Teacher Training | Mentor Coach Training & Development

Module 1 | Introduction to Coaching and Steplab

Duration: 90 minutes

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1.1 What is Instructional Coaching?

1. Why Instructional Coaching? The need for Quality Mentor Support

Reason 1

8% of teachers are leaving the profession every year, teachers who are early in their careers are among the most likely to leave teaching.

Reason 2

A third (32.6%) of teachers leave the profession within the first five years.

Reason 3

The top-most cited reason for teachers leaving in their first five years is “A lack of support”.

DfE, Factors affecting teacher retention: qualitative investigation, March 2018

In terms of impact on student outcomes, instructional coaching has a better evidence base than any other form of CPD.
It is supported by evidence from replicated randomised controlled trials, meta-analysis, A-B testing and evidence from systematic research programmes in achieving greater success for both students and teachers.
When new teachers feel successful, and have meaningful leadership and partnership, they are significantly more likely to remain in the profession, and the more support we provide, the more new teachers we hold onto. Ingersoll (2012) Beginning Teacher Induction: What the Data Tell Us.

2. What is Coaching?

Watch this video of Yo-Yo Ma coaching three young musicians. Note down what Yo-Yo Ma says and does that:

Makes his students open to feedback
Makes it easy to implement his feedback
Makes sure his feedback sticks: that it directly and immediately changes how they play the piece

3. What does Instructional Coaching look like?

The real value of observation & feedback is not to evaluate a teacher, but to develop their practice so that their pupils can learn better.

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Coaches:

Isolate discrete skills to be practised successively and cumulatively
Narrow the focus to improve one area at a time
Model the successful implementation of the skill
Facilitate deliberate practice of the skill
Provide frequent and focused feedback that directly impacts practice

Watch this video from Uncommon Schools of Instructional Coaching in action.

Note down how the coach:

Isolates discrete skills
Narrows the focus
Models the skill
Facilitates practice
Provides focused feedback

1.2 Completing a Coaching Observation and Selecting an Action Step

1. What does a coaching observation look like?

The heart of the coaching process is observing a lesson. As a coach, you observe a lesson to gather the necessary evidence around what your teacher can do to improve the learning of the students in their class. Observations should last 10-15 minutes, by the end of your observation, you should be in a position to give feedback straight away, Steplab will help with this process.

As a result of the 10-15 minute observation, the coach should have:

Decided whether the teacher has achieved their previous action step
Decided on the next 'highest leverage' action step
Gathered evidence to help the teacher see the rationale for this change
Planned 'Probing Questions' to help the teacher build powerful mental models
Planned how they will model the change for the teacher

Key Vocab | What do we mean by 'highest-leverage action step'?

See the Frayer mode below for the definition, characteristics, examples and non-examples of action step.

An action step is considered to be 'highest-leverage' when it is the step that yields the greatest potential for improving the learning for the pupils in the classroom

Reflect:

How does the concept of bite-sized action steps cohere to your understanding of how effective learning takes place?

Key Idea | Action Steps can be a Performance or a Product

Action Steps may focus on

Performance. A physical activity such as classroom positioning or giving instructions.

or a

Product. Building resources such as planning an effective powerpoint slide or designing a specific task (e.g. Do Nows)

2. Task | Selecting an appropriate Action Step

Read the Case Study: Observing a Lesson

Imagine you are Christina, the coach and observer. What would be your action step for John that would be sure to increase learning for everyone in his classroom?

Write down your action step ensuring it is:

a) bite-size

b) highest-leverage

c) describes a specific and visible action that John can do to achieve the desired impact on learning

After you have written down your action step, move onto the next section.

Case Study: Observing a Lesson

Imagine a novice teacher – John – who is working to develop his classroom management skills. His coach – Christina – is coaching him. Here’s what Christina saw yesterday when she observed John at work.

It’s 10:30 on Wednesday morning, and as Christina slips into the back of John’s classroom, everything seems to be going smoothly. John’s Year 8 pupils are quietly finishing up an exercise on systems of equations. “Time is up! Put your pencils down” John says a few moments after Christina has entered. “I need all eyes on me.”
Most pupils look up. Daniel, however, is still working on one of the problems, and Isabel twirls her pencil between her fingers, gazing dreamily towards the door. In another corner of the room, Tracy is fiddling with a piece of paper under her desk. As John moves on, asking who knows the answer to the first question on the worksheet, a number of other pupils drift out of focus too, one by one.
John calls on Darius, who has identified the need to add the two equations to eliminate the x variable but has made some errors in adding negative integers. John asks Darius how he has got his answer. As Darius begins his explanation, however, more pupils lose focus. Tracy has shown the paper she was playing with to the classmates around her, and now they are murmuring among themselves. Their voices soon begin to compete with Darius’.
“Wait Darius” John interjects, looking around the room to see which pupils are causing the disruption. He prompts Darius to continue when the noise reduces slightly, but background noise lingers as Darius continues answering John’s question.
At this point, Christina contemplates what should be John’s next step for improvement.

