At the microsystem ecological level, coaching in the professional learning and development of school leaders provides a structured process whereby a school leader can engage with real-life adult learning in the areas of role clarity, self-efficacy, identity and agency. Andragogy, Knowles’s (1980, 1984) adult learning theory, conceives adult learners as being autonomous, motivated and self-directed and seeking growth-orientated learning that is experiential and context-informed. Zepeda et al. (2014) claims that professional development for principals, while focusing on goals and problems, often neglects to consider the context or prior knowledge and suggests that coaching is a viable solution. The reviewed literature reveals that coaching can provide real-world learning that is relevant, goal-and solution-focused and useful in leaders’ daily practice and that can build on the specific prior knowledge of the individual (Aas and Flückiger, 2016; Boon, 2022; Celoria and Roberson, 2015; Irby et al., 2023). Coaching builds leadership capacity because it is “job-embedded, instructionally focused, collaborative, supportive and ongoing” (Flückiger et al., 2017, p. 614). Many of the coaching processes we see in education originated in business organizational contexts—notably, Whitmore’s (1996) goal-orientated GROW model (Aas and Flückiger, 2016; Boon, 2022; Flückiger et al., 2017; Igu et al., 2023). Lofthouse (2019) refers to the collaborative dualism of coaching, whereby productive progress is achieved through skilled questioning on the part of the coach and dialog based on curiosity, active listening and reciprocity. The resulting enhanced self-awareness increases confidence and motivation (Boon, 2022).

According to Bandura, “self-efficacy refers to beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments” (Bandura, 1997, p. 3). The literature suggests that coaching is highly effective in enhancing school leaders’ self-efficacy because it improves their ability to predict or examine the outcomes of their performance in a way that informs their behavior/decisions on an ongoing basis and is intrinsically related to motivation, perseverance and resilience (Boon, 2022; Igu et al., 2023; Lewis and Jones, 2019; Sardar and Galdames, 2018; van Nieuwerburgh et al., 2020). Role clarity refers to the knowledge regarding expectations associated with one’s role (Aas et al., 2020) and is positively related to successful goal-orientated coaching, self-efficacy, resilience, adaptability and leading teams (Brandmo et al., 2021).

Research suggests that coaching facilitates identity formation in reciprocal interactions at the microsystem level, which is highly beneficial to early-career leaders whose leadership identity is in the early stages of development (Boon, 2022; Celoria and Roberson, 2015; Cosner and De Voto, 2023; Simon et al., 2019). Celoria and Roberson (2015) outlined that learning and identity creation happen at the intersection of the social and the individual, while group coaching has been effective in fostering leader identity through personal and contextual feedback from other leaders (Aas and Flückiger, 2016; Aas and Vavik, 2015; Brandmo et al., 2021; Flückiger et al., 2017).

An important area for development in the coaching of the professional learning and development of school leaders is the question of agency. School leaders of today need to grow as agentic professionals capable of negotiating the complex organizational and social terrain in which they lead in a way that affords them the maximum capacity to bring about positive influence through goal-focused self-regulation (Grant and Atad, 2022). An advantage of coaching and group coaching over other forms of professional learning is that coaching is ecologically sensitive (Andrews and Munro, 2019). Priestley et al. (2015) explain that an ecological approach to agency involves one’s capacity to engage with the surroundings and make decisions based on a skilled negotiation between one’s personal capacity and the constraints or demands of the environment. Bronfenbrenner’s ecologies, which scaffold the findings of this review, can offer much in the design of coaching interventions that seek to enhance the capacity of school leaders to engage creatively with their environments as agentic professionals (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 2007; Miller, 2018). Coaching can influence a school leader’s intellectual independence, moral purpose and cultural responsiveness as well as the confidence and agency needed to lead transformative change (Bush-Mecenas et al., 2020; Flückiger et al., 2017; Goff et al., 2014; Simon et al., 2019; Weathers and White, 2015; Wise and Cavazos, 2017). Coaching conversations as reciprocal interactions (proximal processes) at the microsystem level can enhance self-awareness in school leaders, and through an apprenticeship of observation, they can learn to emulate the skills of active listening, effective, empathetic questioning, use of data and guided opportunities for growth among their own interactions beyond coaching sessions, with members of the school community. Coaching skills are learned vicariously by school leaders when they are coached successfully (Boon, 2022; Weathers and White, 2015). The coaching relationship is most effective when the school leader views the coach as supportive, non-directive, trustworthy, confidential and non-judgmental (Bush-Mecenas et al., 2020; Netolicky, 2016; Weathers and White, 2015). Most studies saw coaches take a non-supervisory and non-evaluative role, something that Klar et al. (2020) found to be essential in fostering a safe space for school leader learning and reflection. However, Wise and Cavazos (2017) found that a supervisory dimension to the coaching relationship did not significantly affect school leaders’ perceptions of safety and confidentiality.

