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Purpose: The purpose of this article is to examine how the leadership coaching capacities of experienced school leaders can be developed to support less-experienced school leaders to lead continuous improvement efforts. In this article, we report the findings of a 2-year study of experienced school leaders who developed their leadership coaching knowledge, skills, and dispositions to enhance the capacities of less-experienced school leaders in a research–practice partnership called the Leadership Learning Community. Research Methods: We drew on qualitative research methodology to answer the study’s research question. To collect our data, we utilized participant observations of 12 professional development days and 70 job-embedded coaching sessions over a 2-year period, yearly semistructured interviews with the eight leadership coach participants, and other artifacts related to the Leadership Learning Community. We analyzed our data using multiple rounds of coding to arrive at the themes. Findings: The findings highlight the possibilities of developing leadership coaching capacity through a combination of community-based structured and facilitated learning opportunities and experiential learning. The findings also add to the limited research regarding leadership coaching as a strategy for enhancing school leadership development. Conclusion and Implications: The results of the study provide assistance to national and state administrator organizations, educational service districts, and school district administrators endeavoring to meet the learning needs of school leaders through leadership coaching. Further research should be conducted to understand how the leadership coaching capacities of leadership supervisors and developers can be facilitated.

In this article, we report findings from two cases of rural, high-needs elementary schools in the Southeastern United States that successfully improved learning outcomes for their students. As illustrated by our findings, a combination of effective teacher professional development, focused student learning initiatives, and enhanced community and family involvement contributed to the removal of the schools from priority and below average designations. In addition to illustrating the leadership practices that positively influenced improvement efforts in these two schools, and expanding the nascent body of scholarship on context-responsive leadership, our findings serve as a starting point for a larger project centered on the nexus of school leader agency in increasingly diverse cultural contexts.

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PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine how a school leadership team in a rural, high-poverty elementary school learned to lead continuous school improvement in a research–practice partnership.Design/methodology/approachThis case study draws on qualitative research methods, improvement science and Deming's notion of a system of profound knowledge to identify how members of the school leadership team understood and approached their school improvement work differently as a result of engaging in continuous improvement processes in a research–practice partnership.FindingsThe findings illustrate how engaging in continuous improvement processes in the research–practice partnership enhanced the leadership team members' capacities to prioritize and solve problems, incorporate multiple and diverse perspectives in problem-solving efforts and establish a culture of increased risk-taking and ownership of teaching and learning outcomes. In sum, the members of the leadership team became the drivers of their own change processes.Originality/valueThe findings provide insight into how leaders in rural, high-poverty schools can build capacity within their schools to meet the demand for increased student achievement by leading collaborative, continuous improvement processes grounded in improvement science in research–practice partnerships.