Chapter 5: Accelerating New Principal Development Through Leadership Coaching

New principals face a rush of expectations beginning from their first day on the job and often find themselves left alone to deal with these challenges. Induction support is rarely guaranteed in most districts and support from their university-based preparation program is often not available once a principal completes or graduates from their preparation program. Given the challenges facing new principals, it is easy to understand how new principals are distracted from the core work of improving teaching and learning and overwhelmed by the demands of school leadership. Consider this first-year principal’s experience:

Research increasingly suggests that new principals, much like the one quoted, benefit from formal induction (Spiro, Mattis, & Mitgang, 2007). There has been a steady increase in the number of induction programs for school principals in the past decade (Hall, 2008; Malone, 2001). A variety of induction models have been proposed by researchers and practitioners (Anderson, 1991; Bloom, Castagna, Moir, & Warren, 2005; Reiss, 2007; Villani, 2006). Leadership coaching, or “the practice of providing deliberate support to another individual to help him/her to clarify and/or to achieve goals” (Bloom et al., 2005, p. 5), has become an especially common form of induction for new school principals. The primary purpose of coaching is to accelerate learning, ease entry into professional roles through socialization, and focus support on individual strengths. While leadership coaching has become a popular form of support for new principals, its impact on principals’ leadership practice—particularly instructional leadership—is unclear.