The positive relationships a leader can forge in the coaching process can be mirrored in successful, trusting relationships with colleagues, ultimately building leadership capacity across the organization (Butler, 2024; Patrick et al., 2021; Ray, 2017). The relationship between the coach and coachee is foundational to effective leadership coaching (Boon, 2022; Lochmiller, 2018), and a strong rapport facilitates the coach in challenging the leader to recognize the potential for better performance (Huggins et al., 2021), modeling relational authenticity for their role in the wider school community (Celoria and Roberson, 2015).

Highly effective professional development facilitates and encourages reflection (Darling-Hammond and McLaughlin, 2011), which, for Mezirow (1990), includes making inferences, discriminations and evaluations as well as solving problems. School leaders and prospective school leaders should be facilitated in engaging in reflection and feedback to raise self-awareness, develop their thinking, encounter questions, recognize assumptions and correct misunderstandings (Boon, 2022; Gray et al., 2022). The facilitation of critical reflection is a central feature of coaching for the professional learning and development of school leaders (Bush-Mecenas et al., 2020; Goff et al., 2014; Simon et al., 2019; Wise and Cavazos, 2017), and coaching is effective in forming habits of self-examination and self-awareness in the early stages of a school leader’s career (Celoria and Roberson, 2015; Simon et al., 2019). The comparison between biased or inaccurate self-ratings and multi-source uncomplimentary feedback examined in the safe space of a coaching setting can challenge assumptions of self-efficacy and motivate growth and re-evaluation in school leaders at all stages of their careers (Goff et al., 2014; Patrick et al., 2021; Ray, 2017).

School leaders who have engaged in coaching place great value on the sense of trust that the coach builds with the coachee (Boon, 2022; Celoria and Roberson, 2015; Lochmiller, 2018; Huggins et al., 2021). Furthermore, when senior school leaders benefit from a trusting professional relationship in their experiences of coaching, they, too, can seek to build sustaining relationships with colleagues, who, in turn, will benefit from mutual trust (Boon, 2022; Van Nieuwerburgh et al., 2020). Such trust, created in a safe space for school leaders in coaching, is instrumental in the critically reflexive creation of a fresh professional identity for novice school leaders (Simon et al., 2019).

