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Coaching for professional learning of early career teachers
Abstract
Successful education systems invest in teacher development for their professional growth. Professional teacher development varies from country to country. This chapter describes professional coaching of teachers as one effective approach to early career teacher development in schools. The aim of this chapter is twofold: First, to clarify the conception of coaching and its links to mentoring, and second, to illustrate empirically how schools implement professional coaching as part of their strategies to improve learning and wellbeing of their teachers and students. Conclusion is that when coaching is well defined and strategically implemented as part of overall improvement plan of the school, it can significantly support early career teachers' professional growth, enhance student outcomes, and help schools to retain their teachers.
The selection process of a coaching model should be an initial consideration before conducting training activities. However, the limited availability of coaching models hinders the delivery of quality training programs. Therefore, it is necessary to have options for coaching models. This research aims to develop a goal, actual, alternative, plan, action, monitoring, and reflection based on blended learning (GAARANTUNG) a coaching model rooted in goal, reality, option, will (GROW) with the addition of action, monitoring, and reflection elements based on blended learning. The development of this coaching model is conducted by adopting the analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation (ADDIE) research and development concept, which involves three main steps: analysis, design, and development. The results of this research include the availability of a coaching model that meets the needs, including the incorporation of technological elements within GAARANTUNG. The GAARANTUNG coaching model is the improved version of the GROW coaching model, which only focuses on action planning, and the goal, reality, option, will-monitoring, evaluation (GROW-ME) coaching model, which lacks a description of coaching during action and does not include digital technology elements. The refinement of the syntax in GROW and GROW-ME to form GAARANTUNG is a crucial step in providing a coaching model that aligns with the needs and facilitates the implementation of training programs, specifically targeting the main needs of participants, including teachers and school principals.
Purpose
The research examines how contextual coaching (Gorrell and Hoover, 2009; Valentine, 2019) can act as a lever to build collaborative professionalism (Hargreaves and O'Connor, 2018) and lead to school improvement.
Design/methodology/approach
The multi-case study (Stake, 2013) draws on two bespoke examples of contextual coaching in education and uses the ten tenets of collaborative professionalism as a conceptual framework for its abductive analysis. Data from both cases were collected through interviews, focus groups and documentation.
Findings
The findings demonstrate that effective contextual coaching leads to conditions underpinning school improvement. Specifically, there are patterns of alignment with the ten tenets of collaborative professionalism. Whereas contextual coaching is found on four of these tenets (mutual dialogue, joint work, collective responsibility and collaborative inquiry), in more mature coaching programmes, three others (collective autonomy, initiative and efficacy) emerge. There is also evidence that opportunities exist for contextual coaching to be further aligned with the remaining three tenets. The study offers insight into how school improvement can be realized by the development of staff capacity for teacher leadership through contextual coaching.
Research limitations/implications
The impact of coaching in education is enhanced by recognizing the importance of context and the value of iterative design and co-construction.
Practical implications
The principles of contextual coaching are generalizable, but models must be developed to be bespoke and to align with each setting. Collaborative professionalism offers a useful framework to better design and implement contextual coaching programmes.
Originality/value
The research introduces contextual coaching in education, and how coaching can enhance collaborative professionalism in schools.
Visible Learning has been one of the most influential research initiatives conducted in education in the past few decades, and at the same time, instructional coaching is becoming one of the most popular forms of professional development. This paper considers how the implementation of Visible Learning may be supported through instructional coaches by: (a) offering a brief summary of the central tenants of Visible Learning; (b) summarizing the foundational research on instructional coaching conducted at the Kansas Coaching Project at The University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning; (c) describing what those findings reveal about effective instructional coaching practices; and (d) pointing out how the research findings suggest that instructional coaching should be used to support the implementation of Visible Learning or any other educational innovations.
This study examined the experiences of a small group of Newly Qualified Teachers (NQTs) during their NQT year. A focus group was used to explore the NQTs' understandings of their role and the influence of the NQT year on the development of their professional teacher identity. Data were digitally recorded, transcribed and organised into themes. The data indicate that the participants had developed a strong sense of their own accountability for their own professionalism and for improving the academic performance of their pupils. They had been initiated into the discourse of performativity that is entrenched across the education system. Consequently, some, but not all, NQTs had rejected their personal educational philosophies and had embraced a socially assigned identity which embraced the principles of performativity.
