Ensuring Coaching Impacts Teaching and Learning

Last month was the first AAICIS virtual conference. Unfortunately I was travelling to a school visit the whole day, but thankfully I have got the session recordings, and I'm going to reflect on these over the coming days, starting with the first keynote by Joellen Killion.

My big take away is that the most important thing is for coaching to impact learning - and impact means that it needs to change behaviour and thinking.

Joellen shared 5 essential elements for this impact and she asked us to consider which is the most present in our current situation and which one most needs "tuning up":

• Clear purpose
• Equitable access
• Sustained duration
• Effective measurement
• Continuous improvement

Purpose - according to Joellen this is the most important element of a coaching process.  When asked about their purpose, many coaches say their job is to support teachers - but Joellen said that in fact the most important element is to ensure that every student has an equitable and fair opportunity to succeed and to achieve their potential.  She also pointed out that coaching needs to align with strategic parameters in the school, so through coaching each teacher aligns with the strategic priorities in the school, and all are working towards the same end. Every coaching conversation and every co-teaching or classroom visit should contribute to enhancing the school’s priorities.

Equitable access - We need to consider which teachers the coaches interact with.  In fact she tells us that each staff member should have an appropriate amount of coaching - from the head of school to the support staff. School leaders need to advocate for and engage in coaching. Joellen recommends setting a schedule for coaching so there are opportunities for every teacher to work with a coach.

Sustained duration - some coaches do “drop in” coaching - a one-and-done approach - but this is insufficient to change thinking and behaviour. Change takes times - so coaching needs to be sustained over several days or weeks to support a teacher's competence and courage to change practices. It’s important for coaches to follow up and look back to see if additional support would be helpful. It’s also important to monitor changes over time - teachers can collect data to demonstrate successes and to reflect on this.

Effective measurement - a coaching programme should be measured and evaluated in order to make constant “upgrades”. We need data about changes in classrooms, as well as in the coaching programme. Data needs to span different types of evidence eg: talking with teachers as well as collecting student data. We want data about the type of support offered to teachers, the timeframe and how long coaches are working with teachers,  and the types of topics that are being addressed (in a general way so that it can feed into grade or subject professional learning). If there is no evidence about the impact of coaching, schools may decide they cannot afford the financial investment in coaching. We need to report the impact to the faculty, to the community and beyond this across the world as other schools will also want to see the evidence in order to start of expand a coaching programme.

Continuous improvement - using data to examine the coaching programme and to make adaptations to increase the effectiveness of coaching. We want to use the data to impact the quality of coaching and we need to think about who will be responsible for analysing this data.

When I reflect on the coaching programme in my last school I think we were strong on purpose, on access and on duration.  A big challenge I think was measuring the impact on learning - and on this I know we are not alone.  We did collect a huge amount of qualitative and quantitative data, and could definitely see approaches to teaching, in particular using technology, changing over time.

As I'm home over the holidays I'm looking forward to catching up with more of these AAICIS recordings.

Image by poli_from Pixabay