Previous studies have shown that coaching is strongly associated with alleviating workplace stress and addressing avoidance behavior as a maladaptive response to stress, although time constrains combined with inadequate “contracting,” (where the coach clearly explains what the coachee can expect from the process before entering into an agreed coaching relationship with a defined timescale and goals), was shown to increase stress on the part of the coachee (Gyllensten and Palmer, 2006). A leader’s awareness of their physiological and emotional reactions is important for self-management and well-being, and coaching can be particularly beneficial in this regard (Boon, 2022; Butler, 2024), reducing burnout among school leaders (Celoria and Roberson, 2015; Igu et al., 2023). Coaching can offer much-needed support to school leaders’ experiences of isolation, self-doubt and uncertainty, assisting them in managing emotions and enhancing their emotional intelligence (Celoria and Roberson, 2015). At the micro-level, school leaders’ daily experiences and stresses can be reflected on in a supporting coaching environment that builds resilience (Boon, 2022; Igu et al., 2023; Lewis and Jones, 2019; Sardar and Galdames, 2018; van Nieuwerburgh et al., 2020). Further research on coaching for the well-being and resilience of school leaders could draw more from the work of positive psychology pioneers Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi and their work on human flourishing (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Strengths-based approaches have been notably successful, and a coaching model that uses Bronfenbrenner’s ecologies to explore the reciprocal interactions (proximal processes) that may cause school leader stress over time would be a worthwhile focus of future research. This approach will also help school leaders in building capacity in others through the development of teams around individual team members’ strengths.

In the context of school leadership, education policy and its implementation, the goals and content of policy and reforms cannot be separated from how they are implemented on the ground, and the school leader is central to their implementation (Pont, 2020). Reform at the school and policy levels requires highly effective school leaders who can interact skilfully within their contexts with clear goals. Leadership coaches can be highly effective in tailoring their practices to meet the specific needs of individual school leaders in the successful navigation of the complexity of school reform by identifying deficiencies in capacity, negotiating political and cultural contextual challenges and communicating systemic state policy reforms in a meaningful way at the school organizational level (Ermeling et al., 2015; Lochmiller, 2018). Coaching can enhance school leaders’ ability to recognize the emotional dimensions of educational reform implementation, both for the school leaders themselves and their colleagues, and can support school leaders in negotiating the challenging situations that arise as they instigate reform at the school organizational level (Lindle et al., 2017).

The goals of coaching engagements revolve around change (e.g., cognitive, behavioral, attitudinal or motivational), and the theoretically grounded science of psychology is key to understanding the processes and understanding of human change as the key element in generating better coaching outcomes (Cidral et al., 2023; Grant, 2011). Coaching models should be embedded within school organizations’ fabric and aligned with the systemic goals of policy-driven reforms (Butler, 2024; Hollweck and Lofthouse, 2021; Lofthouse, 2019). The inevitability of change within organizations necessitates interventions such as leadership coaching (Gray et al., 2022). Leadership coaching focuses on individuals’ leadership practices and their abilities to effectively lead change in their schools, inspiring change at the level of the individual leader—that is, change in what they think, what they believe and what they do to influence their organization (Goff et al., 2014; Huggins et al., 2021; Weathers and White, 2015). School leaders’ strategic thinking and planning can be enhanced through coaching (Oberholzer and Macklin, 2024; van Nieuwerburgh et al., 2020). Coaching enhances school leaders’ reflections on the culture of the schools and their thinking about how it can be improved (Aas and Flückiger, 2016). The coaching of school leaders enhances a school culture of exploration and collaborative, mutually influential relationships in which teacher autonomy is valued in the context of school improvement (Boon, 2022; Hollweck and Lofthouse, 2021).

Grant (2011) argued that coaching should be informed by theories of change and outlined potential areas of study, including positive psychology, narrative approaches to coaching and leadership and management coaching. In developing group coaching practices, Brandmo et al. (2021) used therapeutics from group psychotherapy because they are central to the personal change process (Vinogradow and Yalom, 1989; Yalom and Leszcz, 2005).

Aas and Vavik (2015) plotted the development of coaching in the 1990s, which had its roots in cognitive development–based psychology or executive coaching, to a form of coaching in the 2000s that was broader and more diffuse in scope. Cognitive coaching involves structured, authentic and empathetic dialog and focuses on developing self-directed thought processes to empower school leaders to perform effectively and confidently through planning, reflection and problem-solving conversations (Rogers et al., 2016). The literature distinguishes leadership coaching from instructional coaching, with the former relating to context and individuated performance, as opposed to more generalized instructional coaching, for which a more experienced professional will coach the client using superior subject-specific knowledge on how best to approach given tasks and responsibilities (Lochmiller, 2018; Ray, 2017).

