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There is an urgent need for teacher preparation programs to equip teachers to teach in innovative and transformative ways, meeting the needs of diverse learners. Coaching is an instrumental tool for supporting change and development, especially in contexts with decentralized teacher preparation guidelines.

This multicase study examines cross-institutional programmatic innovations for coaching teacher candidates (TCs) and centering equity using improvement science and equity coaching. The authors explore the networked improvement community’s (NIC’s) examination of problems of practice through plan–do–study–act cycles in three coaching contexts within and across seven institutions.

Qualitative methods revealed that adapting coaching protocols can center equity and build equity-focused practices. This work highlights revisions to coaching within and across teacher preparation programs (TPPs), which the authors hope inspires extending equity-centered coaching and improvement science to new contexts. This cross-case analysis revealed program innovations for coaches, digital technologies and alignment.

This study addresses ongoing challenges faced by TPPs in the United States, including TCs' understandings of equity in teaching and decentralized teacher preparation that results in varied and incongruent understandings about quality teaching. This study builds on previous scholarship that examines shifts in coaching practices by disrupting silos in TPPs as examined innovations.

The paper offers a unique view of cross-institutional collaboration in coaching to improve transformative teaching experiences in teacher preparation field experiences.

Across K–12 settings, instructional coaching continues to flourish as an approach to teacher professional development intended to address long-standing inequities in student achievement. Yet, coaching models differ in how to conceptualize change or transformation as a result of coaching efforts.

This case study problematizes the concept of change within one practice-based coaching program, by positing the possibilities of striving for transformational change directed at addressing educational inequities.

Qualitative methods reveal how coaching belief statements guide the burgeoning identities of beginning coaches to align to (and at times extend beyond) coaching for change through the lens of teacher practice.

Implications describe ways that coaching programs might utilize reflection and analysis activities to foster more equity-oriented coaching identities, regardless of coaching model.

Designing and facilitating authentic learning opportunities for coaches to reflect, rehearse, connect, and apply knowledge to practice as they develop their own understanding of what it means to coach for change is crucial.

This chapter focuses on the career paths of African American women in collegiate athletics. Through a review of literature and policy analysis, three overarching themes emerged and is the focus of this chapter: (1) challenges and barriers African American women encounter in pursuing careers in collegiate athletics with a particular focus on extant inequities of African American women in administrative and head coaching positions; (2) professional sport development programs tailored to improve career opportunities for African American women and other minorities; and (3) strategies to alleviate challenges and barriers African American women endure in collegiate athletics.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of instructional leaders in promoting culturally responsive practice in ways that make schooling more inclusive and humanizing for minoritized students and communities.

The data pull from a six-month long case study of a mid-sized, Midwestern school district that was attempting to implement culturally responsive leadership practices. After axial coding, findings emerged from interview data and field notes.

Instructional leaders can play significant and useful roles in promoting culturally responsive teaching and pedagogy in schools. Districts can establish positions in which instructional leaders can work to strengthen the culturally responsive pedagogy of every teacher in a district.

This study has implications for both research and practice. Culturally responsive school leadership (CRSL) exists in multiple spaces and at various levels in a district. CRSL is not only a school-level function, but it can also be a district-level practice. Culturally responsive instructional leaders (in this case, not principals, but coaches) can have significant impact in promoting culturally relevant pedagogy.

This contribution moves beyond school leadership and examines how district leadership practices and decisions foster culturally relevant practices and the challenges in employing this equity work.

The purpose of the study was to gather data to determine whether instructional coaching partnerships can improve teachers’ implementation of learned mathematics instructional strategies. Teachers are willing to learn and implement new mathematics strategies after professional development sessions to see better student learning results. However, the implementation process can become difficult. Our purpose was to determine whether implementing mathematics strategies improved if an instructional coaching partnership supported teachers.

“Do instructional coaching partnerships improve teachers’ implementation of mathematics instructional strategies?” We gathered data to determine whether instructional coaching partnerships support teachers’ capacity to implement new learning. Data were collected using video recording or classroom observation as a pre- and post-assessment. Teachers received 4 to 6 weeks of instructional coaching support during the intervention. Teachers completed a questionnaire about their intervention experiences. Student testing data were also analyzed to determine whether the intervention increased learning outcomes.

Our findings showed improved mathematics strategies, explicitly implementing the open-ended questioning strategy used during mathematics instruction. Open-ended questions to check students’ mathematics understanding increased by 42%. Teachers responded to a qualitative survey and stated overall satisfaction with the support provided by the instructional coach. Additionally, state testing scores in Grades 3 to 5 increased proficiency levels. Grade-level growth comparisons increased between 5 and 28%.

