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Moving the center of expertise: Applying a communities of practice framework to understand coaching in urban school reform

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Abstract

Intermediary organizations’ coaches are utilized to support and develop principals and teachers as they seek to bring about substantive school improvement. This study presents a qualitative case study of one coach engaged as an intermediary of a school reform organization, the Together Initiative (TI). To investigate how this coach enacted TI reform, we utilized a communities of practice framework and found that although coaches were initially viewed as the leaders of the reform effort, it was actually the teachers who enacted key aspects of the reform. We also surfaced the coach’s critical role in helping staff come to understand that they were capable of instituting new practices. This paper provides new perspectives on the complexity of the coaching role in supporting organizational change in urban schools.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Neag School of Education, 249 Glenbrook Road, Storrs, CT, 06269-3093, USA

    Anysia Mayer, Sarah Woulfin & Larisa Warhol

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  1. Anysia Mayer
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  2. Sarah Woulfin
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  3. Larisa Warhol
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Correspondence to Anysia Mayer.

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Mayer, A., Woulfin, S. & Warhol, L. Moving the center of expertise: Applying a communities of practice framework to understand coaching in urban school reform. J Educ Change 16, 101–123 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-014-9236-y

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