I like ideas that cut through complexity – bringing clarity to things that are inherently complex, nuanced (bingo!) and variable. For the coaching process and the general outcomes of a wider professional learning programme, there is sometimes a risk of a false either/or creeping in to the discourse. Also, when I work with schools, I sometimes i find that their CPD processes can fall down because they don’t meet one of two key requirements:

a) Specifying Actions:

Teachers have to make and sustain changes in their practice that succeed in solving the problems they encounter or, to put it differently, that lead to improvements in their teaching. To change practice requires intentionality: a deliberate decision and effort to do different things in the classroom. This requires a plan of action – a mental plan informed by a mental model the teacher trusts and understands, linking their actions to a likely positive impact.

Unless the outcome of a CPD/coaching process is a change in teacher actions – and ideally their habits – then it’s an expensive waste of time. But those actions need to be doable – tangible. They need to have meaning in the teacher’s context. You can’t, for example, ‘improve your questioning skills’ or ‘manage behaviour more effectively’ or ‘explain things more clearly’. That’s like asking a student to ‘produce better writing’. No, the actions teachers can actually take need to be steps they can describe in enough detail to enact. They need precision.

b) Fostering Motivation

Teachers need to be motivated to change in order to make the initial effort and then, more difficult still, to sustain the change in the long term such that more effective habits form. Of course, motivation can be ‘stick’ driven – ie through ‘non-negotiables’ and compliance checks – but that’s not a culture I’m interested in. Not many people are. Much better, motivation needs to be about making teachers feel really good about themselves and seeing the rewards of feeling even better through problem solving and./or improvement in their practice.

For sure, if your processes make teachers feel scolded, chastised, undermined, weary, cynical… then you’re not likely to see much change. You breed resentment, resistance, disillusionment and defensiveness. For good reason.

So, whoever you are working with, I think when coaching individuals or teams you need to have these two ideas firmly in mind:

This applies equally to teachers at opposite ends of any competence/experience range.

A new teacher who is really struggling could be having difficulty with managing behaviour or their radar for off-task talk or habits for monitoring engagement in independent work could be weak. However a CPD session or coaching conversation goes, they must leave feeling good about themselves and armed with specific actions to take to address these issues.

A long-serving teacher who has experienced reasonable success in terms of outcomes and gained institutional kudos will still have problems to solve. To an observer, they too might have some habits that are less than ideal for say the weakest few- e.g. they don’t really check for understanding in a systematic way or ensure all students are participating in question and answer sessions. There’s nothing to gain by exploring these issues in a way that leaves this teacher feeling anything other than strongly affirmed with positive feelings about their work. At the same time, there are actions they can take to solve problems that an observer can detect.

This is the skill a coach and CPD leader needs to have – to raise issues such that a teacher can hear them without feeling crap or defensive! This needs a sense of solidarity; a culture of deep professional respect; a sense that we’re all solving similar problems because they are inherent to the difficult work of teaching a full class of individuals simultaneously. It can also require a capacity to be direct – ‘do you mind if I share something i’ve noticed… ‘. Then you share it and explore the teacher’s perspective and the possible plan of action.

One of the things we find works with our Walkthrus five-step guides is that each step is pre-written and can serve as a prompt for a conversation. You don’t raise the issue because it’s a deficit in the teacher’s practice; you raise it because it’s there on the page as part of the description of the technique: How do you feel this bit goes for you? Do you always do or need Step 3? It de-personalises any critique and still opens up probing discussions that can allow a teacher to see their practice in a different light and consider alternatives.

My experience with schools suggests that some models don’t put enough emphasis on one or other of these elements.

• Peer coaching pairs and triads can often lack the rigour that leads to concrete action steps; they are big on motivation but weak on actions. There has to be someone there with the capacity to ask those probing questions and lead people towards impactful action steps and in a school of triads, some might work but too often too many just don’t. Lots of nice chats don’t make enough impact to be worth the time invested.
• Top-down, scrutiny driven systems can be big on suggesting specific actions but can be so impersonal that not enough attention is given to the motivation element. The whole culture revolves around teachers’ paranoia/resentment about the judgements they might receive from on high. It’s unhealthy on many levels.

So yes – there is a wide path to follow between those poles. It’s not one or the other; it’s both. Motivation matters; action steps matter. Or else we don’t move forward or we might even go backwards.