Discussing leadership coaching at Innovation Summit

I was delighted to share my recent research on instructional leadership coaching for school principals at last week's 2012 Innovation Summit sponsored by AdvancEd Kentucky and the University of Kentucky College of Education.  At a poster session, I was able to share the latest  phase of my on-going research developing coaching protocols to help school principals improve their instructional leadership using a theory of practice framework.

Pictured with me (left to right) are my research partner, Dr. Tom Stewart of Austin Peay State University and our friends from the Monroe County Schools, who hosted the most recent round of coaching activities: Amy Thompson, Monroe County assistant superintendent, and Cecilia Stephens, elementary instructional supervisor.  I am very grateful to Amy, Cecilia, Superintendent Lewis Carter, and all the leadership in Monroe County for their thoughtful, active participation in our work.

We had many great conversations with education leaders from around Kentucky at our presentation.  Leadership coaching is increasingly recognized as an essential strategy for professional growth and we were gratified to share ideas about future applications of our work, including applying our protocol with superintendents and district-level school leaders, developing peer coaching applications, and integrating our work using the Enneagram personality system with coaching. 

Look for formal publication of our most recent coaching research within the next year.  The first phase was published in the October edition of Qualitative Research in Education.

More thoughts on the Innovation Summit's keynote presentation from Tony Wagner later this week.