3. Reflect | Selecting an appropriate action step

Christina has identified that John needs to focus on his classroom management to reduce off-task behaviour. Below are three levels of guidance that Christina could give to John.

Reflect on which level of guidance is closest to the action step you wrote down.
Did you identify the same area for improvement?
Is there anything missing from your action step?

Guidance #1

“Improve your classroom management using a variety of techniques"

This is ineffective guidance.

Firstly, when Christina arrived in the lesson, John's class was settled, this is no mean feat and suggests he is doing very well with his Classroom management for a novice teacher. John doesn’t need to improve all aspects of management.
Secondly, this guidance offers no indication about what John needs to actually do. It will not help John to improve, and might even lead him to doubt what he already can do.

Guidance #2

“Be sure to immediately redirect any pupils who are off task during your class. That will help you keep other pupils on task, so you don’t end up with an even bigger management problem.”

This is definitely stronger guidance:

It provides a more narrowed focus to when problems first emerged – John does not address the first students who go off task.
Christina has selected a more specific aspect: redirecting off-task individuals.

However, this still does not guarantee any improvement as it leaves a lot of unanswered questions:

What is meant by “off-task” behaviour?
How should john redirect?

Both John and Christina need to know and agree on what 'redirecting' looks like so that he can implement it and Christina can recognise it when she observes the class again.

Guidance #3

“Deliberately scan the room for on-task behaviour:

Choose three hot spots (places where you have students who often get off task) to constantly scan
“Be Seen Looking”: crane your neck to appear to be seeing all corners of the room
This way, pupils will know they are being watched and are more likely to stay on task"

This is an Action Step.

It is bite-size
It is explicit (observable and practicable)
It doesn't just refer to the end result, it describes the exact means of getting there

4. Using Steplab to support observations and the selection of action steps.

Selecting the right action-step, and ensuring it is effective is an expert skill. Steplab makes this process quicker and easier by providing a sequence of action steps to choose from.

The Standards Sequence is a sequence of action steps that cover the 6 fundamentals that all teachers should achieve in their formative years, aligned with the Teachers' Standards. It acts as a waterfall whereby each action step leads on to the next in order to facilitate sustainable cumulative development. Steplab will always suggest the next logical action step in the sequence, your taskk as coach becomes determining: 'has the teacher already met this step? or is there another step further down the sequence that is higher-leverage and more appropriate to the teacher at this time?'

You can familiarise yourself with the Standards Sequence in the Step Library here

You can practice the process of completing an observation of a teacher here:

5. Key Takeaways | Completing a Coaching Observation and Selecting an Action Step

How can I make sure I really make a difference when I coach?

Observe your teacher once a week
Give them feedback during the same week as you observe
Script your feedback during the lesson observation, so that you capture everything you want to share
Give your teacher feedback every single week: little regular changes make a big difference!

What should I use my observation time to do?

Decide whether the teacher has achieved their previous step
Decide on an appropriate next step
Gather evidence to help the teacher see the rationale for this change
Plan 'Probing Questions' to help the teacher build powerful mental models
Plan how you will model the change for the teacher

1.3 Giving Feedback

1. Giving Feedback

Giving feedback to a teacher is the moment that you as a coach begin to make a real difference to their teaching, and to the pupils they teach. During feedback, it's your job to ensure the teacher clearly understands their step and to hold the teacher to account to plan and practice the change before entering the classroom.

Ideally , feedback takes place in the classroom the teacher normally teaches in but without pupils present. This acts as a low-stakes environment free from distraction and allows them to practise the action where they will be delivering it e.g. they can practise delivering instructions from the visible spot in their classroom they will use when they do go ‘live’.

Key Vocab | What do we mean by deliberate practice?

See the Frayer mode below for the definition, characteristics, examples and non-examples of deliberate practice.

Reflect:

How does the concept of deliberate practice cohere to your understanding of how effective learning takes place?