New teachers entering the profession are said to bring with them enthusiasm, idealism and recent training – a promising combination for innovative teaching. However, these early career teachers are also commonly portrayed as professionals facing exceptional challenges, with fragile identities who leave the career in high proportions. Can these new teachers help schools to innovate while trying to perform as effective teachers during their initial years? This paper argues that the difficulties most early career teachers encounter, which have largely remained unchanged over the last 50 years, are embedded characteristics of the teaching profession. Further, it discusses the importance of the first five years of the teacher career in acquiring critical professional skills, and highlights the importance of context over experience per se. The paper concludes by making the case that these first five years could work as a residency for early career teachers – similar to that of medical training – where they could receive support to experiment in sheltered environments. This professional residency might represent a policy milestone in the building of a continuum of teachers’ professional growth and development.
Past research has found that solution-focused (SF) coaching questions led to more positive outcomes than problem-focused (PF) coaching questions. Another body of research (Broaden and Build Theory; Fredrickson, B. L. (1998). What good are positive emotions? Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 300–319) posits that positive emotions promote AQ2the discovery of novel ideas and actions including goal attainment and positive change. These theoretical frameworks have influenced coaching practitioner literature, but no research has explored their conjoint effects. We explore these by randomly allocating 512 participants in comparing (1) PF coaching questions with (2) SF coaching questions with (3) positive affect (PA) induction with (4) a SF plus PA condition (SF + PA). The broad findings of this study were that PF questions performed the worst on all measures, and that PA induction and SF coaching questions were equally effective at enhancing positive affect, increasing self-efficacy, enhancing goal approach and developing action steps. These results show, that while positive affect makes a valuable contribution to coaching outcomes, combining PA induction with SF questions produces superior outcomes than PA or SF questions alone in terms of self-efficacy, goal approach and action steps. While this research supports the central tenets of Broaden and Build Theory in terms of coaching outcomes, just making people feel good is not enough for truly effective coaching practice.
Teacher coaching has emerged as a promising alternative to traditional models of professional development. We review the empirical literature on teacher coaching and conduct meta-analyses to estimate the mean effect of coaching programs on teachers’ instructional practice and students’ academic achievement. Combining results across 60 studies that employ causal research designs, we find pooled effect sizes of 0.49 standard deviations (SD) on instruction and 0.18 SD on achievement. Much of this evidence comes from literacy coaching programs for prekindergarten and elementary school teachers in the United States. Although these findings affirm the potential of coaching as a development tool, further analyses illustrate the challenges of taking coaching programs to scale while maintaining effectiveness. Average effects from effectiveness trials of larger programs are only a fraction of the effects found in efficacy trials of smaller programs. We conclude by discussing ways to address scale-up implementation challenges and providing guidance for future causal studies.
There has been an almost exponential growth in the amount of coaching-specific and coaching-related research over the past ten years. At the same time there has been considerable interest in the development of evidence-based approaches to coaching, and many coaching practitioners have incorporated the phrase into their terms of reference for their practice. However, these is still a lack of clarity about what constitutes evidence based
coaching, and there have been few, if any, published guidelines about how to determine the relevance of different bodies of research to coaching practice. This article discusses the nature of evidence-based practice as it relates to coaching and then presents a two-by-two framework that highlights the relevance of a broad range of research to evidence-based coaching practice. The aim of this paper is to help further develop a more nuanced view of evidence-based approaches to coaching practice.
The provision and maintenance of quality teachers is a matter of priority for the profession. Moreover, teacher attrition is costly to the profession, to the community and to those teachers who leave feeling disillusioned. There is a need to investigate the experiences of early career teachers to consider how these issues contribute to decisions about staying in or leaving the profession. This paper reports on an aspect of a larger study on teacher retention. It describes and analyses the experiences of teachers participating in the study and highlights implications for teacher retention. The study proposes the notion of ‘resilient stayers’, and how beginning teachers’ resilience might be strengthened and supported. It asks what combination of circumstances in the school and the system, and individual resources of resilience on the part of early career teachers, might maximise the chances of teachers choosing to remain in the profession.