Although group coaching is insufficient in quantity and reach, the literature suggests that it can benefit individual leaders and organizations (Aas and Vavik, 2015). Aas and Flückiger (2016) indicated that the role of the coach requires a unique set of skills, and much needs to be done to create evidence-based coaching preparation programs for the coaching of school leaders.

Much of the literature on coaching for the professional learning and development of school leaders revolves around enhancing school leaders’ capacity to enact effective change (Lochmiller, 2018; Weathers and White, 2015; Wise and Cavazos, 2017). At the exosystem level, the positive influence of coaching for the professional learning and development of school leaders can be seen in most of the findings on leading change and managing staff teams (Lofthouse, 2019; Wise and Cavazos, 2017). In some cases, learner experience and outcomes have seen improvements attributable to coaching, particularly in schools in high-poverty or disadvantaged areas (Klar et al., 2020; Master et al., 2021). Instructional leadership has consistently been shown to be enhanced by coaching (Ceballos and Bixler, 2024; Damore and Rieckhoff, 2021). The reciprocal interactions (proximal processes) that a school leader will experience in providing instructional leadership can be considered at both the exosystem and macrosystem levels, with which the evolution of school policies is concerned. Coaches can help school leaders explore values and goals so that they can lead school policy development confidently and effectively, especially when school policies and reform initiatives converge. Coaching can enable the enhanced communication and collaborative development of strategic goals and the building of teams that work in a manner aligned with the school’s mission (Oberholzer and Macklin, 2024).

Organizational support structures for the coaching of school leaders are provided in a wide variety of means across the literature and jurisdictions/districts, with many falling under the umbrella of educational leadership development, policy implementation, governance and oversight (Butler, 2024; Klar et al., 2020; Master et al., 2021; Murphy, 2023; Schleicher, 2012, 2015). While business terms such as “return on investment,” in consideration of the viability of coaching (Grover and Furnham, 2016), are avoided in research on coaching for the professional learning and development of school leaders, which aims to enhance student learning and experiences (Lochmiller, 2018; Wise and Cavazos, 2017), stakeholders exercise control over investment, with many jurisdictions offering support services, guidelines or frameworks (Boon, 2022; Butler, 2024; Lochmiller, 2014; Master et al., 2021; Wise and Cavazos, 2017). Lochmiller’s study in the United States showed that effective and transformative coaching can take place at a cost amounting to as little as $4.20 per student (2014), while in Master et al.’s study, the cost would be between $5,000 and $15,000 per principal, indicating high value and cost effectiveness, given school leaders’ significant impact on student achievement and experiences (Darling-Hammond et al., 2022).

Another consideration at the policy and organizational levels is school leader sustainability and attrition rates. Attrition rates are an international concern, with principals attributing stress and lack of support as key reasons (Lynch and Worth, 2017) with coaching seen as one of the areas which can address the issue (Lackritz et al., 2019; Simon et al., 2019). While it commonly takes a school leader 5 years to affect a positive change in school performance, just 50% of principals in the US stay in the role for 5 years (Lackritz et al., 2019), and there is an even greater rate of school leader turnover in areas of higher poverty (Sun and Ni, 2016).

