ABSTRACT The role of the high school principal has evolved significantly over the past few decades, becoming increasingly complex and requiring an orientation towards fostering both student and adult learning. Using learning-oriented leadership model, this qualitative study examined how six urban high school principals conceptualised and implemented adult learning practices. Despite competing demands, we find these principals viewed their role as critical in fostering conditions for teacher learning, including creating collaborative environments and positioned themselves and others as continuous learners. Simultaneously, they faced challenges in facilitating teacher ownership of professional learning. The study suggests that principals can build capacity for adult learning by first implementing core practices aligned with the learning-oriented model and then, gradually, expand their approach towards shifting other cultural norms. Our findings reinforce the need for district leaders, policymakers, and researchers to work together to ensure principals are supported and that the shift towards learning-centred leadership is integrated into broader school improvement strategies. Overall, this study underscores the pivotal role of principals in promoting adult learning and outlines best practices for leading such initiatives in today’s schools.

Schools are critical settings for supporting student mental health; research is needed to identify key levers for addressing the impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) on students' relationships. Drawing on survey data from rural high school students (N = 2902), we examine the associations between ACEs scores and multiple developmental relationships (parenting adults, teachers, peers, neighbors, program leaders). School-level engagement and support, and teacher relationships were also examined as potential protective factors. Higher ACEs scores were associated with weaker developmental relationships across all groups. However, positive relationships with teachers and supportive school engagement and support slightly moderated the negative influence of ACEs on youths' relationships with parenting adults. District and school leaders should support educators in building strong relationships with students by protecting their capacity, providing trauma-informed professional development, and ensuring access to mental health services for students and staff. Building strong relationships with teachers and fostering a supportive and engaging school environment can be key strategies for buffering the risks associated with adversity and ultimately supporting young people's development of strong, healthy relationships.

The World Health Organization proposed a clinical care bundle as a first response for postpartum haemorrhage (PPH), a leading cause of maternal deaths. A large trial was conducted to evaluate its effectiveness, with Tanzania among the participating countries. We explored the experiences of healthcare workers during the early implementation of this bundle within the broader trial. An exploratory qualitative study was conducted to understand the early implementation experiences of the PPH bundle. We held six focus group discussions (FGDs) with healthcare workers, clinical leads designated as champions, and research nurses from all six facilities that implemented the intervention in Tanzania. A d-eductive qualitative thematic analysis was performed using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research to structure our findings. We reported on four domains: the intervention and its implementation, individual attributes, and the inner and outer contexts. Healthcare workers reported positive experiences during implementation of the PPH first-response bundle. The innovation included several known components: calibrated drape for early detection, on-site training, facility audits, champions and the PPH care bundle comprising uterine massage, oxytocics, tranexamic acid and intravenous fluids. Individual participants appreciated the multi-component strategies that addressed chronic issues, including the lack of objective measurement of blood loss, inadequate skills, and supply shortages. Additionally, local clinical leads who served as champions increased local ownership and accountability. Facility-level challenges included staff rotation and a lack of clear communication, particularly when managing at-risk women. The availability of external support for training, supplies, and drugs required to administer the bundle, along with strong support from the districts and regional health management teams, enhanced the adoption and implementation process. The components of the bundle and the implementation strategies were well received and perceived as reducing the risk of severe postpartum haemorrhage and potentially saving lives. The perceived successes were contributed by the interconnectedness of the different strategies used. Facilities and countries aiming to scale need to harness these strategies that target the health system. In addition, there is a need to strengthen local facility audits, document and address chronic challenges affecting staff dynamics and supplies. District, regional and national leadership in adopting and integrating new clinical practices are key.

