Instructional coaching

The power of learning in action.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Thoughts and musings

‘Instructional coaching’ is a term that I am fairly new to discovering but as a concept, one that I have favoured for my whole career. Building on from last week’s post (Pragmatic professional development), it felt only right to delve deeper into what instructional coaching is and how it can empower all educators. I believe the best place to start is with the ‘how?’ The question mark that you may be left with when you have had attended an interesting training session, read an insightful article or listened to an enlightening podcast. The information has been ingested in a way that works best for you, with the trust of your leadership team and a carefully-designed PD schedule. Yet, you are still left wondering the answers to the question, ‘but how?’

• How do I plan my learning opportunities so that they include these ideas?

• How do I introduce them to my class?

• How do I adapt and refine my learning environment?

• How do I create this resource to ensure that it achieves the intended outcome?

The list goes on. Often this ‘how’ can go unanswered. Lost in the plethora of actions, responsibilities and administrative tasks which teachers are faced with every day. Even with the best intentions, if time to embed a new idea, strategy or approach isn’t prioritised it may go unactioned. Similarly to this, intention may be present but I always remember one of my PGCE lecturers saying, ‘teaching can be one of the loneliest jobs in the world’ and this rings true here. If you are not lucky enough to have a network to naturally bounce your successes, difficulties, thoughts and musings off, and you are not sure of the answers to the ‘hows’, the PD cycle is not fully complete.

Last year, I was lucky enough to land my dream role - Primary Lead Practitioner. The position was being reintroduced in the school and beside my two other amazing lead professionals, our over-arching remit was to focus on teaching and learning in EYFS and Primary. I had hit the jackpot! Over the course of my time in the role, I learnt so much. A large portion of this was increasing my understanding (now that I had a ‘bird’s eye view’ over the 60 classes I was responsible for) of how to best implement, develop and (I believe most importantly) to share best practice. Now that I was afforded the time and flexibility (the role was mostly “off timetable”) to get into the thick of the teaching and learning across the school, it was clear what was having the most impact - instructional coaching.

So, what does the term ‘instructional coaching’ mean exactly and what can it ‘look like’? I was lucky enough, when attending researchED Dubai earlier this year, to watch Rachel Ball (Coaching Development Lead at Steplab) model a coaching conversation. The method employed by Rachel was instructional coaching in action. As she expertly showed the audience how to effectively give feedback, she was also coaching us on how to do this, in action. Steplab’s website offers an excellent summary of instructional coaching, with the main points being:

• One ‘more expert’ teacher works with another ‘more novice’ teacher to help them take personalised steps to improve their practice.

• Teachers identify areas where they would like to improve, often based on an initial observation (undertaken by the ‘instructional coach’).

• Structured feedback is given and a process is implemented to model what best practice in the identified area looks like.

Ideas and practical suggestions

So, what might instructional coaching look like in your setting? Below are two suggestions which I hope can be actioned with minimal time spent preparing. Think of these more as a shift towards intentionality as you consider what the lasting and purposeful impact of pragmatic professional development opportunities looks like in the PD cycle and how an instructional coaching model can be implemented to achieve these aims.

1. Make appraisal cycles personalised and purposeful

Over the years, I have been part of a number of different approaches to appraisal, most with their own record-keeping template with the observation criteria dutifully attached, highlighted and often with a judgement circled at the top. As a newly-qualified teacher, this process terrified me. Fresh out of my own schooling, where exams and coursework were graded and I always had an innate desire to please and do well, I applied this rhetoric to appraisal. I wanted to be ‘outstanding’.

Thankfully, over the years, I experienced increasingly more personalised appraisal cycles, as it became clear that the purpose of these was to support me in identifying my next steps, working on my goals and (perhaps most importantly) recognising where my talents lay and how I could use these to support others. Sadly, from my experience working with other teachers who had exceptionally different appraisal processes in their previous settings, I realised this was not the case for all.

Many teachers who I have had the privilege of working with over the years have harboured a resentment for the process, with a number feeling that it is something ‘being done to them, rather than for them’. With this viewpoint has often come a resistance to the coaching process, as with emotions running high, the last thing a teacher may welcome is someone ‘more experienced’ coming into their classroom and showing them ‘how it should be done’. At the heart of the instructional coaching process, I believe, is emotional intelligence. As I have mentioned before, and will continue to do so, teaching is a vocation and one that most arrive at with an innate belief that they can make a positive and lasting difference to the pupils that they teach. To have a negative experience in an appraisal cycle can have a lasting impact.

• So, how can the appraisal process become empowering rather than one to be feared?

  • Place the teacher at the heart of the process. As educators, we hopefully are of the understanding that learning is a lifelong journey - and an exciting one at that. There should always be something new to learn. We are preparing our students to be successful in a future that is ever-evolving and this needs to be at the forefront of our minds when refining and adapting our practice. Ensuring that teachers have an element of choice over their next steps and making this learning personalised, accessible and relevant makes the process purposeful and motivating. Ideas for tailoring PD experiences can be found in my previous post.