There is a recognized need for informed professional expertise in educational coaching, but research focusing on the professional development and backgrounds of coaches who work with (or who should work with) school leaders is scant (Huggins et al., 2021; Lochmiller, 2014; Lofthouse, 2019; Wise and Cavazos, 2017). While one study provided evidence of quality assurance issues around coaching performance, it was an outlier, and it reported positive outcomes in leader identity formation as a result of coaching (Lackritz et al., 2019). Regarding the development of leadership coaches in education, Huggins et al. (2021) stressed that coaches should have enough experience to draw on in their coaching of school leaders. They also stressed that coaches need the support of communities in which coaches can learn in an ongoing way from their peers and that coach training should be facilitated by someone with expertise in both coaching and leadership development. In the literature, developing the coaching skills of experienced acting and former principals to coach senior and middle school leaders has been effective (Boon, 2022; Flückiger et al., 2017; Huggins et al., 2021). When the focus has been explicitly on the instructional dimension of coaching in educational settings, the issue of credibility and how the coach is perceived by school leaders has often been foregrounded (van Nieuwerburgh et al., 2020). Studies have shown inconsistencies in the effectiveness of coaching, attributable to the types of coaching inquiries and coaching behaviors used (Patrick et al., 2021).

Atad and Grant (2021) argued that a qualification in psychology is not necessary for those who would become effective in coaching psychology. School leaders value the skills and expertise of coaches in coaching per se, not necessarily in the subject matter in question at the time of a session (Ray, 2017). Wise and Cavazos (2017) found that the more frequent the sessions, the more effective the principals found the coaching to be, with school leaders who sought a coach being more positive about their experiences of coaching than those who had coaches assigned to them. The coach’s skills are critical in redirecting thinking through skilled open-ended questioning that encourages reflection (Cidral et al., 2023; Goff et al., 2014). Experienced school leaders can be trained to be effective coaches who provide professional support at the community or district level (Huggins et al., 2021; Lofthouse, 2019; Simon et al., 2019). Furthermore, research has suggested that experienced principals can also benefit from a coaching focus at the microsystem level, particularly around areas of emotional intensity, self-awareness, reflection and well-being (Lindle et al., 2017).

It can be argued that coaching can offer an alternative to the performativity and accountability agendas of neoliberalism (Ball, 2016) because, as Fullan and Knight (2011) argued, “Schools need less blatant accountability and testing and more capacity building, team learning, learning across schools, and transparency of results and pedagogical practice—the very things that coaches are good at” (53). Fullan viewed coaching as a highly collaborative practice and saw its potential for coherent systemic change. In this regard, the power interplay between organizations that hire coaches to achieve organizational and policy goals and the agency of individual school leaders requires further attention, as does the power dynamics of coaching which is assigned to principals on the one hand, or sought out by them on the other, and provided by a school district, a state agency, a state educational support service or a professional coaching organization. Coaching may not be for everyone, and its common provision as an option for school leaders among a range of available supports reflects this understanding (Butler, 2024; Wise and Cavazos, 2017). The perceived value of the role of a coach can also be enhanced by a culture that embraces coaching and principals through their experiences of being coached, learns coaching skills vicariously while building a sense of self-efficacy and can consequently help to develop it in others (Butler, 2024; Boon, 2022).

An area of potential may be the development of high-level coaching skills in school leaders through leadership preparation programs and continuing professional learning and development models, whereby school leaders can be highly effective coaching resources (one-to-one, triads or group) for each other and their organizations (Aas and Vavik, 2015; Brandmo et al., 2021; Cosner et al., 2018; Klar et al., 2024; Thomas et al., 2024), drawing from the successes of such peer coaching models in industry (Kotlyar et al., 2015). This may be a more cost-effective approach for governments that view the provision of coaches as prohibitively expensive (Lochmiller, 2014). However, this review shows that it is predominantly externally appointed professional coaches that can provide a formal and powerful learning and development intervention for school leaders. While peer-to-peer coaching may be worthy of further research, it would be essential that the research is appropriately rigorous and that all “peers” would be properly trained and experienced coaches in their own right. In terms of the provision of coaching, blended and virtual coaching models have performed strongly and may offer attractive alternatives to face-to-face coaching due to lower costs and the increased availability of coaches (Ermeling et al., 2015; Irby et al., 2023). School leaders need to be politically astute and able to foster relationships that assist strategic goals and ultimately enhance the learning experiences and outcomes of students (Lindle et al., 2017). Further research is required on the ways in which coaching can enhance school leaders’ deployment of distributed leadership (Spillane et al., 2015), although coaching has been shown to help school leaders build capacity by building on the strengths of team members to foster collaborative decision-making that aligns with broader policy objectives (Oberholzer and Macklin, 2024). Recent studies have shown that leadership coaching has been positively associated with enhancing a culture of distributed leadership in a way that can enhance both teacher and school leader wellbing (Butler, 2024).

Our Ecological Framework for the Coaching of School Leaders uses Bronfenbrenner’s three categories to define temporal considerations in human development: micro-time refers to immediate experiences (i.e., “here and now”), meso-time refers to regularity and consistency and macro-time refers to historical events or cultural shifts. For Bronfenbrenner, time, when considered at the levels of micro-time (an immediate experience), meso-time (consistent, regular or everyday experiences) and macro-time (historical events, societal and cultural shifts, belief systems, personal life-changing events, social mores and norms taken for granted, which may have roots in historical events, political upheaval or global pandemics), can have a significant bearing on human development across the ecological dimensions. In the literature, the focus is on meso-time, whereby time constraints on the school leader’s time impede access to coaching and its effectiveness, resulting in a lack of consistency, regularity and time for in-depth coaching. Challenges for the success of coaching going forward are the difficulty school leaders experience in finding sufficient time for the coaching itself (Boon, 2022; Butler, 2024; Irby et al., 2023; Lindle, 2016) and the concern that inadequate time investment and the lack of sustained, regular in-depth coaching conversations can lead to ineffective quick-fix or directive coaching, which fails to enhance self-awareness and reflection and does not lead to the lasting changes in behaviors and performance that the school leader may require (Ray, 2017). Among novice school leaders who are overwhelmed with the workload and responsibility of the role, coaching can be seen as yet another demand on their time, but if the support is sustained and of appropriate quality, it is ultimately perceived by leaders as being highly beneficial (Lindle et al., 2017; Sardar and Galdames, 2018). Temporal flexibility and the availability of extended timelines of coaching benefit school leaders as a broader range, and a diversity of issues is likely to be encountered by school leaders, which can form the basis for coaching discussions (Ermeling et al., 2015).

School leaders’ daily and immediate experiences in the “here and now”—can provide challenges that, over a prolonged period, often impact their resilience (Boon, 2022; Igu et al., 2023; Lewis and Jones, 2019; Sardar and Galdames, 2018; van Nieuwerburgh et al., 2020), causing burnout and high attrition rates (Igu et al., 2023; Lackritz et al., 2019). Coaching may alleviate pressures across various levels of immediacy, be it time-bound (with a defined timeframe for completion of the process), time-sensitive (coaching to address a specific issue or issues with time constraints) or timely (coaching engaged with at appropriate junctures for maximum professional effectiveness) and when provided appropriately and consistently (and not just reactively) can enhance resilience and self-efficacy, reducing the likelihood of burnout (Brandmo et al., 2021; Igu et al., 2023; Ray, 2017). Early retirement or leave due to stress or burnout are life-changing events. Here, the impact of sustained regular challenges at the micro-time level, without adequate coaching interventions at the meso-time level, leads to highly negative outcomes at the macro-time level for school leaders and their schools.

Exploring these temporal features in systematic ways could provide rich opportunities for reflection and growth on the part of school leaders and enhance the efficacy of coaching school leaders. Due to the aforementioned time and financial constraints, coaching is often employed to help leaders deal with immediate, pressing issues relating to performance or a particular goal. This conception of coaching is limiting; it denies the reality of the environmental factors Bronfenbrenner outlined that synergistically inform a school leader’s performance. Coaching frameworks should provide scope for adequate exploration and discovery at the macro-time level—of impactful and relevant experiences as well as societal and cultural shifts/events throughout school leaders’ lives that may have informed their development both during and before their tenure as school leaders.