Session Information
WERA SES 01 B, Feedback and Coaching to Promote the Professional Reflection and Learning of School Leaders
Symposium
Contribution
This paper investigates the interplay of feedback and coaching to promote professional reflection and learning. It reports on results from piloting of the ICT-based inventory in eight country contexts (Australia, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Denmark, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland) and focuses in particular on the participants’ use of their individual feedback reports in their self-reflection processes and the group-coaching activities. Feedback and coaching have become one of the fastest growing global developmental strategies (Judge & Cowell, 1997). Recently, providers of school leadership development have embraced coaching models. Studies also report on the benefits of coaching programmes on school leaders’ learning in terms of their taking ownership for their self-development, gaining agency and political empowerment, gaining confidence to improve their learning opportunities, and becoming more proactive (Robertson, 2008). Methodological approaches include observations of three group-coaching sessions in each of the countries according to a common observation framework, and short interviews with individual participants and the coaches. The findings show that the coach is important in order to connect feedback scores to specific coaching topics. Also, the coach is important in helping participants commit to trying concrete actions to change certain leadership behaviors based on their reflections. Across country contexts, we found two general successful strategies of the coaches: 1) to start with a concrete problematic situation and then bring in scores on certain dimensions, and 2) to use scores as a point of departure and then present concrete situations where a low score could be an issue. The feedback helps the participants to understand themselves in their role in the school leadership team and in relation to the staff. In particular, the participants reflected on the extent to which they can use their strengths in their current role, andtheir potential to develop capacities which are needed in their leadership context.
References
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