Campus Location
Dallas Campus (Online)
Date of Award
7-2026
ORCID
https://orcid.org/0009-0003-1516-1544
Document Type
Dissertation
Department
Organizational Leadership
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Committee Chair or Primary Advisor
Rick Zomer
Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor
Jamie Goff
Third Committee Member or Committee Reader
Frank Rojas
Abstract
This qualitative phenomenological study examined how professional dispositions were defined, experienced, and assessed in coaching education within the rapidly expanding field of professional coaching. The problem addressed was the lack of a clear understanding of professional dispositions in coaching and the absence of a systematic dispositional assessment comparable to that in counselor education. The researcher’s purpose was to explore how credentialed professional-level coaches defined and identified professional dispositions for effective coaching engagements and how these dispositions aligned with constructs in other helping professions. The researcher collected data through semistructured videoconference interviews. Purposeful and snowball sampling yielded 16 U.S.-based coaches who also served as coach educators and met predetermined experience criteria. Findings revealed three nested themes: the coach as being, emphasizing identity and embodied presence; the emotional architecture of coaching, highlighting self-regulation as a professional imperative; and guarding the gate, describing ethics, boundaries, and developmental assessment structures. Participants characterized professional dispositions as developmental, identity-level capacities closely linked to emotional intelligence domains of self-awareness and self-management. Key conclusions were that coaching education programs should intentionally cultivate and formatively assess dispositions over time and adapt structured dispositional assessment frameworks from counselor education to strengthen professionalization, ethical integrity, and client protection.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Thompson, Michelle Renee, "Professional Dispositions in Coaching Education: ICF-Credentialed Coaches’ Perspectives on Development and Assessment" (2026). Digital Commons @ ACU, Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1037.
https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/etd/1037
Included in
Counselor Education Commons, Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons, Other Education Commons, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Commons