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Chapter 1

Coaching and Change in Education

Coaching is about change. The purpose of any coach working with a practitioner—whether an athlete, a musician, or a classroom teacher—is to improve performance. There are, of course, many ways to improve performance, but coaching provides a personalized, one-to-one, focused plan to get better. It is a highly effective and highly versatile method of improving teaching and learning. In a school setting, a coach might help teachers practice new instructional strategies, master a recently adopted curriculum, incorporate new technologies, work on areas of concern in their evaluations, improve classroom management—the list goes on and on.

The next few pages set the stage for this book by reminding educators that change is constant in our profession, that new skills are required to stay current, and that change is difficult. This chapter will also describe why coaching is the vehicle for the needed change and what effective coaching looks like in schools.

In 1969, I was a second-year teacher in upstate New York. The National Science Foundation scheduled a conference in August at a resort in the Catskill Mountains. I asked my principal to send me to the conference, but he responded that it was too expensive and such privileges were reserved for senior teachers. I begged! The answer was still no. I paid for the three-day conference out of my own pocket. I drove my old Plymouth and crashed on the couch in another teacher’s room.

I loved the sessions (and the vendor’s chocolate treats) and brought home a thick folder of great ideas. This folder, I thought, contained the ideas that would make me a terrific teacher! I started the year planning to implement new strategies any day now. The folder next surfaced on my desk in late October (oops!), but I renewed my commitment to try out some of the strategies to engage my students in learning. It surfaced again when I cleaned my desk at the end of the semester. Wow, what great ideas were in that folder! At the end of the year I threw it out, because if I hadn’t tried out a single new idea from that folder in a year, I wasn’t going to.

Most of the thousands of teachers with whom I have worked relate to this story. Seminars and conferences generate ideas and strategies but attendees rarely incorporate them into everyday practice.

Change Is a Constant in Education

In my foundations of education class, we studied a history of educational change. From John Dewey to Benjamin Bloom, there seemed to be a small book full of change. To review this history in a broad sense, three leading thinkers are key. Dewey (1938) brought interactivity into the didactic world of teaching and learning. Ralph Tyler (1949) provided the first critical understanding of curriculum and assessment. Bloom (1956) edited a taxonomy of educational objectives that transformed how educators structure learning. As educators gained knowledge about how learning takes place in the brain, accepted the differing ways people think, and reviewed research about teaching and learning, the rate of change accelerated. Schools, districts, states, and nations began to call for accountability, which brought additional change.

Every part of schooling is in flux. Curricula at every level are constantly shifting through several iterations of curriculum mapping, into multiple variations of state standards, the Common Core State Standards, and other guiding documents. Each of these has required teachers to learn new skills, work cooperatively in new settings, and apply new teaching strategies. Teachers have also needed new skills and processes to incorporate new knowledge about the brain and diverse learners. Schools have codified models of instruction to define good instructional practices and standards for evaluation. The political and social climate puts additional pressure on schools and teachers. The goal has always been to graduate students who can contribute to the work force and function in society. As workforce needs shift away from repetitive labor toward technical work that requires more education, so do the desired results of schooling. Education is an institution of change which now comprises a library.

And yet, despite all of this knowledge—about how we learn, how curriculum should be constructed, and how we should teach—individual classrooms stay the same. There are still college classrooms where professors lecture about hands-on learning. There are still middle school classrooms where the teacher holds a mathematics textbook and asks students to copy down algorithms as she copies them from the book. Many classrooms—maybe even most classrooms—do not reflect the latest knowledge or best practices in education.

Changes in Instructional Practices Are Needed

Despite the continuous transformation of many aspects of education, further change is needed. There is a significant perception that public education is doing poorly (Harvey, 2018). School reform is bringing new curricula, expanded pedagogy, additional assessment, requirements for differentiation, new technology, stronger accountability, and more (McDonald, 2014). The media, politicians, business leaders, parents, school boards, and community leaders are vocal. The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study report (TIMSS; National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2016), state testing programs, graduation rates, student surveys, attendance data, and other data all indicate we could be doing better (NCES, 2018). The common need for remedial programs for college students (Butrymowicz, 2017) and data about new employees in the workforce who need basic reading and mathematics skills beyond those they acquired in high school reinforce the need to improve (Rothman, 2012). Many students live in poverty or experience other societal factors beyond the control of the school, such as absent or ineffective parenting, lack of jobs, aggression, abuse, and the like, which contribute to students’ poor performance (Jensen, 2009). Along with these changes, educators are presented with students who are increasingly apathetic about school and have increasing distractions from school and learning (Chamberlin & Matejic, 2018).

