Principal Coaching in Central Office Supervisory Roles: Exploring Persistent Tensions

Abstract

Scholars have increasingly focused on the practice of central office administrators. Principal supervisors, who often work in central offices, have received attention as scholars view these administrators as an essential source of support for school principals. This study employed a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with 20 principal supervisors who participated in coaching partnership facilitated by a private, mid-sized university over three academic years. Additionally, the data set included 127 hours of non-participant observation and 59 documents. The findings indicate that principal supervisors had difficulty reconciling coaching behaviors within the context of their supervisory roles. In particular, supervisors found the expectations associated with their role more prescriptive than anticipated and thus an impediment to the adoption of coaching behaviors in their work. Supervisors thus sought to adjust their practice to accommodate coaching behaviors. However, given expectations associated with their role, supervisors often resorted to directive and supervisory behaviors. A primary conclusion of this study is that leadership coaching behaviors might not be readily implemented within the context of supervisory practice unless adequate support, training, and organizational reforms occur. The findings thus have implications for the configuration of central office supervisory roles as well as how leadership preparation programs prepare candidates for central office supervisory positions.

Guiding Principals: Middle-Manager Coaching and Human-Capital Reform

“…It is possible that this non-directive approach is generally well-received by and useful to most principals, but that there are some who respond better to directives. While a non-directive approach is a hallmark of the predominant models of leadership coaching, research has shown that principal supervisors often "resort" to directive behaviors (Lochmiller, 2018a). Our research suggests that there may be important nuance in the appropriateness of a directive, rather than non-directive, coaching approach based on content, contextual conditions, and coach-to-principal match.…”

“…In contrast, tools may be useful for some principals and not for others, depending on their needs, capacities, and contexts. While utilizing tools and protocols in leadership coaching is common (Lochmiller, 2018b), our finding that mixed-rated IDs more commonly cited using them than consistently highly-rated IDs did raises questions about how to best use tools and protocols to support principals. Equally important to the use of these strategies was the approach with which they are applied.…”

“…These responsibilities necessitate an understanding of how adults learn (e.g., Jarvis, 1987;Merriam et al, 2012) and how to appropriately support principals in their learning. A few studies have begun to examine the role of principal supervisors, noting the importance of coaching capacity (e.g., Goldring et al, 2018) and taking stock of the considerable challenges of maintaining dual roles as supportproviders and evaluators or managers (Lochmiller, 2018a). Some studies examined the practice of principal supervisors trained in the Blended Coaching model (see Bloom et al, 2005), showing that these coaches drew upon various sources of knowledge and strategies in addition to Blended Coaching, but they primarily focused on classroom instruction, adapted their responses to principals' needs, used tools and protocols as models of leadership practice, and buffered principals from district politics (Lochmiller, 2018a(Lochmiller, , 2018b.…”

“…Recognizing the need to support principals as they take on these new roles, many districts have begun offering them enhanced professional development, often through coaching (Goldring et al, 2018;Lochmiller, 2018a). In many districts, principal supervisors have begun to play an important role in providing capacity-building support to principals around a variety of topics related to instruction.…”

Is Role Change Enough? District Organizational Supports for Principal Supervision

“…Principal support, the third and newest function of the supervisor role, builds upon the notion of evaluation for improvement by emphasizing the supervisor's use of coaching and professional development to guide principal improvement (Lochmiller, 2018; Thessin, 2019). The support function requires further shifts in supervisors’ mindsets and practices, from simply identifying and evaluating principals’ leadership performance to teaching principals how to lead effectively.…”