The Coaching Toolkit

The Coaching Toolkit
The Coaching Toolkit
A Practical Guide for Your School
Shaun Allison and Michael Harbour

© Shaun Allison and Michael Harbour 2009
First published 2009
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Contents
About the authors vii
Acknowledgements ix
Key to icons x
List of electronic resource materials xi
How to use this book xii
1 What is coaching? 1
2 Why coaching? 14
3 Getting started 19
4 Specialist coaching 29
5 Using coaching for new teachers 36
6 Group coaching 45
7 Coaching in challenging circumstances 53
8 The first steps for school leaders 65
9 Establishing peer coaching across the school 78
10 Measuring impact 86
Suggested timeline for implementing a coaching programme 100
Glossary 103
References 105
Index 107
About the authors
Shaun Allison
[email protected]
Shaun Allison is Assistant Headteacher at Littlehampton Community School in
West Sussex, which is a large 11–19 comprehensive. In this role, he has overall
responsibility for the Continuing Professional Development of the staff at the
school, as well as the induction of Newly Qualified Teachers. He also works very
closely with three local Higher Education Institutions, co-ordinating the school
placements of their Initial Teacher Training programmes. His other leadership roles
at the school include leading the performance management process and evaluating
the impact of whole-school improvement initiatives. Prior to this, he was Head of
Science at another large comprehensive school in West Sussex. Under his leader-
ship, the department showed continuous improvement at KS3 and GCSE. Since
2005, Continuing Professional Development at the Littlehampton Community
School has developed into an innovative and highly personalised programme, with
coaching and sharing best practice at its heart.
Michael Harbour
[email protected]
Michael Harbour is a Consultant Headteacher, who has led two co-educational
13–18 comprehensive schools in the United Kingdom. The first successfully oper-
ated a joint sixth form with its neighbours, and developed a collaborative cluster of
primary, middle and secondary schools (see ‘Collaboration, Competition and Cross-
phase Liaison: The North Lowestoft Schools Network’ in Consorting and Collaborating in
the Education Marketplace (1996) Bridges, D. and Husbands, C. (eds) London: Falmer
Press). The second, a school in challenging circumstances, achieved four years of
continuous GCSE improvement under Michael’s leadership. During his time as a
Headteacher, he served on the University of East Anglia’s Initial Teacher Training
Advisory Panel and was a consultant Head in the Suffolk Headteacher Appraisal
Scheme. Since becoming an independent consultant in May 2000, he has sup-
ported schools facing challenging circumstances in the United Kingdom and in
Dominica and St Lucia in the Windward Isles. He has written a guide to school
development planning in conjunction with principals and education officers in
Dominica, and helped to introduce peer coaching in schools in the south and
north of England. He works closely with teachers, senior teams and education offi-
cers to build the capacity for sustained school improvement.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to many people for their contributions to this book and for their
support and inspiration.
We would like to thank Julia Vincent, Sue Bond, Julie Woodward, Ian Boundy,
Trevor Pask and colleagues at Bognor Regis Community College, West Sussex, who
embraced coaching wholeheartedly and who gave generously of their time to
reflect on their experiences. We thank John Morrison for his wise counsel and
unfailing belief in his staff’s capacity to make a difference.
We are indebted to Jayne Wilson for her commitment and support for the devel-
opment of coaching at Littlehampton Community School and to her staff who
have engaged with the coaching process.
Many thanks to Will Thomas for his clarity, theoretical framework and vision of
coaching, and for getting us started.
We would like to thank colleagues at Patcham High School, in particular Paula

