Throughout the conversation, I was continually asking myself to what extent my plans were actually a form of coaching, as well as considering how I might adapt my plans to make them more effective.
Q1: Can anyone learn to be a coach?
I feel that @EnserMark summed this up concisely when he stated that coaches might struggle to hide it if their ‘personality sucks’. Unsurprisingly, many others agreed that personality traits were key to a good coach, including being able to ‘believe in capable people’ (@Steven_Berryman) and the need to be ‘kind’ and ‘empathetic’ (@EnserMark). In a thread later on, @teach_music_ldn also highlighted the importance of a moral purpose, with the coaches needs being the core of the process, not the ‘feather in [the coach’s] cap’.
It also seemed that there was agreement in the need for coaching to be a choice as well, with @MissM0Eng3 stating that there ‘shouldn’t be an expectation that everyone is a coach’ though @HenrySauntson highlighted that a ‘culture of collaboration’ is still a possibility (perhaps with coaching as a part of it, rather than a process everyone follows).
There was also agreement in that learning to be a coach is a process that needs time, with @DrRLofthouse explaining that ‘learning to coach is a developmental process’ with a need for this to be ‘scaffolded’. This concept, along with the process of ‘focused practice and a reflective feedback loop’ for developing coaches (@Mr_N_Wood), leads to this idea proposed by @Steven_Berryman: coaches should be ‘willing to be coached’ themselves.
Q2: What are the active ingredients of effective coaching?
The consensus for this question involved many agreeing that effective coaching needs active listening, a lack of judgements being made and space (both physical and temporal) for the conversations to happen. I found this document from CfBT Education Trust (mentioned by @DrRLofthouse in the chat) really useful in outlining what the processes of listening might look like to promote an effective coaching dialogue. This is vital if we take @informed_edu’s contribution of coaching dialogue being ‘a reflective conversation to stimulate learning and growth’.
I also felt that @jillberry102’s tweet about coaching taking a ‘how can we?’ rather than a ‘why can’t we?’ approach relevant here, especially with the links back to the positive personality traits that were mentioned in the first part of the discussion.
The discussion at this point also turned to a comparison between coaching and mentoring, which becomes trickier in a sense (given that there are different forms of coaching). I agreed with @Steven_Berryman that coaching should be a ‘meeting of equals’ whereas mentoring implies a hierarchical relationship. Other contributions highlighted that the coach is there to ‘support [the coachee] in reaching their own conclusions’ through ‘open questioning and reflection’ (@bibliogeordie). This clashed a little with my understanding of instructional coaching in particular, with Steve Farndon seeing a need for ‘direct, explicit instruction’ for instructional coaching to be ‘efficient’, with this form of coaching assuming ‘that there are some areas where [the coachee] is more novice’ (2019). That being said, instructional coaching can still seen as a dialogical model, with Caviglioli and Sherrington seeing it as a process where ‘teacher and coaches work together as partners’ (2020) as well as the dialogical process being highlighted in both the CfBT document shared by @DrRLofthouse and ‘Leading Coaching in Schools’ from NCSL.
Q3: How can a coaching culture be grown across a school?
I feel that the main component in the final section of the chat can be summed up in a single word: trust. @EnserMark stated how a ‘them and us’ culture prevents this and, therefore will prevent the growth of a coaching culture. @DrRLofthouse also mentioned how successful coaching is ‘harder to achieve in a performative culture’, which gives more reason to decouple it from any performance management process (better still: remove the performance management ‘objectives’ entirely).
Time was another factor cited by people in the discussion, as we all felt that a coaching culture isn’t something that can be generated overnight. I found @robertkelly95’s reflection really useful here, as he explained how his school changed from the initial plan of all staff being coaches due to the time needed for training (‘better to have a small group of well-trained coaches doing it well’).
My Plans
Overall, it’s difficult for me to justify my initial plans for ‘peer coaching pairs’ as actual coaching. I think that the element of choice was an important one, as well as the fact that it would be difficult to balance developing my department as effective coaching with other CPD needs, much as @robertkelly95 found in his school. However, I still feel that pairing staff up for reflection and structuring some of this reflection (in our department meetings) with coaching-style scaffolds will be beneficial. In the meantime, perhaps I need to consider whether staff might opt-in to a coaching programme across the school.
Thanks again to everyone who joined in this week’s chat for your contributions and expertise. I hope that anyone who was back at school this week also has a restful weekend, though don’t forget to vote for our next topic on Sunday!
#edCPDchat runs every Wednesday at 7:30pm. Details of upcoming topics can be found at the @edCPDchat account.
References
Caviglioli O and Sherrington T (2020) Teaching Walkthrus: Five-step guides for instructional coaching. Woodbridge: John Catt Educational Ltd.
Creasey and Paterson (2005) NCSL Leading Coaching in Schools. Available at: http://www.lcll.org.uk/uploads/3/0/9/3/3093873/leading_coaching_in_schools.pdf
Farndon, S (2019) What is instructional coaching? Available at: https://www.ambition.org.uk/blog/what-instructional-coaching/
Lofthouse, Leat and Towler (2010) CfBT Coaching for teaching and learning: a practical guide for schools. Available at: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/media/wwwnclacuk/cflat/files/coaching-for-teaching.pdf
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