Purpose This study examines pathways individuals follow from paraeducator to teacher, focusing on Paraeducators of Color and Indigenous Paraeducators (PCIP). The purpose was to generate data-driven evidence to support university and district leaders in designing sustainable, equity-centered strategies to recruit, prepare and retain a more diverse teaching workforce amid ongoing shortages and turnover. Design/methodology/approach Using longitudinal administrative data from three large urban school districts between 2007 and 2022, we conducted descriptive and regression analyses to identify demographic, educational and contextual characteristics associated with PCIP movement into teaching positions. Findings PCIP were more ethnoracially diverse than the teacher workforce, one in six held a bachelor’s degree and nearly one-fifth had an existing teacher certification. Certification attainment strongly predicted promotion into teaching roles. These findings highlight the untapped potential of paraeducators as a key source of ethnoracially diverse teachers and provide a template for creating data informed evidence to support district–university partnerships. Practical implications Findings provide actionable insights for university and district leaders to design inclusive certification supports, mentorship systems and recruitment pipelines for paraeducators. The results also inform policymakers seeking to sustain and fund partnership-driven workforce diversification initiatives. Originality/value This study contributes to the limited empirical research on paraeducator-to-teacher pathways and adds findings relevant to districts in urban geographic contexts facing staffing shortages. Results demonstrate how reciprocal collaborations between higher education and K–12 districts have potential to inform local hiring and preparation pathways.

Purpose: Care is of concern for educators, but little is known about the way that district-level leaders conceptualize and enact care within a district central office. This study explores the research question: How do district leaders conceptualize and strive to enact care? Design and Evidence: We draw on qualitative interviews with district central office leaders and employ a grounded theory approach to analyze our data and elucidate themes. Findings: District leaders described care as (a) complex and multifarious; (b) relational; (c) requiring partnership, political moves, and connections; (d) embodied; and (e) needs-driven and responsive. Implications: Central office leaders have varying conceptions of what constitutes care. Few districts had defined the boundaries of district care. This implies that leaders would be well served to spend resources on defining and aligning policy with care as it connects to their own school communities. We found that district leaders conceptualize care as being needs-driven and responsive to individual needs within the school community, yet there is a disconnect between our study and equity-oriented leadership practices. An implication is to consider how equity initiatives can be a key part of caring district leadership. Another persistent theme was the outsized role that external agencies and partnerships play in building the architecture of care. Much more so than with instructional reforms, how and to what extent political capital is needed to navigate and nurture this constellation of care is unknown. A fruitful area for future research might be at the nexus of community and district care.

Purpose : The focus of this study was to understand how district-level, central office administrators lead inclusive districts. Research Methods: This study is grounded in a conceptual framework informed by the traditions and knowledge of leadership for inclusion of students with disabilities, social justice, and disability studies in education. This research project spanned three years, involving frequent research meetings, interviews, sharing of district documents, member check meetings, email debriefing of interviews and transcripts, detailed field logs, and data collection memos. This included in-depth interviewing as a data collection method, that was used for the purpose of understanding the ways in which special education administrators make sense of their leadership role. Findings : We found two main avenues for these district administrators’ enactment of inclusive leadership: 1) engaging in student-level advocacy and 2) engaging in systems-level advocacy. These leaders operated at both the student-level, addressing student-specific issues, and maintained a broader lens and focus on systems (school, district, and community). Findings reveal the leadership scope, strategy, and actions leaders took, leading to a proposed framework of inclusive, socially-just, disability-centered district leadership. Implications : Recommendations are made for district leadership, leadership preparation, and future research.

Across the United States, equity-oriented STEM initiatives are frequently launched through short-term grants, yet few persist once external funding ends, particularly in economically marginalized communities where institutional capacity is constrained. This longitudinal qualitative study investigates how an out-of-school-time (OST) robotics initiative developed the relational and organizational capacity to transition from a time-limited grant project into a functioning STEM ecosystem that has persisted for a decade. Drawing upon eight years of focus groups and field notes analyzed through integrated deductive and inductive approaches, the study traces how STEM ecosystem tenets were enacted, adapted, and reinforced as partners navigated resource constraints. Findings identify four mutually reinforcing mechanisms that stabilized the ecosystem beyond the grant period: relational infrastructure coordinating work across students, educators, families, university partners, and district leaders; community recognition and collective pride conferring legitimacy and mobilizing local support; parental validation and logistical advocacy; and youth identity development and near-peer leadership renewing commitment and circulating expertise. Together, these mechanisms converted initial grant-funded inputs into durable capacity by reducing coordination costs, strengthening shared responsibility, and embedding STEM participation within community meaning-making. The study contributes to STEM ecosystem research by advancing a theory-building, process-oriented explanation of how equity-focused initiatives achieve durability.