Key Idea | What are the five principles of deliberate practice?

1. Just do it - Push beyond one’s comfort zones

2. Work towards well-defined, specific goals

3. Focus intently on practice activities

4. Receive and respond to high quality feedback

5. Develop a mental model of expertise

2. What does effective coaching feedback look like?

Praise progress & review previous step | What happened?
Share and agree next step | What next?
Model and reflect | What does that look like?
Plan & rehearse next step | How can I achieve this?
Decide Follow-Up Actions | How can I make it stick?

1. Praise progress & review previous step | What happened?

Praise progress: use specific examples e.g. ‘It was really effective when you delivered instructions for pupils to pack away, you broke them down into sequential steps to give pupils a chance to take up the information.’
Review the previous step: review whether the teacher met all the criteria for the action step and encourage them to keep using it.
Own success: ask your teacher 'How did achieving this step improve your pupil's learning?'

2. Agree & model next step | What next?

Most of the time you are likely to feel your teacher has made enough progress embedding their previous action step and you’ll set them a new one. If you don’t, you can repeat the previous one, modelling it again and giving them lots of opportunity to practise in the low-stakes environment.

Ask probing question: Try to ascertain the teacher's current understanding of the area of practice you wish to focus on. e.g. 'I noticed that when you set pupils an independent task, a few pupils at the back lost focus. What can you tell me about this? What impact do you think this had on the learning in your room?'
Share and agree next step: use specific examples to explain why you have chosen the next step, e.g. ‘The next step is for you to keep pupils focused without disrupting the class or highlighting to the class that someone is off task. Today we’ll work on how to give non-verbal prompts to pupils to help them refocus. Your next step is: As soon as you spot pupils beginning to lose focus, use an appropriate nonverbal prompt to remind them of your expectations e.g. a finger on your lips for silence.’

3. Model and reflect | What does that look like?

Your teacher needs to see exactly what you mean by the action step. For this, you will deliver the model you planned in your observation. This model will emphasise the criteria that make the action step really effective. After you deliver your model example, you will check your teacher understands the model and why it is effective. This is important for preventing the action step from becoming just another ‘teaching tip’.

Share criteria to focus attention: it’s hard to understand something new. Prime your teacher to see the important features of your model by telling them what to watch out for e.g. ‘Watch for how I exaggerate my facial expressions and gestures because the prompt I am giving is entirely non-verbal.’ If the action step is product-based e.g. you are showing them how to plan something, prime them on what to listen out for in your thought process.
Model: deliver the model example of your teacher’s action step, emphasising the key features. If it is a performance target such as delivering instructions, model as if you are in a ‘live’ environment i.e. with pupils, so your teacher can see exactly what it should look like. If you are modelling a product such as planning an exit task, think aloud, so they have access to your thought process as well as your actions. Feel free to make use of video in your models.
Check: make sure your teacher understands the ways in which the step you have modelled is different from their current practice by asking 'What is the difference between my model and your current practice?'. Don’t be afraid to support your teacher by telling them the answers, if they are unsure. It is vital that they are really clear.

4. Plan & rehearse next step | How can I achieve this?

Practising in a low-stakes environment will enable your teacher to refine and become fluent in their action step before they go ‘live’ in front of their pupils. Support them to practise their action step with your guidance, so they can get it exactly right. The more rounds of practise you can achieve, the better equipped the teacher will be to implement the action step successfully in the 'live' classroom.

Plan to rehearse: explain to your teacher how the practise will run by telling them what they need to do. You may need to support them to write a script for what they will say e.g. to script manageable, sequential instructions before they practise delivering them. It is fine if your teacher needs to read from a script at the beginning of the practice. If your teacher is practising a product such as planning an exit task, they may need the steps visible to them as a support at first.
Run practice: once your teacher is prepared, guide them to get into the correct mindset and position to begin practising. Explain what your role will be. Sometimes you will need to be a pupil e.g. when they are practising supporting a pupil to refocus, and all the time you will be watching them practising, so you can give micro pieces of feedback to ensure they are getting all of the key features right.
Feedback and practise again: support your teacher to get the action step exactly right by giving them feedback and having them practise again to refine and become fluent e.g. if your teacher is practising giving a pupil a non-verbal prompt to refocus them, you might need to give them feedback to exaggerate their gesture so the pupil sees and understands it and have them practise doing this. If your teacher is practising a product e.g. adapting a set of questions for their class, they should be thinking aloud the thought process you modelled. Provide feedback to help them apply the correct principles and time to practise an aspect again.

