Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how school principals influenced or controlled leadership coaches working with assistant principals in urban secondary schools. Design/methodology/approach – This longitudinal qualitative case study drew upon semi-structured interviews and program documents obtained from participants in a university-based leadership coaching program across three academic years. The study included 22 total participants, including ten assistant principals, nine leadership coaches, and three program staff. Findings – A thematic analysis of the data produced three themes. First, principals controlled coaches’ work with assistant principals both directly and indirectly. Second, the extent of principal control influenced how coaches developed a confidential relationship with the assistant principals and what strategies they used to preserve the confidential nature of the coaching relationship. Third, the focus of the coaching support evolved in response to the assignment of responsibilities and duties to the assistant principals, which were largely outside the assistant principal and leadership coach’s control. The absence of alignment between coaching priorities and leadership responsibilities frustrated coaches. Originality/value – The findings from this study make two significant empirical contributions to the literature. First, the study provides critical new insights about the extent to which politics generated by principals and administrative teams may influence the work of leadership coaches. Second, the study contributes to the sparse literature about leadership coaching for assistant principals, particularly those working in secondary school settings in the USA.

PurposeMuch of the scholarship relating to educator learning in the context of school change centers on promising organizational structures that support educator knowledge-building and sharing. However, recent studies have found that educators' social networks also enhance learning of new practices. This study aims to explore how informal interactions support organizational learning in schools.Design/methodology/approachApplying structuration theory to concepts of organizational learning mechanisms, this paper proposes a framework for examining informal interactions and organizational learning. Employing an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design, this paper utilizes social network analysis of survey data and thematic analysis of interview data of a purposive sample of participants in a rural school district.FindingsWithin this rural district, organizational and social conditions supported recursive interactions where educators developed and shared knowledge of new instructional practices. Organizational resources and routines, and individuals' habits of mind mediated these recursive interactions, resulting in somewhat dependable knowledge-sharing spaces. Through these recursive interactions between individual agents acting within the opportunities and constraints of the normalized organizational expectations of each school, informal knowledge structures emerged.Originality/valueThis article applies structuration theory to examine organizational learning mechanisms in schools. This novel approach provides researchers with a new perspective on the organizational learning process—one that facilitates the exploration of the role of informal knowledge-building in this process.

Background/Context: Rural districts often struggle to provide organizational structures that support knowledge-building and sharing among educators, contributing to the challenge of change implementation in rural contexts. Although prior scholarship identifies social relationships centered on trust as important for fostering educator learning, we know little about how knowledge regarding a change initiative moves through a district lacking formal organizational learning supports and the role that informal relationships may play in fostering educator knowledge-building for organizational learning in an under-resourced rural context. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This article explores the network of knowledge related to a recent change initiative in a rural district striving to implement new instructional practices. Of particular interest is how knowledge is created and shared among educators and the role that organizational structures and informal relationships play in educators’ knowledge-building and sharing processes. Research Design: I present a conceptual model that brings together knowledge-creation and structuration theories. Using a sequential mixed methods design, I examine the information and advice interactions and knowledge-building experiences of educators in one rural school district. Analytical methods include social network analysis of survey data and thematic analysis of interview data. Conclusions/Recommendations: Findings suggest that informal relationships were consequential to organizational learning in this district with few formally designated learning supports, though friendship relationships were not consequential. Instead, knowledge-building interactions occurred when individual educators had a positive prior relationship; when mundane organizational structures, such as the master schedule and the assignment of informal or extracurricular roles, facilitated informal interactions; and when educators were motivated to engage in such interactions. This article makes three important contributions to our understandings of organizational learning in this under-resourced rural district context: (1) through mundane organizational structures, principals influence informal knowledge interactions; (2) educator agency is critical for change implementation; and (3) recursive educator interactions may constitute an informal organizational learning structure. This informal structure supporting organizational learning that was invisible to school leadership—fed by recursive informal interactions and supported by mundane organizational structures—represents a fertile area for future research.

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