Coaching for teachers can provide several benefits, both for those in the earliest stages of their careers and more experienced teachers.
While there are several models to choose from, instructional coaching has one of the strongest evidence bases of any form of continuing professional development. It’s the reason why our Early Career Teacher and Teacher Training programmes include instructional coaching.
At the heart of this approach is coaching conversations. This article explores what instructional coaching is and what having coaching conversations with teachers looks like in practice.
What is instructional coaching?
Instructional coaching is a powerful approach to professional development that can support high-impact teaching to significantly impact pupil outcomes. It’s a useful tool in a teacher educator’s toolbox when building teacher expertise.
Unlike traditional coaching, which often focuses on open-ended questions, instructional coaching takes a more targeted and deliberate approach.
The role of an instructional coach is to guide teachers toward making specific improvements in their practice. The approach consists of holding frequent coaching conversations where the coach observes an area of a coachee’s practice. They then offer feedback in the form of a conversation.
Conversations involve a specific, bite-sized goal; a model of the suggested outcome; and subsequent rounds of deliberate practice (a method of practising new habits) with feedback.
What does a coaching conversation look like?
Coaching which is underpinned by information on what works and why is going to be the most effective.
The Education Endowment Foundation’s guidance report, ‘Effective Professional Development’, sets out core mechanisms which should form the basis of professional development for teachers. These are supported by evidence from research on human behaviour change and are central to the coaching conversation.
The mechanisms include:
- Setting and agreeing on goals
- Modelling
- Monitoring and feedback
- Rehearsal (often known as deliberate practice)
The format of a coaching conversation can vary depending on the expertise of the coachee or current school priorities. However, a coaching conversation usually includes the following steps (though sometimes in a different order):
1. Setting a target performance
Instructional coaching begins with the coach and coachee identifying a ‘target performance’ or outcome prior to the first coaching conversation.
2. Praising and probing
During the coaching conversation, the coach praises the coachee’s practice in line with their previous goals before exploring possible further development using probing questions.
The coach will seek to find out more about the coachee’s practice and encourage them to reflect deeply on the approaches they take and how elements might be improved. They will support the teacher to see any gaps between the intended goal and their current performance.
3. Designing a model
Next, the coach will design a model to support the coachee’s own preparation. Adding modelling to professional development can help to bridge the gap between theory and practice.
Models can take different forms and fall into two broad categories: product-based and performance-based.
Product-based models help the coachee with planning or designing activities. This could include scripting what they will say to pupils or designing an activity.
Performance-based models are live models. The coach will model what the coachee might do in different classroom scenarios, such as when pupils enter the room or how to use silent gestures to keep them focused on a task.
4. Setting an action step
The coach and coachee then agree on a single action step. This action step is broken down into bite-sized, manageable parts with clear success criteria. This means that the teacher knows what the step involves, when to practise it, why it’s helpful and how to implement it.
5. Engaging in deliberate practice
The coachee practises applying their action step to a future lesson and receives feedback. Having several rounds of practice and feedback in one coaching session allows for maximum impact.
The goal of instructional coaching is to help teachers make improvements to their practice in a sustainable way while building the tools to apply these techniques.
To discover more about how our Instructional Coaching programme could help improve teaching practices across your school or trust, visit the programme page.
