Using Leadership Coaching to Strengthen the Developmental Opportunity of the Clinical Experience for Aspiring Principals - Brokering and Third-Party Influence

Oct 15, 2026

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Purpose: identify key issues university-based leadership coaches address to strengthen the developmental opportunity of the clinical experience for aspiring principals, and explain how coaches act on those issues. Research: data include about 75 hours of interviews with two cohorts of aspiring principals and 25 hours with the five assigned leadership coaches (N=25). Analysis uses deductive and inductive coding grounded in brokering and social networks brokerage theories. Findings: five issue areas and evidence that coaches regularly function as brokers and third-party influencers, aided by coaching design and tools. Conclusion: coaching tied to principal preparation can strengthen clinical development opportunities and informs leadership preparation and coach deployment.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages37

Reading Time1 h 33 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Clinical experience as a key element in principal preparation

Growing policy and practitioner attention to clinical experience

Program improvement efforts to strengthen clinical experience

Using Leadership Coaching to Strengthen the Developmental Opportunity of the Clinical Experience for Aspiring Principals: The Importance of Brokering and Third-Party Inﬂuence Shelby Cosner and Craig De Voto Educational Administration Quarterly 2023, Vol. 59(1) 3–39 © The Author(s) 2023 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)DOI: 10.1177/0013161X231153812 [journals.sagepub.com/home/eaq](journals.sagepub.com/home/eaq) Abstract Purpose: To identify key issues that university-based leadership coaches act upon in work to fortify the developmental opportunity of the clinical experience for aspiring principals, and how leadership coaches act upon these issues. Research: Data include roughly 75 hours of interviews with two cohorts of aspiring principals and 25 hours of interviews with the ﬁve leadership coaches assigned to these aspirants (N = 25). Drawing theoretically upon brokering and social networks brokerage, analysis of transcripts used both deductive and inductive coding. Findings: We identiﬁed ﬁve key issues acted upon by leadership coaches, including: (a) relational issues between the aspirant and the mentor; (b) insufﬁcient time between the aspirant and the mentor; (c) aspirant identiﬁcation of and engagement with clinical work of developmental importance; (d) aspirant access to and/or authority for clinical University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA Corresponding Author: Craig De Voto, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1240 W. Harrison Street, 1570-V, Chicago, IL 60607, USA. Email: [cdevot2@uic.edu](cdevot2@uic.edu) work; and (e) the developmental supports provided to aspirants by mentors. Drawing upon theories of brokering, social networks brokerage, and thirdparty inﬂuence as we examined how coaches acted upon aspirant issues, we found that coaches regularly worked as brokers and third-party inﬂuencersin these pursuits. The structuring and design of coaching as well as coaching tools proved vital to this work. Conclusion: Leadership coaches tethered to principal preparation programs can play an important role in fortifying the developmental opportunity of the clinical experience. Our ﬁndings suggest an assortment of implications for leadership preparation, the deployment and design of university-based leadership coaches, and the development of such coaches tied to principal preparation. Keywords principal preparation, brokerage, clinical experience, mentoring, coaching Introduction In the United States (US), much attention over the last several decades has been directed at understanding effective principal preparation program (PPP) designs and marshaling these ﬁndings to spur and support program improvement. Although the clinical experience has historically been regarded as a key PPP element (e.g., Browne-Ferrigno, 2003; Browne-Ferrigno & Muth, 2003; Cordeiro & Sloann, 1996; Hackmann et al., 1999; Jackson & Kelley, 2002; McCarthy, 1999; Pounder & Crow, 2005), an assortment of more recent studies has elevated its importance in supporting aspiring school leader development (Barnett et al., 2009; Crow & Whiteman, 2016; Drake et al., 2021; Reyes-Guerra & Barnett, 2016; Young, 2015) . For example, research comparing more traditional preparation programs to onesidentiﬁed as innovative found that more robust internship experiences—that is, full-time, job-embedded, 300+ hours—promote higher levels of leader learning and instructional leadership practice development (Orr & Orphanos, 2011), career advancement (Orr, 2011; Orr & Barber, 2006), and several important working conditions for teachers (e.g., greater professional development and collaboration; see Orphanos & Orr, 2014) . Similarly, research examining exemplary PPPs has identiﬁed carefully supervised and well-planned ﬁeld experiences as a hallmark feature distinguishing such programs (Crow & Whiteman, 2016; Darling-Hammond et al., 2007, 2022;

FAQs

What is the document’s main purpose?

It identifies the key issues that university-based leadership coaches address to strengthen the developmental opportunity of the clinical experience for aspiring principals, and describes how coaches act on those issues.

What research data and participants were used?

The study uses data from roughly 75 hours of interviews with two cohorts of aspiring principals and 25 hours of interviews with the five leadership coaches assigned to those aspirants, for a total of N=25.

What are the five key issues leadership coaches act upon?

The issues include: (a) relational issues between the aspirant and the mentor; (b) insufficient time between the aspirant and the mentor; (c) the aspirant’s identification of and engagement with clinically important work; (d) aspirant access to and/or authority for clinical work; and (e) developmental supports provided by mentors.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by acoobca