ABSTRACT In Chile, School Improvement Plans (SIPs) are mandated by policy. However, research has shown that these plans are often perceived as bureaucratic requirements rather than as meaningful tools for fostering organizational learning. This study explores a complementary approach; short-cycle improvement planning, implemented by 20 schools participating in a two-year, improvement-oriented program (2023–2024). Through qualitative analysis, we examine how school and district leaders compare traditional yearlong approaches to SIPs with short-cycle planning, and how their improvement mindsets evolve in the process. The findings suggest that short-cycle planning fosters greater agility, collaboration, and more authentic engagement with improvement goals; however, not all schools demonstrated deep shifts in improvement mindset. This study makes both practical and theoretical contributions by highlighting the difficulty of changing the improvement mindset at the moment of planning.

Although ample scholarship has examined the coherence of district-level instructional systems, the literature pays limited attention to crafting coherence around district visions for equitable instruction. In this multiple case study, we use interviews, documents, and observations to examine four districts’ efforts to craft coherence around a shared vision for equitable mathematics. We found that in only one district did district and school leaders describe a shared equity-focused vision, bolstered by consistent messaging. Across all districts, the critical elements of equitable mathematics (e.g., identity and power) received substantially less attention in instructional visions and supports than dominant elements (e.g., access to ambitious mathematics and achievement). We document the promises and pitfalls of crafting coherence around a shared vision for equitable instruction.

Background: No single course has generated as much contentious policy debate as Algebra I. It serves as a critical gatekeeper to college and career readiness, often creating obstacles for historically marginalized students. As school districts redesign mathematics policies to align with Common Core State Standards (CCSS-M), local leaders must navigate complex instructional decisions. Leaders in one urban district initiated a multiyear effort to redesign its secondary mathematics pathways and access to algebra in response to changing standards. Purpose: This study examines how district leaders socially constructed the needs of various educational constituencies during internal decision-making and how these constructions influence the design of influential mathematics policy. This paper contributes to the field of education research by highlighting the connection between local policy and the deliberative processes through which district leaders shape their collective efforts. Drawing on social construction theory, it underscores how the way constituent groups are defined can influence policy design in education. Given that much educational decision-making occurs outside the public’s view, this work draws attention to a key influence on the process and outcome of important policy design. Research Design: We conducted a longitudinal qualitative case study over 2.5 years in the Cypress School District, a racially and socioeconomically diverse urban district serving more than 50,000 students. Our data corpus included 14 observed task force meetings (totaling 372 hours of observation), 101 interviews with 49 central office staff, and 1,826 documents, including 22 drafts of the policy under development. We identified 899 references to stakeholder groups and used a combination of inductive and deductive coding to analyze how district leaders rhetorically constructed these groups as targets of design, voice, and persuasion. We traced how these constructions evolved alongside the drafting of policy documents, allowing us to map discourse to specific decision points and revisions in the policy. By triangulating observational data, interviews, and policy artifacts, we were able to capture how internal deliberations shaped both the process and substance of instructional policymaking. Conclusions: District leaders, individually and collectively, made sense of the needs and interests of diverse constituent groups, including students, parents, teachers, school leaders, other district leaders, and school board members. They positioned these groups as (1) targets for their design efforts, (2) salient perspectives to give “voice” to within meetings, and (3) potential audiences to be informed or persuaded. Policymakers weighed the perceived needs of Black and Latinx families who had been ill-served by past policies; teachers, school leaders, and district leaders who were constructed as leading implementers in different policy solutions; affluent parents who would argue for access to advanced coursework for “mathematically gifted” children; and members of the elected school board who would need to be convinced to vote for the final policy. Weighing the needs of these different constituent groups formed the basis for the district’s eventual approval of the course pathways policy. We argue that constituent group construction is a key influence on the process and outcome of important policy design in local school districts.

