being blamed for it’). To resolve such conflicts and maintain cohesion was yet another task on principals’ long list of emotional work, and it was ‘burdensome’, as Runo put it. A total of 11 respondents reported at least some social conflict in their school community related to indoor-air quality.

It is important to underline that most of our respondents told us that the school’s social climate and relationships with parents were good overall (despite these conflicts). In addition to these positive words, however, it was possible to recognise a slight note of fear in their speech; there was a risk that the situation might change rapidly if they did not remain alert. ‘If that kind of issue becomes acute, that kind of indoor-air quality concern for guardians, then that’s quite a media storm [media myllytys]’, as Vanamo explained. Little wonder that many of our principals spelled out the importance of keeping the community calm. When asked to suggest some advice for other principals, Ruska replied:

[…] to reassure the work community and stick to the basics. As much as it’s possible. And maybe to anticipate, in a way, to monitor those indoor-air quality things carefully so before they burst. So, in that, even what you say is crucially important, as in all things. So, if you yourself go along with that kind of a wave of panic, then it’s certain that everyone will be panicking, because the supervisor’s actions are constantly very closely monitored, and how you react to any given thing.

Many of our respondents emphasised that it was important for the school community to focus on its main role (‘stick to the basics’) despite the environmental problems – that is, to teach, learn and remain operational. However, the experience of achieving this was like walking on a knife-edge for our principals, and they needed to practise strict self-control; indeed, the greater the uncertainty, the more controlled they had to be. Accordingly, Ruska explains above that principals needed to keep track of the community’s ‘indoor-air quality things’, calm the community, and consider both their own speech and others’ reactions carefully. For these reasons, principals should avoid telling teachers about their own symptoms (‘but I’m not going to talk about my symptoms to our teachers’, as Vanamo said), and should actively share reliable information, as many of our respondents strongly emphasised (‘we always make an announcement when there is something to announce’). Otherwise, as Ruska explained, things might ‘burst’, leading to ‘a wave of panic’ that would take everything with it.

3.3. Theme 3: being worried in the face of the unknown

The last theme concerned principals’ environmental suffering related to symptoms. It included worry about others’ symptoms and about the difficult decisions principals had to make on behalf of symptomatic community members with limited resources.

More than half of our respondents reported symptoms of their own that they attributed to the school buildings. For example, they reported loss of voice in the building (‘one’s voice can’t endure talking a whole day’), constant nosebleeds that could not be hidden from teachers (‘it couldn’t be a secret that I had quite a lot of nosebleeds’), and coughing and skin irritation (‘my scalp is itchy, and my eyes too. And well, I’ve had some of that kind of dry cough’). Although such symptoms were quite common, however, respondents said little about them and often only after the interviewer had asked directly. For example, when asked how building-related symptoms had impacted on work, Toive replied: ‘I was tired, I was tired, that’s how it impacted’. When asked at the end of the interview whether ‘you’ve had any symptoms yourself’, Valo, however, gave a wordier description:

Valo:

I have developed asthma in the same workplace, which couldn’t be proven to be occupational asthma, but asthma nevertheless. And well, at the moment the situation is that if I step into my own office, within two hours there I will get, I will get quite, quite powerful symptoms due to poor indoor-air quality, so in that sense I’m quite happy about this remote work life, that I get to work from home [laughs] … 

Interviewer:

Okay [laughs].

Valo:

… work, two birds with one stone, but well, they say that the captain is the last one to leave the ship, so I haven’t been demanding temporary facilities for myself, only once everyone else has received temporary facilities, then I will get them for myself […].

Valo’s situation was difficult. Although this respondent reports having developed asthma in the school, it ‘couldn’t be proven to be occupational’ – as is typical with environmental exposures. Furthermore, in addition to asthma, Valo suffered from unspecific building-related symptoms, particularly a bottomless fatigue that was so strong it was ‘reflected in everything possible,’ and Valo was therefore just ‘focusing on surviving’, as the principal explained later in the interview. Nevertheless, despite all this suffering, Valo explains in the extract that ‘I haven’t been demanding temporary facilities for myself,’ making the comparison to a sea captain. For Valo, a sea captain’s ultimate duty was to promote the safety of those for whom they were responsible, no matter the cost to the captain themselves. This strong norm of selfless action could also be identified in other respondents’ talk.

If they were terse about their own symptoms, respondents were garrulous about other symptomatic community members. It was obvious that principals generally tended to empathise with these members’ situations (‘feeling the pain for the students who are trying to hang in there with a headache’) and were concerned about them (‘well, of course you are worried’). When asked how symptoms could affect a student, Havu replied:

Mm, er, it really is a burden. It’s to anyone, if the place where you have to be, and the law requires that you have to complete compulsory education. Sure, you can do it at home, but very few people go for it. And its causing you to get sick of course increases the burden on the young person’s shoulders.