This study adds to current research stating that instructional coaching cycles and the implementation of partnership principles can positively support the execution of learned teaching practices. The study also indicates the effects of coaching support on students’ learning.

As a tenured associate professor whose career has engaged various social justice issues, this chapter discusses the collaborative and shared decision-making process used to found and maintain basketball teams for seven years. The chapter also focuses on personal reflections of coaching club basketball as part of an auto-ethnography. The chapter explains the experiences that influenced a praxis focused on social justice as an attempt to infuse principles of equality and inclusiveness in opposition to harsh traditional coaching practices. Youth embraced an approach with little yelling, but some parents disapproved. Finally, this work discusses the limitations and successes of utilizing a social justice approach, including professional and health consequences.

Sport organizations hold substantial ideological power to showcase and reinforce dominant cultural ideas about gender. The organization and portrayal of sporting events and spaces continue to promote and reinforce a hierarchical gender binary where heroic forms of masculinity are both desired and privileged. Such publicly visible gender hierarchies contribute to the doing of gender beyond sport itself, extending to influence gender power relations within sport and non-sport organizations. Yet, there has been a relative absence of scholarship on sport organizations within the organizational sociology field. In this paper, we review findings of studies that look at how formal and informal organizational dimensions influence the doing and undoing of gender in sport organizations. Subsequently, we call for scholars to pay more attention to sport itself as a source of gendered organizational practices within both sport and non-sport organizations. We end with suggestions for research that empirically explores this linkage by focusing on innovative theoretical perspectives that could provide new insights on gender inclusion in organizations.

The research examines how contextual coaching (Gorrell and Hoover, 2009; Valentine, 2019) can act as a lever to build collaborative professionalism (Hargreaves and O'Connor, 2018) and lead to school improvement.

The multi-case study (Stake, 2013) draws on two bespoke examples of contextual coaching in education and uses the ten tenets of collaborative professionalism as a conceptual framework for its abductive analysis. Data from both cases were collected through interviews, focus groups and documentation.

The findings demonstrate that effective contextual coaching leads to conditions underpinning school improvement. Specifically, there are patterns of alignment with the ten tenets of collaborative professionalism. Whereas contextual coaching is found on four of these tenets (mutual dialogue, joint work, collective responsibility and collaborative inquiry), in more mature coaching programmes, three others (collective autonomy, initiative and efficacy) emerge. There is also evidence that opportunities exist for contextual coaching to be further aligned with the remaining three tenets. The study offers insight into how school improvement can be realized by the development of staff capacity for teacher leadership through contextual coaching.

The impact of coaching in education is enhanced by recognizing the importance of context and the value of iterative design and co-construction.

The principles of contextual coaching are generalizable, but models must be developed to be bespoke and to align with each setting. Collaborative professionalism offers a useful framework to better design and implement contextual coaching programmes.

The research introduces contextual coaching in education, and how coaching can enhance collaborative professionalism in schools.

In digital education curricular initiatives, some teachers are taking on key roles when appointed as instructional coaches (ICs) and become crucial in the sustainability of the initiative by coaching teachers. This study aimed to find out the difficulties ICs are facing when mentoring teachers in the development of the digital skills and to identify the coaching activities the coaches offer.

Employing a mixed-methods research design focusing on a qualitative approach, the research team conducted 6 focus groups with 38 ICs from 12 primary schools in Switzerland. Quantitative descriptive data were collected through a survey submitted before and after the focus group.

The results indicate that (1) the professional development (PD) activities offered to teachers vary greatly depending on the instructional coach characteristics and the school to which the teachers belong, (2) the in-service training of ICs should include coaching and leadership skills and (3) distributed leadership to ICs could facilitate the adoption of technologies by teachers and support change in the school.

Some ICs offer activities with a low involvement of the teacher. ICs' training programs should provide strategies to better take advantage of PD activities. The authors suggest training ICs in PD activities, aligned with Gibbons and Cobb's (2017) such as analyzing classroom video or lesson study involving a group of teachers working together with an expert to improve a lesson. District and school leaders should provide ICs with explicit guidance and more resources to achieve systemic change. ICs should also be empowered by being involved in the development of the school's continuing education training plans.

This study presents a new perspective about understanding and applying in-service teacher PD in the context of a digital education curricular initiative.