This research investigated how K-12 school and district leaders in Georgia enacted leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on interviews with 11 educational leaders (10 of whom identified as African American), this study explored how proximity to policy and people shaped leaders’ actions and understandings of crisis leadership. Findings reveal that while all participants experienced the pandemic as an acute and ongoing emergency, their leadership diverged sharply by role. District leaders focused on maintaining system level legitimacy, policy coherence, and infrastructure stability, while school leaders engaged in the daily emotional and cultural labor of holding communities together through care and connection. Across contexts, crisis leadership emerged as a multifaceted practice requiring decisive action and deliberate attention to personal well-being. For Black leaders, the work was further shaped by the racialized dynamics of leading through dual pandemics. These findings position crisis leadership as an enduring practice shaped by leaders’ proximity to policy decisions and the people they serve as well as by the emotional relationships that define their work.

To address research-practice gaps, scholars are investigating the conditions that strengthen and constrain the use of research evidence. Yet these studies primarily focus on evidence that adult researchers have generated. In Youth-Led Participatory Action Research (YPAR), youth learn to conduct systematic research to improve their schools and communities. However, youth researchers face challenges similar to those experienced by adult researchers around how their findings are disseminated and used. This article illustrates active efforts of a research-practice partnership between San Francisco Unified School District and UC Berkeley to scale the impact and use of YPAR evidence. We detail the development and testing of a districtwide dashboard as a method for disseminating YPAR evidence to K-12 students and district leaders. We describe the origins and motivation for the dashboard concept, the development process, early impact and benefits, implementation challenges, and future directions. Through the development and testing of the dashboard, ethical and political implications emerged. We describe tensions related to dashboard content, privacy and confidentiality, use, and impact. The dashboard is one method designed to strengthen the use and impact of youth-generated evidence from YPAR. Implementation challenges that arose during the development phase required us to strategise about responsibly and effectively disseminating YPAR evidence. As of December 2025, we have moved into a beta testing phase for the dashboard. A forthcoming public launch will bring new insights to district leaders in San Francisco, with potential replication across the state and beyond.

Culturally responsive practices (CRPs) (i.e., practices that affirm students' cultural backgrounds) can reduce educational inequities, but these practices have yet to become normative within U.S. education. A national study of K-12 teachers conducted in late 2023 found that teachers' use of CRPs depended not only on their individual moral frameworks regarding diversity (i.e., endorsement of multiculturalism and colorblindness) but also on their communities' and administrators' support for efforts to increase equitable educational outcomes among students (i.e., equity work). Since 2023, federal guidance has shifted, and educational equity work is now discouraged. We conducted a second national survey of K-12 teachers (N = 980) in early 2025 to examine whether contextual influences on teachers' decisions regarding CRP use have also shifted in light of changes to federal guidance. While the 2023 study found that teachers with weaker multiculturalism beliefs were more likely to use CRPs when their administrators supported equity work, findings from the 2025 study revealed that administrator support only predicted greater CRP use when these teachers worked in politically liberal (but not conservative) communities. The shift suggests that recent federal policy changes have weakened the influence of district and school leadership on teachers' decisions to use CRPs, particularly among teachers who are not individually inclined to use these practices. This study offers timely insights into teachers' use of CRPs after new federal guidance on educational equity efforts and reaffirms that teachers' practices are not solely shaped by their personal beliefs, but are instead responsive to the broader contexts in which they work.