5. Decide Follow-Up Actions | How can I make it stick?

Agree what the teacher will do to make this change stick: ensure your teacher makes concrete plans for when they will implement their action step over the course of the week. For some action steps e.g. manageable and sequential instructions, your teacher will be able to identify numerous times to use this in their teaching. For other action steps e.g. identifying the critical knowledge, skills and concepts they need to teach, your teacher will need support with when and how often to do this over the week.
Suggest a drop-in: suggest another teacher for them to drop in on in order to observe this action step being used effectively in a 'live' classroom
Agree on next observation: agree on which section of their lesson you will be observing next time in order to see the new action step being used by the teacher.

3. Reflect | Facilitating Deliberate Practice

Reflect on the following questions:

1. Why do teachers need to engage in deliberate practice?

2. What can deliberate practice look like?

3. What challenges do you anticipate with Deliberate Practice?

4. How do you plan to overcome these challenges?

3. Using Steplab to support giving feedback

When it is time to give feedback, Steplab takes all of the notes you made during your observation and turns it into a script to provide a framework to your discussion.

It divides the feedback up into the following sections aligned with our model for effective coaching feedback:

Praise progress & review previous step | What happened?
Share and agree next step | What next?
Model and reflect | What does that look like?
Plan & rehearse next step | How can I achieve this?
Decide Follow-Up Actions | How can I make it stick?

You can practice the process of running through a feedback conversation here:

4. Key Takeaways | Giving Feedback

How can I make sure I really make a difference when I give feedback?

Make sure you praise your teacher when they get better. Try to make your praise as specific as possible.
Make sure that you use the step and criteria to clearly model what great teaching looks like. Without a model, the teacher has nothing to base their improvements on.
Make sure you discuss your model with the teacher and ask them to think about how this compares to their current performance. If they can clearly see the gap, they are ready to get better.
Make sure to carefully plan for the change with your teacher.
Make sure to complete lots of repetitions of practice with your teacher - we don't ever nail something the first time.

What should I use my feedback time to do?

Discuss what happened in the lesson observation (Praise progress)
Agree what the teacher needs to do next (Action Step)
Establish what that looks like (Model the goal)
Make this a reality through planning and deliberate practice
Make this stick by agreeing a plan of implementation

1.4 Contracting

1. What is contracting?

Contracting is a process that involves teasing out the norms, goals and ways of working that will lead to a productive professional relationship. It is a reciprocal process intended to develop shared expectations, establish mutual respect and pre-empt potential issues. This serves as a starting point for you as a coach to reflect on the key messages you want to get across in this meeting and support to prepare effectively for it.

2. Why is contracting important?

Contracting serves as an anchor upon which you base the foundations of the coaching relationship. Without these solid foundations, it makes the rest of the working relationship harder to build upon and less resilient when faced with situations or factors that will test this relationship throughout the year.

3. What does contracting involve?

Contracting is used in many different contexts and across all different fields so there is a lot of variety in what contracting looks like and how it is carried out. Despite these superficial differences, contracting can be viewed on three levels:

Professional: Considers the aim of coaching in relation to the professional development of the ECT.
Procedural: Considers the practicalities of making effective coaching happen.
Psychological: Considers the perception and possible misconceptions of coaching, and how you might deal with these.

4. Your contracting meeting

In your first meeting with your teacher, use the following prompts as the basis for a coaching contracting discussion.

Contracting is most effective when both parties (yourself and the teacher) answer questions for each other so consider how you would also answer each of the questions below:

1. Professional prompts

What is important to you in your work?

What do you want to get out of this process?

What do you need from me to make this work well?

2. Procedural prompts

What is the best way for us to communicate and when?

When are the best times to meet for our mentor sessions?

What classes/subjects are best to observe?

3. Psychological prompts

What does an effective professional relationship look like for you? Can you give me an example?

What experience have you had of observation? How can we make observation an effective experience?

What experiences do you have of coaching? What might we need to do to embrace this coaching approach?

Download Printable Copy

1.5 Making the most of Steplab (optional)

1. Using Study for Coaching

As a coach, it's helpful to have a clear picture of of the science of learning and what great teaching looks like in the area where you are setting steps. This is where the Study for Coaching function comes in. You have the power to access clear evidence summaries and models of excellent practice before you coach to help you make an even bigger difference to the teachers that you work with.

How does Study for Coaching work?