This is not to say that educators are not working hard or making positive impacts. Much of public education is, in fact, doing fine, and dedicated teachers and administrators deserve credit for their great work. However, this book is about getting even better. School improvement has been a serious topic since the 1970s and has received much attention and support with a significant amount of resources (Edmonds, 1982; Hanushek & Lindseth, 2009). And yet, if you were to travel across the country, drop into a hundred random schools, and visit five classrooms in each of those schools, much of what you would see is similar to the classrooms of the 1950s. While this might seem to contradict the history of constant change discussed in the previous section, the reality is that individual teachers are slow to change (Weimer, 2016). There is, of course, a group of cutting-edge teachers who follow the literature and create their own change to meet the needs of a changing student body. Each of us can reflect on our own experiences as a student and pick out a small group of our favorite teachers who exemplified the best of teaching. However, a large portion of teachers teach as they were taught, relying heavily on direct, teacher-driven instruction. And even the best can get better. This truth is the very reason we need coaching.

We know more now: we know more about how the brain works (Jensen, 2008); we know more about how students learn (Bellanca & Brandt, 2010); we know more about what works in schools (Marzano, 2017). Leaders speak clearly of how effective instruction can improve learning (Bellanca & Brandt, 2010). Effective models and strategies define how to teach, how to assess, how to engage, how to build knowledge, how to differentiate, and how to work together. Comprehensive models of instruction from Charlotte Danielson (2013), Robert J. Marzano (2017), and others are well known. Carol Tomlinson (2014) has spent decades defining and refining differentiation. James Popham (2018), Peter Airasian and Michael Russell (2008), Thomas Guskey (2014), and many more are instructive about assessment. Richard DuFour and Robert Eaker (1998) defined professional learning communities to help teachers work together. We have national and international experts on every aspect of teaching and learning and every type of school who are published and active in the school improvement arena. We understand the problem and the solutions. So why is positive change so elusive?

Change Is Hard

Knowledge is available in the literature, in thousands of hours of professional development, and in the collective practice of millions of teachers. And yet change does not occur, or if it does it is at a glacial speed. Sharing knowledge with every administrator and every teacher and operationalizing it in every classroom for every student is the issue. In many cases, educators understand current best practices but struggle to apply the practices in their schools and classrooms. How do we get educators to change their teaching and learning strategies? It’s about teaching the teachers—through both preservice teacher preparation programs and in-service professional development.

As the requirements for rigor and standardization of curriculum have increased, many teachers, administrators, schools, districts, and states have struggled to keep up. Teacher training failed to keep pace and teachers started to fall behind as soon as they graduated. Professional development expanded; many great presenters provided learning opportunities for teachers. We live and work in an era of great knowledge about teaching and learning. We know what works in teaching, learning, assessment, and collaboration (Hattie, 2009, 2012; Marzano, Warrick, & Simms, 2014). Districts have worked diligently to provide current and effective professional development for teachers and administrators. Teachers leave conferences with folders full of tried and true ideas on how and what to teach. For many educators, speakers in their districts and at conferences are terrific sources of resources and ideas. But alas, even as professional development has increased, it falls short of keeping teachers and the system on the cutting edge (DeMonte, 2013). The transfer from the stage to the classroom remains weak. Classrooms look the same before and after the presentation. Frequently, faculty and administrators read, go to conferences, and attend workshops, and, though temporarily inspired, still continue practices with which they are familiar and comfortable.

Why do teachers continue to use a few teacher-centered teaching tools when so many effective strategies are available to them? The first reason is that teaching is complex, and using a new skill or strategy requires new language, new interaction with students, new procedures, new management, and perhaps new assessment. It takes time and practice to implement each of these in an orchestrated application. Think about any new skill and how one progresses from novice to expert—knitting, riding a bicycle, hitting a baseball, ironing. All of these require practice—a lot of practice—to become competent and more yet to become an expert. We cannot expect professional development that relies on low-retention methods like lecture, reading, and audio-visual presentations (DiPiro, 2009) to provide teachers with all the learning that they need in order to improve their work in the classroom.

