Brokers and Boundary Crossers in an Urban School District: Understanding Central-Office Coaches as Instructional Leaders

Abstract

This article highlights the boundary crossing and brokering work of two instructional coaches in one Washington State urban district. A distributed leadership frame helps foreground how the coaches, based in the central office, exercised instructional leadership across the district. This inquiry contributes to emerging pictures of the kinds of roles that central-office leaders—in this case, those of instructional coaching—play in prompting and supporting systemwide instructional improvement. Important implications for systemwide reform efforts emerged, including issues about strategic communication opportunities afforded by boundary crossers in a system, as well as considerations about preparing and supporting those who assume brokering and boundary-crossing roles in a multilevel system.