Over the last few years instructional coaching has gained popularity in a huge number of schools. What started as an approach to support early career teachers has quickly become an offer for all members of staff, with an acknowledgement that all teachers have both the entitlement and responsibility to continuously improve their practice.
The general approach to coaching is now pretty well known, at least in theory: every week or two a coach drops into a teacher’s lesson for around 15 minutes, they then give the teacher an ‘action step’, and finally they practise together how they will implement this new approach.
The action step at the centre of this approach really is the nexus of instructional coaching. It describes what a teacher should do differently to improve their teaching and secure better outcomes for their pupils. And yet, it’s devilishly difficult to get right. In my experience, the most common reason for instructional coaching failing is a poor action step.
So, how can coaches identify, frame and articulate a great action step for teachers?
Firstly, it’s important to remember that like traditional lesson observations, drop ins have pretty low validity in terms of the inferences that you can draw. As a coach you are only ever seeing a snapshot, and so it’s incumbent on coaches to remain cautious around the conclusions that they make about what a teacher is and isn’t doing.
One way of combatting this lack of validity is to draw information from as many sources as possible. Great coaches don’t only watch teaching. They also talk to students, look at their books, consider the content being taught, listen closely to questions being asked, as well as how they are answered. Crucially, they will also ask genuinely open questions to the teacher during the coaching meeting: after all, the teacher is in their lessons 100% of the time. In short, great coaches spend their time looking at, not looking for.
One way of combating this lack of validity is to draw information from as many sources as possible. Great coaches don’t only watch teaching. They also talk to students, look at their books, consider the content being taught, listen closely to questions being asked, as well as how they are answered. Crucially, they will also ask genuinely open questions to the teacher during the coaching meeting: after all, the teacher is in their lessons 100% of the time. In short, great coaches spend their time looking at, not looking for.
This isn’t to say that ‘anything goes’ in a lesson, or that coaches shouldn’t have a clear position on effective pedagogy and curriculum design. On the contrary, a precursor to writing a great action step is to have a school wide (and perhaps even department specific) vision and model for effective teaching. Once in place, this will ground all discussions in something more objective, based on research, best practice and an agreed set of principles. Without it, action steps are likely to be arbitrary and potentially even contradictory.
Even if a coach has this clear set of principles, and exercises professional curiosity without jumping to conclusions, it can still be hard to make a judgement around what an action step should be. Consider the following example of what you might see in an average lesson:
Which of these areas should the coach assign an action step in? They all seem to be very important! One way of making the decision is to use a calculus adapted from the philosopher Jeremy Bentham who formalised the ethical system of utilitarianism. Although the overriding principle of ‘maximising happiness: the greatest good for the greatest number’ was relatively straightforward, it quickly became clear that in reality happiness was harder to quantify. If I have a bag of sweets, should I give one to every person in the room, or all of them to just one person? Which action results in the greatest overall happiness?
The calculus developed by Bentham provides a number of criteria, and sets out questions that help the ethical actor arrive at their decision. I’ve adapted them here for coaching purposes, helping you to consider how you can select an action step that will have the greatest impact on the most pupils.
Highest leverage Calculus
- Scale: How many pupils are affected by the action step?
- Duration: How long would the action step benefit pupils for?
- Certainty: What is the certainty that the action step will lead to better outcomes?
- Propinquity: How far off will the benefits of the action step be?
- Fecundity: What is the probability that the action step will lead to other positive outcomes?
- Purity: What is the probability that the action step will lead to negative outcomes or lethal mutations?
Having these questions as you observe during your drop in can be a helpful way of ‘filtering’ what you can leave for another time, and what you should address first. For example, most of the time, it’s better to give an action step which will benefit the whole class, compared to one or two students.
The final stumbling block when it comes to writing a great action step is articulating it clearly by writing it down. Vague action steps like “Ensure that the higher attaining pupils are stretched” aren’t particularly helpful because although they convey a truth, they don’t say how the teacher will achieve the goal. Another mistake is to focus entirely on particular strategies, for example “use cold calling when questioning pupils”. This action step doesn’t tell you why it might be a good idea for that particular teacher in their particular subject with these particular students to cold call, and so teachers may be less invested in doing it.
Combining both of these sentiments can help to give the best of both worlds whilst avoiding their flaws. As a general rule, action steps are at their most effective when they follow the ‘goal – strategy’ framing. This means beginning with a shared goal which isn’t currently being achieved ( this could be around pupil behaviour, quality of written work, or the vocabulary being used during discussions) and then providing a strategy that should help to achieve it. So, to choose one of the examples above, for a teacher hoping to improve the language used by children during discussions, you may give the action step: ‘increase the use of technical vocabulary during partner talk by displaying clearly three key words on the board and asking all pupils to include them in their discussions.’
Action steps really can make or break the coaching process, and it’s worth spending a bit of time to begin with making sure that you go into meetings with a clear sense of what you are likely to agree as a next step with the teacher. Using the highest leverage calculus should ensure the biggest impact on the most pupils, and the goal-strategy framing will secure an action step that is specific, motivating and useful.
Find Out More
Jon Hutchinson has created two brand new modules, ‘Instructional Coaching: Which criteria can help us decide what action steps are ‘high leverage’?’ and ‘Instructional Coaching: Framing the action step in terms of goal and strategy’ which explore more about how you can enhance your instructional coaching with the aid of action steps and clear frameworks. Watch the tasters and click through to view the full module descriptions below.
Author: Jon Hutchinson
Jon Hutchinson is currently Director of Training at the Reach Foundation and an LSX fellow with New America.
