Spurred on by my new role with WalkThrus, a visit to Orlando, and countless discussions and conversations both in-person and online, I’ve been thinking hard about coaching teachers and why a technical, pedagogy-focused coaching approach seems a really good bet for developing great teaching. Here are five reasons why I think it works: 

Technical pedagogical coaching focuses on developing and refining teaching techniques, emphasising the importance of precise, intentional decision-making in the classroom. 

Teaching is complex, and it can be helpful to codify core techniques curated from the collective wisdom of the teaching profession. This doesn’t mean insisting that all teachers do the same thing in the same way. It does mean that, as teachers, there is a body of technical practice that most of us have in common. We all seek to build positive relationships with our classes. We all ask questions. We all scaffold, model, guide, feedback, challenge students. We all plan curriculum and foster student agency. And whilst we might have our own very effective ways of doing these things, it’s sensible to have a shared language that helps us to describe, explain and discuss them productively. This is especially important if something isn’t working for our students as well as we might like. 

When pedagogical coaching focuses on the technical elements of teaching, namely techniques, we are laying the foundations for autonomy, fluency and creativity. 

That doesn’t mean it’s plain sailing. The pedagogical coach needs to guide the teacher through three stages of implementation:

• Cognitive, where the teacher is effortfully learning the mechanics and steps of the technique. This might appear wooden and uncomfortable, but it’s a necessary part of the process.
• Associative, where the teacher starts to find their groove with the technique. It starts to become part of a routine that is repeated with increased efficiency.
• Autonomous, where the teacher deploys the routine instinctively, habitually, responsively. They can adapt it for different contexts without compromising purpose and precision.

The key point here is the sequential dependency that exists between these stages of implementation: you can’t reach autonomy until you’ve wrestled with cognition and association. Learning core techniques is central to fluent, responsive teaching. (Explore this idea further with this excellent post from the brilliant Tom Sherrington). 

So, the technique is key. But so is the model of practice introducing that technique. When input is imprecise, implementation can be problematic. Where teachers remain at the cognitive stage, they are less likely to overcome the knowledge-transfer problem…

Traditional approaches to professional development often struggle with the knowledge transfer issue – the gap between theory and practical application in the classroom. In fact, I would say that this reflects my experience of CPD for most of my fifteen years as a teacher. Pedagogical coaching, especially when centred on developing teaching techniques, can help.  

This is partly because instructional techniques can be modelled and rehearsed far more effectively than abstract, conceptual inputs. Models allow teachers to develop a much better understanding of the thing it is that they are trying to do – knowing about and even understanding the importance of say, retrieval practice, doesn’t mean that a teacher can automatically use it in their classroom. When either the model or the concept itself are too abstract – too far removed from the actual things that a teacher says and does in front of their students – the reality is that very little happens at all. Even the most willing and motivated teachers struggle to convert the thing to habit.

Coaching that is underpinned by a focus on specific pedagogical techniques can support the transfer from the training room to the classroom. Coaches can support teachers by providing useful models – observable examples of the target practice –  and guided rehearsal using various instructional approaches, such as demonstration, role-play, video, scripting and verbalisation. Crucially, the coaching process can support the teacher to develop, modify and adapt the technique, step-by-step, so that it becomes lesson-ready, personalised to the context in which it will be used.

Research suggests that adding modelling to professional development helps to bridge the theory-practice gap. And this is key to solving learning problems in the classroom…

Pedagogical coaching that is problem-centred and goal-oriented can be an effective way to help teachers find solutions to learning problems and embed them into their practice.

The inherent complexity of teaching and learning means that teachers face a continuous effort to address and resolve learning problems that arise in their classrooms. Almost every decision made by a teacher serves as a response to prevent problems arising or to put them right when they do. To solve problems in real time, teachers need to call on their knowledge of what has worked in similar scenarios before. Their thinking might go a bit like this:

In my Year 11 class, some of my students are really passive during whole-class discussions. What can I do to solve this problem? I have solved this problem before. Last time, using structured talk systems like Think, Pair, Share did the trick. How can I use that here?