Here Havu expresses empathy with symptomatic students in many ways. Havu explains to the interviewer why such students’ situation was so difficult: they ‘have to’ spend their days in a building that made them sick. Note that in Finland, a person who is subject to compulsory education must participate in basic education according to Finland’s Basic Education Act (628/1998). However, it is not obligatory to go to school (Finnish National Agency for Education, 2023) as Havu explains (you can do it at home). In addition, Havu uses the words ‘anyone’ and ‘you’ to facilitate the perspective-taking and defines the situation as a ‘burden on the young person’s shoulders’.

Yet these symptoms were a burden on the principal’s shoulders too. The empathy and worry associated with the sense of responsibility seemed to be a heavy load in many ways. First, it raised the question of whether the principal had done all they could do, as Tuisku explained when asked which issues were the most difficult to solve:

Well, it always worries me that if you do or don’t do enough to make something happen, someone might really get a lifelong disability or, or illness that might progress to something even worse. So, that is definitely scary.

In addition, symptoms forced principals to make difficult decisions in a situation where they had only limited resources. As we explained in relation to the first theme, principals could not affect the condition of school buildings, and the inspection and repair process was often very slow. Therefore, when teachers or students started to display heavy symptoms, principals strove to develop temporary solutions to ease the situation. But making such decisions could be far from easy. When asked the same question as posed to Tuisku above, Paju replied:

Well, yes, it’s probably one of the hardest things to solve, for those individuals to be put somewhere in isolation, away from the school community, somewhere else to study, to teach, so they are always the most unpleasant solutions, you would rather not do them.

Here Paju describes a situation where a student’s or teacher’s symptoms were so disturbing that they could not study or teach in the school building. In such cases, Paju would arrange alternative spaces for these people in other buildings. By using the passive verbal form ‘to be put somewhere in isolation’ and the adverb ‘away’, Paju underlines how unpleasant and difficult these decisions were from the perspective of the ‘individuals’. So, to make such a decision went against many of the basic principles of educational leadership – the principles of promoting a good social climate, well-being and learning. Paju was forced to break up the school community and promote conditions that risked creating social suffering and impairing learning outcomes. Unsurprisingly, therefore, when our respondents talked about heavily symptomatic individuals, they often expressed concern not only about their health but also to a large extent about their learning and social relations.

Finally, there was an extra load that made the principals’ burden even heavier: medical invisibility. Different factors can cause the same symptoms, especially when the symptoms in question are non-specific, and the principals were highly aware of this (‘fear also causes symptoms’). Even if they wholly agreed that poor indoor-air quality could pose threats to health, and even if they were symptomatic themselves, they were aware of the uncertainty related to such symptoms and the decisions they themselves had to make about them. Havu put into words the pain shared by many respondents:

So as I said, these are difficult sometimes, sometimes to distinguish that if a student has a huge number of absences, and they are often due to migraine, but there are no health reasons that would cause that, then maybe it is easy to state poor indoor-air quality as one of the reasons. Certainly in some cases it is the right answer, but then there are also those students with whom there is a concern that this might not be about poor indoor-air quality.

This was the uncertainty with which the principals had to live.

4. Discussion

The aim of this study was to analyse the environmental suffering of principals who led and managed schools with poor indoor-air quality. By using reflective thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2019, 2021), we identified three themes. The first theme depicted the fatigue, frustration and helplessness the principals experienced and the large workloads they carried in a context where they lacked operational and economic power over the source of the environmental problem. The second theme described the principals’ fear of losing control over the contaminated school community and the anxiety and strain that would result if they did. The third theme discussed principals’ worry and suffering over their own and others’ building-related symptoms, and the difficult decisions they had to make for symptomatic students and teachers under the shadow of medical invisibility and limited resources. Altogether, leading a school with poor indoor-air quality was a highly burdensome and stressful task reflecting the principal’s special role as the person responsible for the school community’s well-being and educational goals. At the same time, the three themes differed with regard to how principals talked about power and uncertainty. Now, we turn to discuss these themes’ different dimensions starting with power (see Table 2).

Table 2. Underlying dimensions between the themes.

	Power	Uncertainty	Responsibility
Theme 1	Lack of power	Municipality	Safety of the physical environment. Educational task and social climate. Health and well-being of individuals.
Theme 2	(Potential) loss of control	Community
Theme 3	Burden of power	Symptoms

Power had a different character in the principals’ talk in each theme. In the first theme, principals complained about a lack of power, whereas in the third theme they struggled with the burden of power. In the second theme, they discussed control and its (potential) loss. Controlling groups is not usually an issue for members of a contaminated community, but it is crucial for leaders in the face of hazards and disasters because in these situations, leaders have an important role in enhancing communication between the community members, and developing trust and hope (Demiroz & Kapucu, 2012). Losing control over the community makes it difficult to achieve these goals and it may lead to a situation where the leaders themselves become objects of frustration as our analysis demonstrated (see also Weisæth et al., 2002). However, except for calming the school community and making individual decisions, the power our principals had was ultimately quite limited, and they were ‘between power and powerlessness’ (Levay & Andersson Bäck, 2022, p. 953). Thus, although they had more power, they shared the same experiences of waiting and frustration (Auyero & Swistun, 2009), and ‘slow violence’ (Nixon, 2011) as members of contaminated communities in general.

