so many effective strategies are available to them? The first reason is that teaching is complex, and using a new skill or strategy requires new language, new interaction with students, new procedures, new management, and perhaps new assessment. It takes time and practice to implement each of these in an orchestrated application. Think about any new skill and how one progresses from novice to expert—knitting, riding a bicycle, hitting a baseball, ironing. All of these require practice—a lot of practice—to become competent and more yet to become an expert. We cannot expect professional development that relies on low-retention methods like lecture, reading, and audio-visual presentations (DiPiro, 2009) to provide teachers with all the learning that they need in order to improve their work in the classroom.
The second reason change in the classroom comes about slowly is actually about the students. A teacher’s new instructional strategy is unfamiliar to the students. They need to practice also. For example, if a teacher tries to implement cooperative learning for the first time, students will need several trials of getting into groups and interacting with each other before the strategy will be effective. The teacher might need to develop a procedure, devote a lesson to learning the procedure itself (without content), provide guidance on polite interactions, and so on. Even with all this support, students need multiple iterations to get used to the new method of learning.
Other barriers include normal resistance to change, isolation, lack of time with colleagues, not being able to watch ourselves work, limited oversight, and so on (Vander Ark, 2014). Creating positive change in professional practice is difficult. As noted previously, outside professional development doesn’t bring about change. So what does work? How can we bring about change? The answer is coaching.
Coaching Is the Solution
Coaching is embedded, ongoing professional development that creates significant and sustained change in teaching skills and the use of effective strategies. Coaches help teachers improve by teaching them new skills and strategies, giving feedback, introducing new knowledge and techniques, guiding practice, and monitoring progress. The coach can support change, reduce feelings of isolation, add time with colleagues, help educators gain awareness of their own teaching, provide feedback, and provide other supports to reduce or eliminate barriers to change.
Where other methods of professional development fail to engender change, coaching supports teachers in putting knowledge into practice. According to research by Bruce Joyce and Beverley Showers (2002), coaching is the vehicle to accomplish change in the teaching-learning process in the classroom, where it counts (see table 1.1).
Table 1.1: Training Components and Attainment of Outcomes
Source: Adapted from Joyce & Showers, 2002.
Joyce and Showers (2002) studied four typical components of professional development for teachers. They reviewed the outcomes to ascertain whether the teachers had a thorough knowledge of the training components, whether they could use the skills, and whether they transferred them to their classroom setting. Table 1.1 clearly shows that coaching (in this case, peer coaching) was the only treatment that produced change in the classroom. Studying the theory behind the skills did not. Watching demonstrations did not. Practicing the skill in a lab situation did not. But peer coaching—coaching and being coached by a colleague—resulted in teachers using the desired skill with students in a real setting.
Due to this proven effectiveness, coaching is a popular topic in the field of education, and many educators have adopted the recommendations of several prominent authors. For one, Diane Sweeney’s (2011) book, Student Centered Coaching, described three types of coaching and their attributes (Sweeney & Harris, 2017). The types of coaching are student centered, teacher centered, and relationship driven, each of which characterizes the focus, role, and perceptions of the coach, and the corresponding use of data and materials. This delineation is helpful in understanding that there are various types of coaching depending on the goals of the coaching program. As the title of her book suggests, Sweeney advocated for student-centered coaching and attested that it has the most impact on student learning.
Jim Knight is another author who has provided years of research and writing from which many educators have gained a strong knowledge base. His book, The Impact Cycle (Knight, 2018), contained a wealth of information and details about many of the tasks an instructional coach typically performs. Knight promoted a cyclical model that emphasizes the partnership between teacher and coach. Many coaches also use Elena Aguilar’s (2013) The Art of Coaching: Effective Strategies for School Transformation as a base for their work. This book presented coaching as a transformational activity for a teacher, a classroom, or a school. It also provided a research base and a plethora of strategies that coaches can use to establish a strong relationship with teachers and help clients accept coaching and make changes in their practice. Common to all these works is the idea that coaches can catalyze improvement throughout a teacher’s career by taking a collaborative approach to practicing new skills.
Every school can plan and utilize practice and collaboration through coaching. Skeptics say this is impossible because of both efficiency and cost. But consider: when a district spends money to train teachers, it expects that the teachers learn from and use the training. It is not a day off from class to simply hear about some interesting ideas; the district pays for a speaker or trainer with the intent that change will take place in the classroom. As explained previously, however, we know that traditional methods of professional development do not effect this change. Coaching is effective and, therefore, a much better investment. The framework is already available in schools—all teachers are surrounded by other teachers and many schools already have coaches. The heart of the issue is how to use scarce resources to create significant and sustained change in student learning. Harnessing and planning a collaborative support program using existing resources is a little messy and requires some focus but is within reach of every educator.
Coaching is about getting better. If you want to learn to downhill ski, you take a lesson with a coach. If you want to improve your golf game, you hire a coach. Every professional sports team relies on its coach. The coach knows the game and can teach it. But more than that, the coach can watch a player’s performance, make decisions about what needs to be improved, and focus the player’s attention on that skill. Alternatively, the coach can listen to what the player wants to improve on and develop a program to make that happen. Transferring knowledge about teaching strategies and skills from the notebook, the folder, or the teacher’s head into the classroom takes focus, work, and practice. This is the role of the coach. This is what coaches do. This is how coaches help teachers get better.
What Coaching Looks Like
A coach makes a difference. Coaches can:
■ Observe strengths and weaknesses
■ Target one or two skills to work on
■ Explain how improving the skill can improve performance (and student learning)
■ Demonstrate or model the skill
■ Direct practice and keep the client on target for improvement
■ Provide specific feedback on progress and encourage results
■ Direct professional opportunities such as observations of an expert, selected readings, co-teaching, role playing, improved instructional language, cooperative learning, and so on
In practice, a good coach can make change materialize.
Coaching programs and individual coaches already