Following a brief recap of the life of the entomologist Erich Schmidt (1890–1969), this paper examines his short tenure at Alexander Koenig’s Natural History Museum in Bonn. Using archival records, the reasons for his premature dismissal are discussed, as well as his role during National Socialism and the resulting consequences for the establishment of the Alexander Koenig Foundation (AKS). Explosive letters from the Bonn City Archives are reproduced to demonstrate that high-ranking Nazi officials, including Bonn’s mayor Ludwig Rickert, NSDAP district leader Cuno Eichler, and Karl Chudoba, the rector of the university at the time, attempted to boycott the foundation’s establishment after the deaths of Alexander and Margarethe Koenig. Berthold Korf, the former senior taxidermist at the museum and a committed Nazi who had likewise been dismissed without notice by Alexander Koenig and later rose to become Bonn’s police chief, also played an important role in this matter. In their will, the Koenigs had designated the AKS as the sole heir to their remaining assets. These consisted primarily of the expected proceeds from the sale of their Blücherhof estate in Mecklenburg, near Waren (Müritz), valued at 3–4 million Reichsmarks. However, the sale did not proceed due to the war. Ultimately, Blücherhof was expropriated during the Second World War, and the AKS was not established until 1946, following the collapse of the Nazi regime. In accordance with the charitable intentions of its founders, the AKS continues to support the Museum Koenig in its diverse scientific endeavours to this day.

Purpose: Students benefit from racially diverse educators, but racial diversity in student composition within U.S. schools has not translated into equal levels of principal diversity, as the profession remains overwhelmingly White. Superintendents play a critical role as district leaders in creating a more racially diverse teacher and principal pipeline. Research Approach: We use district-, school-, and year-fixed-effect models on a 16-year panel of Texas’ K-12 principals’ and superintendents’ data to determine whether superintendent race/ethnicity relates to the race/ethnicity of principals employed in the district. Findings: Black superintendents are linked to increased hiring of Black principals, especially among new hires; this pattern grows over consecutive years. Latinx superintendents show weaker, curvilinear relationships, with significant increases in Latinx principals only after long tenures. Event studies confirm that the appointment of Black or Latinx superintendents can influence principal diversity, though pre-trends complicate Latinx patterns. Implications: These findings suggest that increasing the racial diversity of superintendents can have a positive impact on principal diversity. The recruitment, retention, and support of Black and Latinx superintendents can serve as a strategy for addressing the lack of racial diversity in school leadership. Additional research is needed to understand better the factors that influence the hiring and retention of superintendents and principals of Color across a variety of district types.

Purpose This qualitative research study examines the experiences of aspiring leaders who completed a school-to-university 15-month field-based residency, proceeded through the principal pipeline, successfully secured an assistant principal position, and grew into a campus principal or district leader. Design/methodology/approach The authors use an exploratory narrative qualitative design to investigate the impact of principal mentoring from a leadership exchange lens years after program completion. The following research question guided this study using the experiences of four principal residency program graduates: What mentoring and leadership exchanges do aspiring leaders identify as most influential during a 15-month residency? A deductive analysis approach informed by leader–member exchange (LMX) theory framed the study’s findings. Findings The study’s findings categorized the high-quality exchanges between the mentor principal and the aspiring leader in four areas: (1) empowerment through guided autonomy, (2) open dialogue and feedback, (3) modeled leadership practices, and (4) systems thinking and strategic leadership. The low-quality exchanges involved (5) outsourcing mentoring activities to other individuals and (6) a lack of instructional leadership. Originality/value The study’s findings contribute to the literature in multiple ways. First, this exploratory study investigates the post-program impact of a principal preparation program and their mentoring experiences several years after aspiring leaders completed their field-based leadership residency in their home district. Secondly, the findings operationalize an effective mentor principal, the lynchpin of all preparation programs, within a LMX framework. Lastly, the practices described from field-based residency experiences are important feedback on program structures and expectations for future aspiring leaders.