The second dimension, uncertainty, is closely intertwined with loss of control (Afifi et al., 2014; McCormick, 2002), and it is one of the key foundations of suffering in contaminated communities (Edelstein, 2018; Vyner, 1988). This applied to our principals too. In the first theme, the source of uncertainty was the municipality and its (in)action; in the second, it was the reactions of the school community, including parents; in the third, it was the symptoms, especially those of students and school staff. These were the same social actors that would ordinarily fill the principal’s working day but something had changed in the principals´ ‘life space’ (Wheeler, 2008). To use the vocabulary of Bruno Latour (2005), the school building had moved from the role of an ‘intermediary’ that enabled the school community’s educational tasks and social relationships into the role of a ‘mediator’ that distorted them. Despite this, the physical environment was mainly a scene of action for many of our respondents, and their environmental suffering arose in large part from the uncertainties produced by the social actors using the building and been in charge of its maintenance (see Kroll-Smith & Couch, 1991).

Considering that our principals’ ‘normal’ work also involved great uncertainty (Sarmurzin et al., 2022; Hameiri et al., 2014; Schechter & Asher, 2012), our respondents needed to constantly develop their leadership capability and to adapt to changing environments. The education leadership literature suggests that complex adaptive leadership and its concentration on collaborative problem-solving could be an effective way to tackle such challenges (Bagwell, 2020; Nelson & Squires, 2017). In relation to teachers and students, adaptive leadership did not appear to be an option to most of our respondents. Their efforts to maintain control made it difficult to implement it.

Responsibility was the third factor that penetrated all the themes: responsibility for the safety of the physical environment, for the community’s social climate and educational goals, and for the health of individual community members. These different and intertwined responsibilities reflected a principal’s special role in a school community and the Finnish legislation (Hietanen-Peltola & Korpilahti, 2015), and they were present in every theme. The legal responsibility for larger groups than one’s family rarely affects the ordinary members of contaminated communities. For our principals, however, this responsibility combined with uncertainty and being between power and powerless was the key factor that defined their environmental suffering, and it seems that they reflected also to our principals’ leadership style. This is important since previous research has shown that leadership style is associated with leader’s well-being (Kaluza et al., 2020).

Abreu Pederzini (2020, p. 372) points out that when leaders have a perceived ‘impotence to control things’, they tend to concentrate on caring leadership. Caring leadership is constructed around the ethics of care: responsibility for others, empathy, and sensitivity to needs (Gabriel, 2015). Considering that there is a strong norm that principals should act selflessly (DeMatthews et al., 2021), it seems that many of our principals concentrated on this kind of leadership. Although empathy for one’s followers is essential in situations that include uncertainty (Mahmud et al., 2020), caring leadership also has its costs. It does not protect one from criticism, and a high-demand, low-control situation can expose one to fatigue and burnout (Van der Doef & Maes, 1998; Collie et al., 2020). This seemed to be the case with many of our respondents. The task for future research is to investigate the kinds of leadership style that are optimal both for leaders’ and followers’ well-being in contaminated communities.

In addition to making theoretical and empirical contributions, our findings have some practical implications. Previous literature has shown that unpredictable and precarious situations can have a negative impact on the well-being of a whole school community (Hayes et al., 2022; Reid, 2022). Since principals play an important role as a ‘buffer’ in such contexts (Hameiri & Nir, 2016), their reactions are essential (DeMatthews & Brown, 2019). However, as our study has shown, leading and managing a school with poor indoor-air quality can be extremely exhausting, despite the institutional processes that have been developed, and it is possible that this stress undermines principals’ ability to act as a buffer. Furthermore, it may increase principal turnover. Some of our respondents openly talked about such intentions or reported that they had previously worked in a school with poor indoor-air and ended up changing the school. The principal turnover can have negative effects on the school community (Bartanen et al., 2019; Béteille et al., 2012; Miller, 2013). Therefore, principals must receive sufficient support from various authorities, their workload must be shared, and above all the buildings must be well maintained so that these problems can be prevented in advance. Of course, these recommendations also apply to the leaders of other contaminated communities.

Our study has many strengths, including with regard to how our schools were chosen and the richness of our data, which were produced in cooperation between respondents and the interviewer. Inevitably, the study also has some limitations. Our data were collected in Finland, where there is a high level of awareness of indoor-air problems, and it is therefore possible that our findings are relatively culturally specific although in this way they reflect well the situation in other types of contaminated communities. A cross-cultural comparison would provide important knowledge about whether and how principals’ environmental suffering differs in different countries. In addition, we conducted interviews in schools that had especially low perceived indoor-air quality nationwide. More research is needed in contexts where the situation is less clear.

To conclude, we have shown that leading a school with poor indoor-air quality can be a highly stressful experience in many ways. Research so far has mainly concentrated on contaminated communities in contexts of large-scale technological hazards and disasters. In addition to leaders, more attention should be paid to the very local, everyday environmental suffering that is too often bypassed as mundane.

Conflict of interest disclosure

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Acknowledgement

We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Academy of Finland numbers 323125 and 352753 (Eerika Finell).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Academy of Finland: [Grant Numbers 323125 and 352753].