The second reason change in the classroom comes about slowly is actually about the students. A teacher’s new instructional strategy is unfamiliar to the students. They need to practice also. For example, if a teacher tries to implement cooperative learning for the first time, students will need several trials of getting into groups and interacting with each other before the strategy will be effective. The teacher might need to develop a procedure, devote a lesson to learning the procedure itself (without content), provide guidance on polite interactions, and so on. Even with all this support, students need multiple iterations to get used to the new method of learning.

Other barriers include normal resistance to change, isolation, lack of time with colleagues, not being able to watch ourselves work, limited oversight, and so on (Vander Ark, 2014). Creating positive change in professional practice is difficult. As noted previously, outside professional development doesn’t bring about change. So what does work? How can we bring about change? The answer is coaching.

Coaching Is the Solution

Coaching is embedded, ongoing professional development that creates significant and sustained change in teaching skills and the use of effective strategies. Coaches help teachers improve by teaching them new skills and strategies, giving feedback, introducing new knowledge and techniques, guiding practice, and monitoring progress. The coach can support change, reduce feelings of isolation, add time with colleagues, help educators gain awareness of their own teaching, provide feedback, and provide other supports to reduce or eliminate barriers to change.

Where other methods of professional development fail to engender change, coaching supports teachers in putting knowledge into practice. According to research by Bruce Joyce and Beverley Showers (2002), coaching is the vehicle to accomplish change in the teaching-learning process in the classroom, where it counts (see table 1.1).

Table 1.1: Training Components and Attainment of Outcomes

Source: Adapted from Joyce & Showers, 2002.

Joyce and Showers (2002) studied four typical components of professional development for teachers. They reviewed the outcomes to ascertain whether the teachers had a thorough knowledge of the training components, whether they could use the skills, and whether they transferred them to their classroom setting. Table 1.1 clearly shows that coaching (in this case, peer coaching) was the only treatment that produced change in the classroom. Studying the theory behind the skills did not. Watching demonstrations did not. Practicing the skill in a lab situation did not. But peer coaching—coaching and being coached by a colleague—resulted in teachers using the desired skill with students in a real setting.

Due to this proven effectiveness, coaching is a popular topic in the field of education, and many educators have adopted the recommendations of several prominent authors. For one, Diane Sweeney’s (2011) book, Student Centered Coaching, described three types of coaching and their attributes (Sweeney & Harris, 2017). The types of coaching are student centered, teacher centered, and relationship driven, each of which characterizes the focus, role, and perceptions of the coach, and the corresponding use of data and materials. This delineation is helpful in understanding that there are various types of coaching depending on the goals of the coaching program. As the title of her book suggests, Sweeney advocated for student-centered coaching and attested that it has the most impact on student learning.

Jim Knight is another author who has provided years of research and writing from which many educators have gained a strong knowledge base. His book, The Impact Cycle (Knight, 2018), contained a wealth of information and details about many of the tasks an instructional coach typically performs. Knight promoted a cyclical model that emphasizes the partnership between teacher and coach. Many coaches also use Elena Aguilar’s (2013) The Art of Coaching: Effective Strategies for School Transformation as a base for their work. This book presented coaching as a transformational activity for a teacher, a classroom, or a school. It also provided a research base and a plethora of strategies that coaches can use to establish a strong relationship with teachers and help clients accept coaching and make changes in their practice. Common to all these works is the idea that coaches can catalyze improvement throughout a teacher’s career by taking a collaborative approach to practicing new skills.

Every school can plan and utilize practice and collaboration through coaching. Skeptics say this is impossible because of both efficiency and cost. But consider: when a district spends money to train teachers, it expects that the teachers learn from and use the training. It is not a day off from class to simply hear about some interesting ideas; the district pays for a speaker or trainer with the intent that change will take place in the classroom. As explained previously, however, we know that traditional methods of professional development do not effect this change. Coaching is effective and, therefore, a much better investment. The framework is already available in schools—all teachers are surrounded by other teachers and many schools already have coaches. The heart of the issue is how to use scarce resources to create significant and sustained change in student learning. Harnessing and planning a collaborative support program using existing resources is a little messy and requires some focus but is within reach of every educator.