Translation technology has become ubiquitous in multilingual classrooms without evidence-based implementation guidance. This mixed-methods study examined K-12 teachers’ translation practices (n = 88 survey; n = 3 district leader interviews), comparing ESL specialists and content teachers to synthesize principles for effective use. Translation use was widespread (81.8%) despite minimal guidance (88.6% lack policies). Common methods included translation applications (89.6%), peer translation (72.2%), and native language texts. ESL specialists reported higher confidence (M = 3.69 vs. 3.18, d = 0.61) and perceived effectiveness (M = 3.76 vs. 3.29, d = 0.56) than content teachers—differences probably attributable to second language acquisition training. Thematic analysis of leader interviews, validated through Structural Topic Modeling, revealed professional development gaps as the strongest convergence (75% alignment). A critical divergence emerged: content teachers rated translation moderately effective, while leaders observed counterproductive practices (11.6% of segments), creating dependency rather than supporting English development. Leaders distinguished productive translation (temporary scaffolding toward English independence) from problematic practices (wholesale content translation). Findings grounded in Contrastive Analysis and Common Underlying Proficiency theory yielded seven evidence-based principles addressing temporary scaffolding, L1 literacy verification, communication versus content contexts, and sustained professional development. The scaffold-versus-crutch framework contributes conceptual clarity for distinguishing productive from counterproductive translation in technology-enhanced multilingual education.

Background: The design of educational policy is typically dominated by those in positions of power, such as elected officials, education departments, school districts, and administrators. However, ordinary people, such as students, parents, and community members, who are often perceived as passive recipients of policy, do have rights to educational policy design. It is essential to address cultures of exclusion as a foundation for a transformative co-design process that honors and leverages the knowledge, experience, and expertise of ordinary people who are typically sidelined and silenced in educational policy design. Purpose: This paper explores how a diverse group of stakeholders, including school and district administrators, teachers, students, parents, and community members, form their collective transformative agency—their ability to challenge and break away from traditional rules and norms about expertise in education policy. Specifically, the study looks at how these stakeholders address cultures of exclusion that have historically marginalized certain groups in the co-design process. Through the use of the Learning Lab methodology, this paper examines how Lab members formed a collective transformative agency to co-design a district-level policy. This process allowed them to create an inclusive, student-centered protocol that challenges existing power dynamics and fosters a more equitable approach to policy co-design. Research Design: This qualitative study was conducted in the Aleph School District (ASD) in the U.S. during the 2022–23 academic year. The Learning Lab intervention involved 16 members. After the intervention, we conducted individual interviews with Lab members, and we analyzed the emergence of their collective transformative agency. We analyzed data from Lab meetings and interview recordings, along with ethnographic memos, to explore how transformative agency manifested within the Learning Lab. Conclusions: Collective transformative agency is critical for achieving a truly inclusive co-design of educational policy that moves beyond incremental and tokenistic efforts toward inclusion. In ASD, transformative agency gradually fostered the development of a new, inclusive culture within the district that extended beyond the Learning Lab. District leadership began to seek out the valuable knowledge, expertise, and power that students and families bring to the district decision-making processes. As a result, students’ perspectives and the voices of parents and the community are now seen as legitimate contributors and knowledge creators in educational policy development at the district.