In this case, the coach can support the teacher to modify, adapt and rehearse the old solution so that it becomes the new solution.

But often, for many reasons, the teacher cannot successfully retrieve a solution from memory. Perhaps they don’t recognise the deep structure of the problem; perhaps it’s a novel problem that they have not experienced before. When this is the case, coaches can support by offering techniques that are curated from the collective problem-solution wisdom of the profession, i.e. tried and tested solutions (the playbook!) This might look a little like this:

Teacher: In my Year 11 class, some of my students are really passive during whole-class discussions. What can I do to solve this problem? I’ve never really experienced this before. 

Coach: Well let’s explore some common solutions here – lots of teachers find structured talk systems like Think, Pair, Share can really help to create a bit of accountability around participation. I wonder what that might look like in your class…

One of the reasons why coaching can be effective is because teachers (people) can’t tell you what they don’t know. An outside perspective is key…

Classrooms are busy, dynamic places where the logistical and cognitive challenges of managing the learning of a class of students at once are immense. Coaching can support teachers to notice the things that are easily missed in the moment.

At the ResearchED National Conference in September, I spoke about Charles Goodwin’s notion of professional vision – an expert’s capacity to identify, describe, explain and predict the hallmarks of their professional domain. You can access my slides on this here, but in simple terms, it’s a consideration of how difficult it is to notice the important, often imperceptible insignia of learning in the classroom, and how a core aim of coaching should be to support teachers to develop this capacity. The figure-ground principle states that people instinctively perceive objects as either being in the foreground or the background. They either stand out prominently in the front (the figure) or recede into the back (the ground). 

Essentially:

• We notice what we know about; we sideline what we don’t know.
• The logistical challenge of teaching in a complex perceptual field such as a classroom makes it impossible for a lone teacher to receive and process all relevant perceptual clues about how well students are learning.
• The cognitive taxation of running a room makes it difficult to see things from all angles.

Coaching can help by introducing an outside perspective – an extra pair of eyes – that can highlight and signpost important features. For example, coaches can provide a:

• Physical perspective: they can see things that the teacher can’t simply because they are sat in a different seat.
• Cognitive perspective: they can think more critically about what they see because they don’t have the operational burden of running the room.
• Interdisciplinary perspective: they can support consideration of complex situations by drawing on expertise from different domains.
• Experiential perspective: they can share insights from their own experiences of similar situations.

This outside perspective can be a valuable feature of the coaching process, provided it is part of a system that withholds judgment and promotes dialogical equity…

In The Impact Cycle, Jim Knight says that ‘When people feel judged, they don’t feel comfortable sharing the kinds of thoughts and feelings that are necessary for learning.’ Whereas traditional, formal systems of lesson observation, evaluation and review inevitably lead to judgment, coaching provides a productive, formative space for teachers to think, reflect and develop their practice. 

Judgment comes in lots of different shapes and sizes, and can sometimes creep in, unintended. Our choice of words can determine how well feedback is received by teachers. Sometimes, however well-meaning, our language conveys unintentional judgment. Reframing feedback so that it is student-focused not teacher-focused, and ensuring that it is specific and actionable rather than ambiguous, can make coaching much more effective than punitive, deficit-model approaches to feedback.

I’ve more recently been pondering the term dialogical equity. It might not be quite the term that I’m after, but I wanted to convey the idea that whilst formal observation and feedback processes are often hierarchical – a senior/ subject leader observing and feeding back to a less senior colleague – coaching provides a far more equitable platform for action. Regardless of who is paid more or less, the conversation should feel like two teachers partnering together to discuss their  practice. The conversational dynamics are important here – the ebb and flow of two professionals sharing their insights, pooling their wisdom in order to tackle the never-ending complexities of the classroom.

Now isn’t that a lovely thought.

*I honestly think that the term ‘instructional coaching’ has become a bit problematic. I’ve chosen to use ‘technical pedagogical coaching’ as I think it more accurately describes what I currently believe to a really powerful, sustainable  way to work with teachers.

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