Coaching is about getting better. If you want to learn to downhill ski, you take a lesson with a coach. If you want to improve your golf game, you hire a coach. Every professional sports team relies on its coach. The coach knows the game and can teach it. But more than that, the coach can watch a player’s performance, make decisions about what needs to be improved, and focus the player’s attention on that skill. Alternatively, the coach can listen to what the player wants to improve on and develop a program to make that happen. Transferring knowledge about teaching strategies and skills from the notebook, the folder, or the teacher’s head into the classroom takes focus, work, and practice. This is the role of the coach. This is what coaches do. This is how coaches help teachers get better.

What Coaching Looks Like

A coach makes a difference. Coaches can:

■ Observe strengths and weaknesses

■ Target one or two skills to work on

■ Explain how improving the skill can improve performance (and student learning)

■ Demonstrate or model the skill

■ Direct practice and keep the client on target for improvement

■ Provide specific feedback on progress and encourage results

■ Direct professional opportunities such as observations of an expert, selected readings, co-teaching, role playing, improved instructional language, cooperative learning, and so on

In practice, a good coach can make change materialize.

Coaching programs and individual coaches already exist in many schools and school systems. Many of them are effective in supporting new initiatives and ongoing teaching and learning applications. These programs are as diverse as their schools, but three foundational elements are common to many strong programs that keep teaching and learning sharp and professionals on the cutting edge: (1) a well-defined model of instruction, (2) universal coaching, and (3) the coaching cycle.

In the 1980s, I moved to an island and was given a fourteen-foot wooden sailboat. I had never been in a sailboat. My boat was in terrible condition—it had spent some time on the ocean floor and had been sitting on a broken trailer for a few years after that. I put on a new deck and asked a high school student where the lines went (my first coach). I read a book about sailing to gain background knowledge. Ready to go? Not quite. I asked for advice and went underway with a friend who sailed (second coach). I took the advice and then paddled upwind for half a mile and sailed home (yeah!). I crewed on a racing sloop—though the captain (third coach) may have thought I was more like deck hardware than a mate. Then I sailed on my boat with a friend who had been sailing for years (my fourth coach). I learned a lot and executive transfer occurred. With knowledge, practice, and training and support from my various coaches, I was able to become a competent sailor. More than once I spent a hard day as a principal and then sailed across Fishers Island Sound, up the Mystic River, got an ice cream, and sailed home as the sun was setting. Heaven!

Model of Instruction

A model of instruction defines the strategies, skills, attributes, curricular applications, and the like that teachers are supposed to be using in preparation for instruction, during instruction, and with colleagues to instill learning in students. As such, it provides a comprehensive definition of what good teaching and learning look like so that all teachers and administrators have the same definition against which to assess teacher competence and growth. Having a model of instruction is an essential foundation for improvement and coaching (Marzano & Simms, 2013; Marzano et al., 2014).

From a coaching standpoint, the model indicates the specific elements and strategies that define effective teaching and learning. Teachers or observers can determine from the model which skills a teacher is good at and already using, as well as those that are absent from his teaching and might bring about a stronger learning environment if implemented. One of the strengths of a model of instruction is that it provides the teacher and coach an identical foundation from which to work. They can measure performance in a given strategy and make a plan for improvement. They can also measure success as the teacher’s repertoire gains depth and breadth.

Schools may develop their own models of instruction or use a pre-existing one. Marzano’s (2007, 2017) The New Art and Science of Teaching model is a good example of an available model of instruction. The protocol consists of forty-three elements (see the appendix, page 108), which are supported by over three hundred strategies that teachers can use in their instructional practices. Together, these elements and strategies comprise a comprehensive definition of what teachers (and learners) can do to instill learning. Marzano and his colleagues have described the model and its implementation in Becoming a Reflective Teacher (Marzano, 2012), Coaching Classroom Instruction (Marzano & Simms, 2013), The New Art and Science of Teaching (Marzano, 2017), and the Marzano Compendium of Instructional Strategies (Marzano Resources, 2016b). Danielson (2013) also defined a comprehensive model in The Framework for Teaching that consists of four domains and twenty-one elements, each with associated rubrics, attributes, and examples.

