21CSLA (21st Century California School Leadership Academy)

School leaders play a central role in improving school culture and carrying out instructional and organizational leadership. One meaningful support for school leaders’ work and development has been coaching. Following the expansion of coaching in the business sector almost a century ago, coaching has expanded in the education field over the past decades for both teachers and school leaders. There is no standard definition of coaching, but in general, it entails one- on-one individualized support in learning to clarify, address, and reach professional goals. District and school leadership coaching frequently blends components of both teacher- facing instructional coaching and executive-facing facilitative coaching, with the latter’s attention to the development of leadership skills to support organizational aims. While there has been expanding attention to issues of equity and social justice amongst coaches, attention to equity-driven school leadership coaching remains nascent within scholarship. In this brief, we a) summarize the literature on the recipients, types, and common challenges of leadership coaching; b) provide an overview of coach competencies and methods of coach development in the literature; and c) discuss the existing literature and offer potential implications for equity-driven school leadership coaching.