Perhaps no reform effort has enjoyed more rapid uptake in international education projects over the last few years than teacher coaching. For good reason. Research shows that instructional coaching, in contrast to other reforms (like smaller class size), can result in improved teaching that in turn yields more positive effects on student achievement (Kraft et al, 2018).
As a result, donors, governments and implementers have placed their faith in coaches and coaching to help teachers transfer the fragile knowledge gleaned from a workshop into deep learning in the classroom and to reform teaching.
But as this post will argue, coaching only works if it is conceptualized, designed and implemented well. And here international development coaching programs, writ large, often struggle.
The theoretical underpinnings of coaching often appear intuitive versus research based. Many coaching initiatives are grounded in incomplete theories of change; and recruitment, training and support for coaching are often inadequate.
In short, our aspirations for coaching, minus the foundations that make these hopes a reality, result in a kind of magical thinking about coaching that threatens this potentially powerful form of teacher professional development and support.
I write about these internal threats from the perspective of one who has been a school-based coach, who was trained in cognitive coaching, and whose job over the last several years has been designing and supervising coaching programs for donors in developing countries.
Threat #1: No teaching experience necessary
Coaching is highly technical. It is highly differentiated, individualized, personalized professional development that is craft focused. Teaching is extraordinarily complex—that’s why so many people struggle to do it well.
Skills demonstration; deep understanding of the many dimensions of teaching; empathy with the many travails teachers face; experience with the reality of schools, classrooms and students; offering guidance based on prior experiences; and credibility are essential coaching skills—and they are skills that come from the lived experience of having taught.
Threat #2: No assembly required
But there’s also an inversion of the above, which is, if you’ve been a teacher, ipso facto, you can be a coach! And when we do train coaches, it is often focused on filling out observation forms and donor-funded compliance and accountability forms.
But if teaching is complex, coaching may be more so. The “bricks” of strong teacher experience must be bonded with the “mortar” of coaching skills: feedback; understanding which coaching approaches to deploy (See #7); conflict resolution; change management; and communication skills like summarizing, shifting, and paraphrasing that move teachers from one performance level to another.
Comments
Mary, thank you for this. These are spot on and merit to be acknowledged by our sector! Curious, in lieu of coaching, what TPD and teacher support mechanisms have you found to be most effective and doable at scale with limited funding since let's face it, our targets are often quite high but the cost per teacher is often so low when comparing to what we spend in the US on teacher PD and support.
Hi Nathalie, Sorry for the delay in responding.
There’s not great research on TPD effectiveness, particularly models of PD, in developing country contexts so we don’t know what works best or what is most cost effective. I think the reason we can’t scale in international development is because we focus on “spread” (pushing out an innovation to as many people as possible) -- not “depth” (making sure that teachers have real mastery of the innovation itself). We still don’t know how to scale quality in our field.
• The best examples of capacity building at scale I've seen: The Weekend School, a Dutch initiative that you can read about here: https://medium.com/@mcburns/roots-and-wings-23cdddb4630b. The woman who started it, and still runs it, essentially franchises the whole operation so that there are now dozens of Weekend Schools in Europe (mainly Belgium and NL) It’s run by young people for young people but the Weekend School spends YEARS preparing, grooming and building the capacity of its members—and they have to pass through several stages. This is the only example of successfully scaling quality I’ve ever seen in education (I did some research on these schools in 2016-2017).
• In terms of PD and scale, I don't know if there's one model of PD that is most scalable. I think what is scalable goes back to 1) what teachers are supposed to learn (simple vs. complex; knowledge vs. behavior) 2) existing mechanisms for diffusing these innovations and 3) capacity in the system to help teachers learn whatever this is? If those things exist, then the PD becomes -- which format is best for learning X (a study group? A workshop?) vs which is most scalable.
In terms of scale, this is where technology should/can/is supposed to help. You can add a teacher at marginal cost in online learning and you can reach more teachers through several sections of the same online course. You can provide blended coaching and support to teachers via web conferencing, Skype calls, phone calls, texting. But you can’t do any of this is there’s no Internet and if teachers don’t have the needed technology and skills to use the technology. So the technology that best allows us in theory to scale all kinds of PD (Web based) is inaccessible to many/most of the teachers who would benefit from it.
I think highly structured technology (with a broadcast element) like radio (IRI/IAI) and TV have shown themselves to be very scalable while maintaining fidelity and assuring quality; mobile phones (texting and calling and simple supports) less so but okay. I know RTI uses Tangerine for coaching at scale, but I’m not familiar with it. It would be worth talking to RTI.
I'm wondering if I answered every question EXCEPT what you asked...:)
Thanks for reaching out. Merry Christmas!
In reply to Hi Nathalie, Sorry for the… by Mary Burns
These are great! As always, I appreciate your insight.
Apologies for not thanking you earlier-I didn't get any notification you'd replied :)