In Study for Coaching, you have access to a short, clear and precise evidence summaries in the areas you are setting steps. This content is there to help you if you need it, but is entirely optional.

The teacher you are coaching will get sent the same study after you set them an action step in that area.

Common Misconceptions

Misconception: I have to use Study for Coaching before I can observe.
Truth: You don't ever have to use this feature. We suggest that it might be a good idea for you to brush up on the science of learning in an area before you coach, but we also recognise how busy you are. Study is voluntary.

2. How to Look at a Teacher's Progress

As a coach, it's helpful to keep a close eye on the progress that your teacher is making. To do this, you can look at your teacher's activity feed.

This gives you a clear guide about the action steps that you have set for your teacher so far, and any learning activity surrounding this.

Why might you want to look at the progress bar?

Before you observe your teacher, you may want to get a sense of the steps they have achieved so far;

You may also want to visit View and log progress to check in with any work that they've done on their own, upload a document for them to view or send them some comments about their learning.

3. Viewing and Logging Progress Against a Step

Steplab is designed to support great coaching, but getting better at teaching is more than just being set action steps by your coach.

Great coaches and teachers work together to track and ensure progress towards mastery of steps: for rapid, sustained progress, it helps to track your progress as you work towards achieving a step, and work with your coach and others on making tweaks to techniques until they suit you and your context.

View and log progress shows all of a teacher's activity as they work with their coach towards achieving a step. It also enables a continued dialogue between teachers and coaches through the recording of additional reflections, notes and questions.

Click View Feedback to look at the feedback information the coach compiled.

Click Tap to log progress to leave a comment. If teachers leave a comment, their coach is sent a message. If coaches leave a comment, teachers are sent a message.

4. Viewing the Step Library

The step library is for looking through action steps that may be available to you. You will be able to access an overview of all the development areas and action steps associated with the programme you are on.

If you are in a role that has access to the library, you can access it from your Learn tab and clicking on Library.

1.6 Key extracts and further reading (optional)

Extract 1 | Practice with Purpose

An article from Deans for Impact, co-authored with Anders Ericsson (Author of ‘Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise’), exploring the role of ‘deliberate practice’ in early career teacher development. We zoom into the role that ‘goal setting’ and ‘effortful practice’ play in the development of expertise.

Mentor Training Extract 1.pdf

Extract 2 | Putting students on the path to learning

A paper from some world-leading educational psychologists and designers on the evidence on ‘guided instruction vs discovery learning’, and implications for expert and novice learners. The article is written from the perspective of helping pupils in classrooms to learn, but the evidence is just as important for us to consider from a teacher development perspective.

Mentor Training Extract 2.pdf

Extract 3 | All teacher training should be practice-based

A blog from our own Harry Fletcher-Wood, who leads our programme, Teacher Education Fellows. He reflects on his own experiences of designing and delivering training for teachers at the beginning of their career.

Mentor Training Extract 3.pdf

References

Education Endowment Foundation. (2019) Putting Evidence to Work: A School’s Guide to Implementation. Our core text for your Impact Programme.
Deans for Impact. (2016) Practice with Purpose: The Emerging Science of Teacher Expertise.
Barker, J. (2020) Designing effective professional development.
Furst, E. (2018) Understanding understanding.
Fletcher-Wood, H. (2019) Designing professional development for teacher change
Kennedy, M. (2016) How does professional development improve teaching.
Sims, S., & Fletcher-Wood, H. (2020). Identifying the characteristics of effective teacher professional development: a critical review. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 1-17.
Sims, S., & Fletcher-Wood, H. (2018). Characteristics of effective teacher professional development: what we know, what we don’t, how we can find out.
Kraft, M. A., & Papay, J. P. (2014). Can professional environments in schools promote teacher development? Explaining heterogeneity in returns to teaching experience. Educational evaluation and policy analysis, 36(4), 476-500.
Fletcher-Wood, H., & Zuccollo, J. (2020). The effects of high-quality professional development on teachers and students: A rapid review and meta-analysis.
Timperley, H., Wilson, A., Barrar, H. & Fung, I. (2007) Teacher Professional Learning and Development: Best Evidence Synthesis Iteration.
Kraft, M. A., Blazar, D., & Hogan, D. (2018). The effect of teacher coaching on instruction and achievement: A meta-analysis of the causal evidence. Review of educational research, 88(4), 547-588.
Kraft, M. A., & Blazar, D. (2018). Taking teacher coaching to scale: Can personalized training become standard practice?. Education Next, 18(4), 68-75.