Both Marzano and Danielson divided their models into domains and included lists of elements and strategies with associated rubrics. The strength is the inclusion of the rubric. The teacher and the coach can compare what occurs in the classroom with the descriptions in the rubrics. If they desire a change in a strategy, they can establish and implement a plan. As time and practice allow, the teacher can improve; he or she can then consult the rubric a second time to measure growth and celebrate change.

Evaluation systems can also function as models of instruction. Every district’s evaluation documents define the elements, strategies, and skills that supervisors assess when evaluating teachers. These documents, then, are the de facto model of instruction. Teachers know what the district thinks is great teaching by referring to the evaluation documents. If the teacher rates highly on the criteria set forth in the evaluation documents, then she is a great teacher (according to the district). Coaches and their clients can use a review of the criteria set forth in the evaluation documents as a starting point. As with explicit models of instruction, schools can create their own evaluation documents or choose from existing ones. James Stronge (2018) and others have created evaluation tools that many districts use as their models of instruction. Educators can use these tools to assess performance before and after coaching; however, some evaluation tools are measurement-oriented and may require some modification to focus on growth (Marzano et al., 2014).

Note that, while this book primarily draws examples from Marzano’s work (Marzano, 2007, 2012, 2017; Marzano & Simms, 2013; Marzano Resources, 2016b), the concepts covered apply to all models of instruction. Schools using Danielson (2013), Stronge (2018), a district-produced model of instruction, or any other can all employ coaching with equal success. Readers using other models need simply insert elements from that model to completely understand the points made.

Universal Coaching

Coaching programs in schools should always include all teachers. Universal coaching simply means that all teachers are coached: not just new teachers, not just weak teachers, not just some teachers, all teachers. Having a coach work only with new teachers, or weak teachers, or any subset of the faculty sends the message that some teachers are fine as is and don’t need to change, while other teachers need to fix their instructional practices. It creates a division: we don’t need to improve as a faculty or as a profession, just some of you do. That is the wrong message every time.

Making coaching universal sends the message that the faculty is a group of professionals working together in a school or district. Staff can improve their professional practice, and, working together, they will. Universal coaching engenders the mindset that we all strive to be the best that we can be and will work to do even better tomorrow.

If coaching every teacher seems too expensive or too intrusive, we might respond, Which teachers should be expected to improve and which should not? All teachers, even strong or experienced teachers, can get better and expand their abilities. Concerns about limited resources are easily remedied through adjustments to a school’s coaching program. For example, the peer coaching model (which will be discussed in chapter 5, page 83) requires little expense, can be supported by an administrator or a coach, and provides a vehicle for every teacher to coach and be coached simultaneously. While universal coaching reduces the coach-to-teacher ratio, the improved sense of community and positive attitude about improvement more than make up for it.

The Coaching Cycle

The final essential element of a strong coaching program is the use of the coaching cycle. This is a cycle of events between a teacher and a coach which leads to significant and sustained change. Many years of coaching experience inform this cycle—trial and error, reading, and discussions of success and failure with colleagues and clients. The cycle has five steps.

1. Establishing a baseline of the teacher’s current instructional practice through observation or reflection

2. Setting a goal for change by comparing the baseline with established norms within the school and in the literature

3. Planning to implement the change in lessons and the classroom

4. Practicing the new skill several times in the classroom

5. Assessing and celebrating growth, whether the result was modest improvement or complete achievement of the goal

Assuming that improving teaching and learning is an ongoing process, the cycle repeats throughout the school year and throughout the teacher’s professional career.

The coaching cycle, supported by a model of instruction and universal coaching, is the foundation of the coaching model described in this book. Upcoming chapters will explore the coaching cycle in more detail, as well as individual strategies and schoolwide structures that support the use of the coaching cycle. This book seeks to help coaches and administrators build or modify coaching programs so that they are strong and effective in helping teachers improve their professional practice.

Summary

Chapter 1 discussed change, why it is so hard to accomplish, and how coaching can be the vehicle for change in the classroom. This chapter also introduced models of instruction, universal coaching, and the coaching cycle. Coaching can create positive change in the teaching and learning environment and may be the best approach to getting better. Change is difficult, but coaching ensures progress for professionals as they acquire new skills to improve their teaching. Unlike other professional development formats, coaching provides situational practice and supports teachers as they add strategies to their repertoires that they will continue to use in their teaching. Chapter 2 will provide a detailed look at each of the steps in the coaching cycle.