The role of the coach–coachee relationship in influencing coaching outcomes has emerged as an area of interest in research into the mechanics of effective coaching. Although extensively researched in the psychotherapeutic domain, exploration of the working alliance represents a new phase in executive and life coaching research. This paper presents an exploratory empirical study that explores four aspects of the coach–coachee relationship to investigate which is more related to specific measures of coaching success: (1) autonomy support; (2) the extent to which a coachee feels satisfied with the actual coach–coachee relationship; (3) the extent to which the coaching relationship was similar to an ‘ideal’ coach–coachee relationship; and (4) a goal-focused coach–coachee relationship. This is the first study to use multiple measures of the coach–coachee relationship in order to directly compare the relative efficacy of different aspects of the coach–coachee relationship. In a within-subject study, 49 coach–coachee dyads conducted four coaching sessions over a 10- to 12-week period. Results indicate that satisfaction with a coach–coachee relationship does not predict successful coaching outcomes, and whilst autonomy support and proximity to an ‘ideal’ relationship moderately predicted coaching success, a goal-focused coach–coachee relationship was a unique and significantly more powerful predictor of coaching success. The findings emphasise the importance of goals in the coaching process and highlight important differences between psychotherapeutic and coaching working alliances.
This paper demonstrates how teachers who were working in a range of developmental relationships with researchers used Coaching Dimensions to understand, describe, analyse and improve the quality of their coaching and mentoring conversations. The findings are based on analysis of transcriptions of case studies of one-to-one professional dialogue practice. The dimensions of coaching provide a language and mechanism through which teachers can analyse and reflect on their ‘coaching’ practice. They can act as a metacognitive tool for teachers, providing them with the opportunity to engage with the complexity of their practice. Such self-knowledge enables productive practice development, and an ability to talk with peers about how their practice is developing. This can help teachers to plan for, and be more responsive within, coaching or mentoring meetings. Use of the dimensions allows the relationships between the nature and the intent of practice to be explored and may help to clarify the roles of different types of professional dialogue, securing them within continuing professional development structures in schools. As relationships and trust within coaching and mentoring partnerships can be vulnerable, gaining greater awareness of the significance of the semantics of the dialogue can support the participants to match intent with outcome.
Executive coaching has become increasingly popular despite limited empirical evidence about its impact and wide disagreement about necessary or desired professional qualifications. This article examines the practice of executive coaching, investigating the useful underlying theories by reviewing previous research. It also provides a conceptual framework of executive coaching, integrating the literature on executive coaching and related areas such as mentoring, career success, 360-degree feedback, and training and development. The significance of this article lies in its inte-gration of the extant literature on executive coaching and the development of a conceptual framework of executive coaching and related propositions derived from the literature. The article discusses the implications for future research and for human resource development.
The present article examines the nature and function of human agency within the conceptual model of triadic reciprocal causation. In analyzing the operation of human agency in this interactional causal structure, social cognitive theory accords a central role to cognitive, vicarious, self-reflective, and self-regulatory processes. The issues addressed concern the psychological mechanisms through which personal agency is exercised, the hierarchical structure of self-regulatory systems, eschewal of the dichotomous construal of self as agent and self as object, and the properties of a nondualistic but nonreductional conception of human agency. The relation of agent causality to the fundamental issues of freedom and determinism is also analyzed.
Coaching psychology can be understood as being the systematic application of behavioural science to the enhancement of life experience, work performance and well-being for individuals, groups and organisations who do not have clinically significant mental heath issues or abnormal levels of distress. Although psychologists have long acted as coaches, coaching psychology has only recently emerged as an applied and academic sub-discipline. As coaching psychology continues to grow there will be some exciting challenges from both within and outside of the profession of psychology. First among these there will be the issue of distinguishing the work and professional practices of coaching psychologists from coaches who are not psychologists. Secondly, will be the place of coaching psychology relative to other psychological sub- disciplines, and thirdly will be the development of a research and practice agenda for coaching psychology.
Both Coaching Psychology and Positive Psychology programs have been empirically shown to enhance various aspects of well-being. Perhaps surprisingly, no study to date has directly compared the two approaches along various outcomes in adults. We randomly assigned 393 M.B.A students to attend 13 weeks of lectures, with accompanying practical exercises, in either Positive Psychology, Coaching Psychology, or Organizational Behaviour (control group). Though participants in both the Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology groups experienced improvements (vs. the control group) in subjective well-being and psychopathology, Coaching Psychology participants experienced additional benefits – beyond those experienced by Positive Psychology participants, who did not differ from the control group – in goal attainment, self-insight, psychological well-being, and solution-focused thinking. The latter benefits may be attributable to Coaching Psychology’s capacity to enhance personal agency through goal-focused self-regulation, a key tenet of the coaching relationship. We suggest that this concept could inform future Positive Psychology programs.
