In an effort to scale success, many schools codify various practices to replicate them across schools. While such codification and replication can help scale success, scaling success often comes with numerous negative externalities such as a reduction of autonomy and burdens on successful educators. Based on real events and educators, this case…

Mathematics coaches are often positioned as important mediators between district administrators and teachers regarding messages about ambitious and equitable instruction. Despite this, little research has sought to unpack the connection between what coaches learn at professional development and how they make their learning available to teachers.…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between ICF coaching and early career principals' self-efficacy related to their a) management skills and b) instructional leadership. The sample for this study were principals in a larger urban school district in the northeast who began their principalship between July 2017 and June…

Supporting principals in building capacity to balance both instructional leadership and managerial competence is an essential task. Recognizing that principals do not directly teach students, their impact on school outcomes is broadly understood to be second only to teacher classroom instruction (Grissom & Loeb, 2011; Grissom et al., 2015;…

The evolving role of the assistant principal as an instructional leader has increased the urgency and need for them to be equipped with the appropriate knowledge, skills, and dispositions to support instruction. The purpose of this study was to examine the transfer of job-embedded coaching practices and skills that assistant principals learned…

Instructional coaches are facing challenges as they support our schools with the implementation of evidence-based practices. Tasked with helping teachers address learning gaps after the pandemic, coupled with providing general support to schools, coaches have a challenging workload. This study undertook a rigorous intervention designed to improve…

As principals focus on instructional leadership, principal supervisors must shift from the managerial stance to developing principals' instructional leadership capacity. The problem is supervisors are unprepared to support principals in shifting to instructional leadership, due to a lack of time and instructional leadership capacity to engage in…

Education reform is the driver for changes in principal leadership practices. Instructional coaching is a common lever used to meet reform mandates but has had inconsistent results. The problem in practice is little is known about how principals use leadership practices to establish effective instructional coaching in their school building. The…

Purpose: This study explores factors that influence the initiation of leadership coaching relationships that include externally employed coaches and school administrators. Design/methodology/approach: This qualitative research study includes semi-structured interviews, observations and documents collected across three academic years within the…

Principals today face greater job complexities and more diverse challenges than ever before because of decreases in resources, funding, and district support, along with increases in accountability expectations, student diversity, and unfunded federal and state mandates. Principals today are tasked with myriad responsibilities ranging from…

Drawing on data collected from one coaching cycle during mathematics instruction for one coach-teacher dyad, this study explores one instructional coach's discursive enactment of their coaching stance. Qualitative analyses indicate that there was dissonance between the coach's stance for coaching and their discursive enactment of coaching, and…

The three articles that comprise this dissertation examine different ways that current teachers can express leadership outside of their classrooms, through labor activity and within-school instructional leadership. I use descriptive and quasi-experimental quantitative analysis to examine which teachers take on these roles, their effectiveness, the…

Effective principal supervisors focus on building principals' instructional leadership capacity. Strategies that include data analysis, feedback loops, job-embedded practice, and executive coaching should be a part of every principal supervisor's repertoire of skills. Current research suggests principal supervisors should make specific teaching…

There is a need for school leaders to be able to address barriers that prevent historically marginalized students from being successful in school while also preparing them to be democratic citizens. There is evidence that many school leaders enter the profession underprepared to be able to provide the needed support for equity. This qualitative…

This research study investigated the coaching effectiveness of 1st-year principals in low-performing schools, employing the International Coach Federation (ICF) coaching framework. The study aimed to provide insights into how successful ICF-coached principals perceive coaching's utility, transfer learning from coaching to their leadership roles,…