Group coaching: a new way of constructing leadership identity?

Abstract

This paper focuses on group coaching, one of the newer school leadership development approaches to recently emerge. Using a group-coaching methodology developed at the University of Oslo, we deconstruct the concept of leadership identity as it is reported in texts from students in the National Principal Programme. We suggest that leaders develop greater confidence in their leadership role through personal and contextual feedback from other leaders. We argue that bringing existing and aspiring school principals together in a target-oriented group-coaching process may have profound positive effect on leaders' context-based identity development.

Keywords:

• leadership
• group coaching
• leadership identity

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the comments on the drafts of this paper provided by Professor Helen Gunther, University of Manchester, England, the coaching team at the University of Oslo, Norway and the research group CLEG (Curriculum Studies, Leadership and Educational Governance), from the University of Oslo, Norway.

Notes on contributors

Associate Professor Marit Aas is the leader of the National Principal Programme at the University of Oslo. She is also working on the Master Programme of Educational Leadership at the Department of Teacher Education and School Research. Aas is member of two research groups at the University of Oslo: The Curriculum Studies, Leadership and Educational Governance (CLEG) and Teacher Professionalism and Educational Change: Practices, Purposes, Policies (TEPEC). She is part of two international research projects: International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP) and Professional Learning through Reflection promoted by Feedback and Coaching (PROFLEC). From 2009 she has been responsible for developing a coaching team and group coaching methodology for students on the National Principal Programme. She is also the convenor for Network 6: Educational Leadership at Nordic Educational Research Association (NERA).

University lecturer Mette Vavik has been a facilitator for the National Principal Programme at the University of Oslo, and she is a member of the coaching team at the University of Oslo.

Notes

1. http://www.optimas.no/jti_jung.htm.