This paper reports findings from a study of early career teachers (ECTs) in Western Australia. The aim of this study was to investigate the professional learning activities of ECTs and the perceived impact of these on their professional development. Data were gathered via two online surveys and interviews. Findings reveal that ECTs participated in a range of formal and informal professional learning activities which were accessed through the Department of Education and their schools. The activities that had the greatest perceived impact on professional development were engaging in informal dialogue with colleagues and participation in an in-class coaching programme. Results lend support to the criticism of the unhelpful dichotomy between formal and informal learning in the provision of professional learning activities for teachers, and ECTs especially. They also highlight the critical role played by relationships and school contexts in ensuring the future generation of teachers are equipped to provide high-quality teaching and will remain resilient and committed to the profession beyond the early career years.
Coaching has been evolving as a form of professional development for teachers and school leaders for several decades, and now exists in many forms. This study focused on the work of six coaches in England, using an adapted focus group approach to discover how they explained and conceptualised the value of their practices. As the coaches’ conversations with each other emerged details of the nature of their work, and their reflections on it, were elicited which were analysed thematically while also paying due attention to individual narratives. Although coaching is not easily defined this study demonstrates the significance of relationships and dialogue in coaching and the structures and protocols that support that. It suggests that coaching is suited to helping individuals dealing with authentic challenges, professional interests and dilemmas experienced in complex educational settings, while also acting as a counterweight to some of the consequences of performativity. The study also suggests that coaching may be a valuable means to deploy the expertise of experienced professionals to support an education system exposed to problems of retention of both teachers and school leaders.
A comprehensive guide to coaching theories, approaches and settings.
Purpose
Coaching in educational settings is an alluring concept, as it carries associations with life coaching and well being, sports coaching and achievement and improving educational attainment. Although there are examples of successful deployment in schools, there is also evidence that coaching often struggles to meet expectations. This article aims to use socio‐cultural theory to explore why coaching does NOT transplant readily to schools, particularly in England, where the object of coaching activity may be in contradiction to the object of dominant activity in schools – meeting examination targets.
Design/methodology/approach
The article is a conceptual exploration of peer coaching through the lens of cultural historical activity theory, using an empirical base for exemplification.
Findings
It is argued that the results agenda, or performativity culture, in many schools is so strong that coaching is either introduced as part of the dominant discourse which meets resistance from staff, or where it develops in a more organic, “bottom up” approach, it may well clash with managerial cultures which demand accountability and surveillance, which does not sit well with trust‐based coaching partnerships.
Research limitations/implications
The contradictions described in the article suggest that more research is needed to explore how skilled coaches manage some mediation between the meta‐discourse of managerialism and the meso‐ and micro‐discourses underpinning meaningful professional learning.
Practical implications
The article provides encouragement for peer coaches who manage the boundary between trust‐based coaching and performativity agendas.
Originality/value
The application of cultural historical activity theory offers a powerful analytical tool for understanding the interaction of peer coaching with organisational cultures, particularly through their emphasis on different motives or objects for professional learning.
Educational Leadership, March 1996 v53 n6 p12(5) Today, peer coaching study teams enhance staff development efforts and offer support for teachers implementing new strategies. Fifteen years have passed since we first proposed peer coaching as an on-site dimension of staff development (Joyce and Showers 1980). In the 1970s, evaluations of staff development that focused on teaching strategies and curriculum revealed that as few as 10 percent of the participants implemented what they had learned. Rates of transfer were low even for those who had volunteered for the training. Well-researched curriculum and teaching models did not find their way into general practice and thus could not influence students' learning environments. In a series of studies beginning in 1980, we tested hypotheses related to the proposition that regular (weekly) seminars would enable teachers to practice and implement the content they were learning. The seminars, or coaching sessions, focused on classroom implementation and the analysis of teaching, especially students' responses. The results were consistent: Implementation rose dramatically, whether experts or participants conducted the sessions. Thus we recommended that teachers who were studying teaching and curriculum form small peer coaching groups that would share the learning process. In this way, staff development might directly affect student learning. Our central concern has been helping students benefit when their teachers learn, grow, and change. In studying how teachers can create better learning environments for themselves (Joyce and Showers 1995), we noted with interest a serendipitous by-product of the early peer coaching studies: Successful peer coaching teams developed skills in collaboration and enjoyed the experience so much that they wanted to continue their collegial partnerships after they accomplished their initial goals. Why not create permanent structures, we wondered, that would enable teachers to study teaching on a continuous basis? In working with this broadened view of peer coaching as a mechanism to increase classroom implementation of training, we evolved our present practice of organizing entire faculties into peer coaching teams. We have been convinced throughout that peer coaching is neither an end in itself nor by itself a school improvement initiative. Rather, it must operate in a context of training, implementation, and general school improvement. There is no evidence that simply organizing peer coaching or peer study teams will affect students' learning environments. The study of teaching and curriculum must be the focus. Here we examine the history of coaching, describe changes in the conduct of coaching, and make recommendations for its future, including its role as a component of staff development that drives organizational change.