  • Place the teacher at the literal centre of the process, by productively using technology. I was lucky enough to meet Matt Tiplin and Scott Brothers at the University of Birmingham, Dubai earlier this year. They shared the valuable attributes that ‘ONVU Learning’ provides for supporting teachers in identifying, evaluating and gaining ownership over their professional development. The 360 degree video and audio lesson capture solution allows educators to gain a vantage point that they may not have previously had in their appraisal process. The teachers are in complete control of recordings and the autonomy that is gained as a result of this allows teachers to “try out” approaches and evaluate these, as well as exemplifying ways in which instructional coaching experiences have had a lasting impact, without necessarily needing the other adult in the room. The videos build up a bank of evidence and allow for conversations about successes and next steps to be more equally weighted between the teacher and the coach at future appraisal meetings.

  • Develop a trusting and supportive relationship between the teacher and the instructional coach by providing dynamic learning experiences. Differently to appraisal cycles where the teacher works on their next steps on their own between observations, the instructional coach helps to bring this learning to life. As mentioned above, having access to various avenues which can be explored with the coach, ensures that the teacher is able to access support in ways that most benefit how they prefer to learn. For example, perhaps working together in the planning process would be beneficial, or seeing the instructional coach model a particular concept as part of a team-teaching session, or perhaps the role of the coach is to provide materials which detail further research or practical suggestions in the form of a podcast, TEDtalk or article and these are then discussed with the instructional coach at a later date. Yes, there will be times where a teacher may need to follow a certain path for their development, but often being given the choice will add another level to the individualised nature of an instructional coaching experience.

2. Share the responsibility

A school which has the ethos of instructional coaching at the heart of its mission to embed, nurture and seek out best practice really does so at its many levels. I worked for a fantastic Headteacher a few years ago who was literally never in her office. In fact - you did well to find her! Often she would be in the thick of the Early Years classrooms modelling an innovative way to teach phonics or heading up a working party to adapt our timetable to make lesson timings more productive. The penny dropped for me though, when we were invited along to additional, practical drop-ins on a concept which maybe needed some additional explanation to an email or a whole-school meeting. These were incredibly well-attended despite being an optional session after a busy day at school. She was being an instructional coach and we all couldn’t wait to get involved.

The idea of ‘growing’ instructional coaches is one that I value. As with the children, every educator has a lot to offer and this should be recognised and celebrated. Tie this in with the appraisal process and this is the perfect opportunity for all teachers to have the opportunity to contribute to the development of the staff body as a whole. This is not to take away from the skill that it takes to be an instructional coach. Holding this position will need an element of training to learn how to support another practitioner in their learning journey. Luckily, there are a number of valuable resources which can be accessed to support this process.

• So, how can instructional coaching be invested in and developed?

  • Ensure time is dedicated to exploring instructional coaching techniques. The ‘Teaching Walkthrus’ provide an excellent modular toolkit to develop strategies and techniques rooted in evidence and best practice. I have actually been part of a PD programme where we worked in teams, each focusing on one of the ‘six series’. There were numerous benefits to this model. Firstly, we had widespread representation of year groups and specialist teaching teams, so our input and experiences were varied. We also knew what our strengths and next steps were from our appraisal processes, so as we worked on our particular strand, we could coach and support each other based on our own evaluations.

  • Peer observations are a powerful coaching tool. It may be the instructional coach who is teaching or perhaps the teacher and the instructional coach are watching a teacher who has been identified in the appraisal process as having a particular skill in a key area. A culture of staff coaching staff is such an exciting one to be part of. Built on the foundations of mutual trust and respect, having an open-door policy empowers staff to share their talents and have a tangible impact across the school.

  • In my previous post, ‘Leading by example’, I shared the idea of ‘sparks’. These are the glimmers of best practice that get teachers excited and they simply have to be shared with colleagues! Using instructional coaching to showcase a ‘spark’ is an impactful way to literally show your fellow teachers how it is done. Again, it may not be the instructional coach who is doing the showcasing, but the idea, method or approach could form part of the project the teacher is embarking on with the instructional coach. This may be in the form of purposefully including the ‘spark’ in the lesson plan, creating a dynamic resource using the ‘spark’ or actioning the ‘spark’ in a peer-teaching opportunity. This method certainly encapsulates ‘for teachers, by teachers’.

To read Steplab’s clear and concise summary of instructional coaching, and to explore their professional development platform:

To learn more about ‘ONVU Learning’ and their empowering video lesson capture solution:

To delve into the wonderful world of the Teaching WalkThrus:

A recommended read, from last week’s featured podcast, researcher and author Jim Knight (Instructional Coaching Group):

And if you have not yet listened to the ‘Mind the Gap’ podcast: