Date of Award

Spring 4-14-2019

Document Type

Dissertation - University of Massachusetts Global access only

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Organizational Leadership

First Advisor

Philip Pendley

Second Advisor

LaFaye Platter

Third Advisor

Melissa Bazanos

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the principal coaching and/or professional development activities that expert high school principals experienced that helped them to achieve expert status, i.e. exemplary leadership, and positively impact student outcomes, to rate the effectiveness of the identified activities as reported by the exemplary principals, and to identify the recommendations of the expert principals for the implementation of the top five coaching and/or professional development activities that can be utilized to coach other high school principals toward expert status, i.e. exemplary leadership, and positively impact student outcomes.

Methodology: The Delphi methodology was used for this study. The study consisted of a series of surveys administered in three rounds with the first intending to identify the activities experienced by the expert panel members that facilitated their ascension to “expert status,” i.e. exemplary leaders. The second round allowed the expert panel to rank the effectiveness of this data and identify the top five most effective activities experienced by the panel. The third round allowed the expert panel to provide recommendations on how a school district could best implement these top strategies moving forward.

Findings: In Round 1, there were 12 distinct principal coaching and/or professional development activities experienced by the expert panel. During the second round, five of those activities were identified as being extremely effective. Lastly, the expert panel provided 18 suggestions for districts to consider when implementing or enhancing principal coaching and/or development programs.

Conclusions: There were three major conclusions. The first revolved around providing well organized professional development specifically designed to target leadership characteristics and support district initiatives. The second conclusion identified the need to provide mentoring by prior administrators. The last conclusion targeted the need for districts to create principal professional learning communities.

Recommendations: There were six recommendations for future research provided in order to further the research around best practices to coach and/or professionally develop school principals.

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