Drawing upon findings of a four-year national research project on variations in the work and lives of teachers in England, this paper provides empirical evidence which contributes to understandings about the importance of resilience in teachers’ work. The experience of resilience as perceived by teachers in this research was that it was neither innate nor stable and was much more than a capacity to survive and thrive in extremely adverse circumstances. Rather, it was perceived as being closely allied to their everyday capacity to sustain their educational purposes and successfully manage the unavoidable uncertainties which are inherent in the practice of being a teacher. Their capacity to be resilient fluctuated as a result of the influences of the personal, relational and organisational settings in which they worked. The findings have implications for initial and in-service professional development programmes, school leadership and the quality retention of teachers.
In recent years there has been a growing interest in support, guidance, and orientation programs—collectively known as induction—for beginning ele mentary and secondary teachers during the transition into their first teach ing jobs. This study examines whether such supports have a positive effect on the retention of beginning teachers. The study also focuses on different types and components of induction, including mentoring programs, collective group activities, and the provision of extra resources and reduced workloads. The results indicate that beginning teachers who were provided with multi ple supports, were less likely to move to other schools and less likely to leave the teaching occupation altogether after their first year. Some forms of assis tance and support, however, did not appear to increase beginners' retention.
Varah, Theune, and Parker provide a brief review of the literature on begin ning teachers and document the need for induction programs. The authors also describe the University of Wiscon sin-Whitewater Teacher Induction Pro gram and describe how induction teams, consisting of mentor teachers, school administrators, and university personnel, identify areas of accomplish ment, concern, and improvement for be ginning teachers. Finally, data are pre sented from a small scale experimental study that suggest that the induction program is achieving its primary objec tive of enhancing teacher growth.
Four beginning teachers' experiences of induction programs in Queensland secondary schools are described. Interviews with principals and other senior teachers indicated keen and sympathetic awareness of the complexities of entry into teaching. The beginning teachers of the study complained that induction programs offered were inadequate, inappropriate, or both. These research findings are discussed in terms of the research literature and current official policy on induction in Queensland. It is argued that current induction programs are based for the most part on a deficit model of beginning teachers. Recommendations are made for further research in two main areas: critical examination of teacher induction, the term itself, its purpose and underlying theoretical assumptions; and context-specific studies of programs of support for new teachers.
Early career teacher attrition is a matter of economic, social, and educational concern in many countries. Usually induction programs, including mentoring, are seen to alleviate the problem of early career teacher attrition. Mentoring/induction programs as a solution to what is defined as the problem of early career teacher attrition and retention is the focus for this literature review to determine the current research base that supports such programs and initiatives. Concerns were raised that perhaps induction and mentoring had become the acceptable or taken-for-granted solution to the problem of early career teacher attrition and retention without sufficient attention to the research base. In this article, the literature is summarized, concerns are raised, and new research directions are highlighted.
How does one become an effective teacher? What can be done to stem high attrition rates among beginning teachers? While many teachers are left to ‘sink or swim’ in their first year—learning by trial and error, there remain a number of outstanding examples of collaboration and collegiality in teacher induction programs. Analysis of the most exemplary teacher induction programs from Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand and the United States revealed common attributes and exceptional features. The most successful teacher induction programs reported here include opportunities for experts and neophytes to learn together in a supportive environment promoting time for collaboration, reflection and acculturation into the profession of teaching. Furthermore, several practices unique to specific regions were highlighted. These included extended internship programs, specially trained mentors, comprehensive inservice training and reduced teaching assignments for beginning teachers with an emphasis on assistance rather than assessment.
Early career teacher attrition: new thoughts on an intractable problem
- Gallant
Is it time to REGROW the GROW model? Issues related to teaching coaching session structures
- Grant
The impact of induction and mentoring programs for beginning teachers
- Ingersoll
Threading the needle: examining the mentoring and coaching fellowship of the western Quebec school board
- Hollweck
Coaching: A Reciprocal Learning Partnership. A Practice Insight Working Paper
- Stringer
Want to keep early career teachers in the job? Do this
- Mercieca
Positive psychology approach
- van Nieuwerburgh