This study aimed to assess and inform interventions that reduce early pregnancies and improve access to education and training for adolescent girls (ages 10–19) in Kibaha District, Tanzania. Early pregnancies remain a significant barrier to the education and empowerment of adolescent girls in Kibaha District, Tanzania. This research seeks to improve educational and training opportunities for girls by addressing the root causes of early pregnancy, such as lack of reproductive health education, poverty, gender inequality, and limited access to youth-friendly services. Through a holistic, community-based approach, the initiative focuses on increasing awareness among adolescents, parents, teachers, and community leaders about the importance of delaying pregnancy to enable girls to complete their education and acquire life and vocational skills. A phased, mixed-methods approach was used, including surveys, focus group discussions, key informant interviews, and secondary data review. The study revealed that early pregnancies, school dropouts, and socio-cultural barriers significantly affect girls' access to education and vocational opportunities. Findings showed that proposed interventions are highly relevant and aligned with national priorities and SDMI’s mission. They also cohere well with efforts by local and international actors, though gaps remain in financing and geographic coverage. Efficiency can be improved by strengthening human resources and adapting specific activities, while external factors like the 2024–2025 election period may pose challenges. Effectiveness is promising in areas like vocational skilling and awareness raising, but deep-rooted cultural and legal enablers of early pregnancy may limit broader impact. The interventions are sustainable at the micro-level and well integrated with existing structures, though legal, political, and cultural risks exist. Expected outcomes include reduced rates of early pregnancy, increased school retention and completion among girls, improved knowledge of SRH rights, and greater participation of girls in vocational training programs. Ultimately, the project aims to create a supportive environment where adolescent girls can thrive, make informed choices, and contribute meaningfully to their families and communities. The research combines school-based sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education, peer mentoring, counselling services, and economic empowerment programs. It also engages boys and men as allies in transforming harmful social norms and behaviours. Collaboration with local schools, health facilities, and government departments ensures the sustainability and scalability of the interventions. Key recommendations include omitting the direct provision of contraceptives by SDMI; reinforcing vocational training through VETA; integrating life skills and counselling; investing in skilled personnel; and strengthening collaboration with CSOs and district education leadership. The integration of digital tools for SRHR awareness and anonymous counselling is also advised to enhance outreach and sustainability.

Purpose In this study, we examined the experiences of 10 new coaches who participated in the leadership coaching community (LCC), a professional community designed to integrate coaching education and improvement science. Improvement coaching, an approach that blends leadership coaching with improvement science, aims to foster adaptive problem-solving and drive systemic change in schools. Yet preparing new improvement coaches presents a persistent challenge: the knowing–doing gap. Without targeted coaching education that connects theory to practice, emerging coaches can struggle to apply strategies effectively. Through formal instruction and school-based application, the LCC helped develop improvement coaches who were both reflective leaders and skilled practitioners equipped to guide others to lead sustained change in schools. Design/Methodology/Approach In this qualitative study, we analyzed semi-structured interviews conducted over two summers to capture the experiences of coaches who developed coaching competencies, applied learning and navigated challenges in becoming improvement coaches. Our conceptual framework and data analysis aligned affective, cognitive and behavioral learning theories as key mechanisms for bridging the knowing–doing gap. Findings Combining leadership coaching with improvement science, the program equipped new coaches with practical tools and the confidence to guide school leaders in identifying problems of practice and leading school improvement. Structured coaching education helped new improvement coaches, who were experienced school and district leaders, coach less experienced school leaders in rural contexts. The structured initiative aided them in moving from understanding coaching concepts to applying them in practice. Coaches moved beyond mere conceptual understanding of coaching and improvement science to become confident, skillful practitioners, effectively bridging the knowing–doing gap. Research limitations/implications This study highlights the value of coaching education that engages adult learning theory to help new coaches bridge the knowing–doing gap. Structured programs like the LCC, which combine formal instruction, deliberate practice and peer reflection, support the transition from directive to facilitative coaching. Integrating improvement science equips coaches with tools to lead change and address problems of practice. The study also advances the emerging concept of improvement coaching and points to the need for continued research on how best to prepare reflective, adaptive leaders through coaching education. Practical implications These findings offer insights for designing coaching education programs that produce effective improvement coaches who strengthen school leadership and support sustained school change. Originality/Value We integrate leadership coaching with improvement science to foster adaptive problem-solving and systemic change within schools. New improvement coaches often struggle to translate theory into practice, resulting in a knowing–doing gap that undermines their effectiveness. By addressing this gap through improvement coaching education, we can foster meaningful change in schools while enhancing coaches’ sense of efficacy. Despite its importance, improvement coaching education remains a relatively rare and under-researched element within the broader field of leadership coaching in schools.