Building Capacity and Courage: Professional Learning for Equity-Centered Leadership Coaches

• In Event: Coaching for Equity in California’s Leadership Preparation Programs

Abstract

Purpose: This study examines how leadership coaches experience professional learning spaces designed to support continual development of their coaching capacity. Deepening our understanding about how to train and develop leadership coaches is a key lever that can impact leader sustainability. Analyzing how professional learning impacts experienced leadership coaches’ skills, dispositions and reflective practices informs the coaching efforts of leadership preparation programs.

Perspectives: Informed by theories of professional learning for leadership coaches (Huggins, et al 2021; Wise & Jacobo, 2010), and Communities of Practice (Wenger, 1998) as a site for professional learning, this study seeks to analyze the design and implementation of one such community of practice in order to understand its impact on leadership coach professional development.

Methods: An intrinsic case study design was utilized to address this study’s research questions. The author is the director of a university-based leadership preparation program which provides 1:1 coaching to aspiring principal candidates. As one of the facilitators of professional learning for the leadership coaches, the author contributed to the team who designed and developed the professional learning space.

Data sources: Over one year, researchers engaged in participant observation of 10 professional learning sessions. In addition, we conducted semi-structured interviews with coaches, and analyzed artifacts from professional learning sessions. Through multiple rounds of coding, we generated themes and sub-themes to inform study findings.

Results: Findings reveal that coaches experienced both personal and professional development as a result of their engagement in professional learning. Participating in a community of practice helped coaches increase their ability to tackle equity issues in real time by increasing their ability to notice issues of oppression and providing them with language and courage to respond.

Scholarly significance: This study informs research, policy, and practice pertaining to leadership preparation programs and PK-12 districts invested in supporting pre-service and novice administrators through leadership coaching. Supporting administrators to continually develop their equity lens, requires the ongoing learning and development of their leadership coaches. Future research should investigate the impact of coaching from the perspective of the coachees with specific emphasis on the impact of coaching for equity on leadership practice.

Author

• Soraya Sablo Sutton, University of California - Berkeley