Sargent for her invaluable suggestions about measuring the impact of coaching,
John McKee for his enthusiasm and passion for developing coaching in schools,
and Pete Korman for the many conversations that helped to clear the fog.
We are grateful to Bill Whiting, Vicky Whitlock, Austen Hindman, Kerrie Parsons and
the staff at Mayfield School, Portsmouth, whose determination and teamwork were
inspirational, and to Ian Cox for encouraging all of us to step outside our comfort zone.
Our thanks go to two colleagues in particular in the West Sussex Advisory Service –
Lesley Smith for challenging assumptions and for being so clear about how to support
the work of coaches, and to Mark Wilson for his grounded approach to whole-staff
coaching training.
We are indebted to Katie Morgan for her useful case study, and Tracy Smith and the
rest of the teaching staff at Seven Kings High School for their inspirational work on
Assessment for Learning.
Our thanks must also go to all those coaches and coachees with whom we have
worked in schools and from whom we have learned.
Finally our thanks to Jude Bowen and Amy Jarrold for guiding us through the pub-
lication process.
ix
Key to icons
Chapter objectives
Case study
Questions for reflection and discussion
Electronic resource available from website
Summary
Further reading
List of electronic resource materials
Wherever you see the icon, downloadable material can be found at

www.sagepub.co.uk/allison for use in your setting. A full list of materials follows.
Chapter 1
Beliefs and principles of coaching
Beliefs about learning and teaching
Coaching, counselling and mentoring definitions
Peer coaching
The effective coach
Chapter 2
Coaching helps people to …
Coaching is based on …
Skills–motivation matrix
Why coaching? 1 and 2
Chapter 3
Record of coaching conversation (FLOW)
Record of coaching conversation (STRIDE)
Self-talk and performance success task
Chapter 5
Coaching prompt cards
NQT co-coaching – lesson observation review sheet
Chapter 8
Teaching audit
Procedures for peer coaching
CPD staff questionnaire
Protocol for peer coaching
Sample coach invite letter
Chapter 9
The coaching cycle
Coaching for performance – PowerPoint presentation
Coaching for performance – training plan
Coaching for performance – programme
Request for coaching form
Chapter 10
Coaching review template
Job satisfaction chart
Teacher attitudinal survey
Whole-school coaching audit
Student survey
xi
How to use this book
We decided to write this book because we have experienced, in a range of very dif-
ferent schools, the power of coaching to develop teachers’ practice. In a ‘coaching
school’, you will hear much conversation about what works effectively in the class-
room and you will notice openness about the issues that teachers face, a high degree
of self-reflection and a real confidence that teachers will find the solutions to their
own challenges. In other words, coaching has the capacity, if properly embedded, to
generate enormous positive energy and a ‘can do’ culture within a staff.
We noticed that, although there are many excellent books on the market about the
theory and skills behind coaching, very few writers have paid attention to the prac-
ticalities of introducing and embedding coaching in a busy school. We intended to
plug this gap, as well as sharing our enthusiasm and experiences with you.
After writing The Coaching Toolkit, we have come to one very firm conclusion about
using coaching as a staff development tool in schools. That is, there are many ways
to go about setting up coaching and some approaches may not fit in with your own
ideas or the needs of your institution. This is fine! Bill Whiting, Assistant
Headteacher, Mayfield School, Portsmouth, sums this up beautifully, by describing
coaching as being like a virus in that it needs to adapt and evolve depending on the
conditions and circumstances of the school. Consider the following questions in
this context:
• What is to be the focus for coaching? The focus of how coaching is used may
vary from year to year, or school to school. For example, the whole school may
be involved in coaching trios, or coaching may be used to develop teachers in
their second year of teaching.
• What are the school’s circumstances? Schools are clearly very different places,
because of the circumstances they find themselves in (special measures, ‘coasting’,
low morale, dynamic, pro-active …). These differing circumstances will determine
how coaching will be used.
• What is the climate of the school? In schools with different cultures, coaching
could be viewed as:
a tool to address failure and weakness

°
Continuing Professional Development (CPD)
°
a tool to celebrate strengths
°
a way of improving practice
°
a way of developing people.
°
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK xiii
The challenge is finding the right way to do it in your school. What have other
schools done to establish coaching? What were the practicalities? What were the
problems? How did they overcome these problems?
Finding the answers to these questions, based on the real experiences of schools, is
not easy. Coaching as a staff development process in schools is relatively new.
Schools are still trying it out for themselves – seeing what does and does not work.
We have been doing what we tend to do a great deal in education, and that is work-
ing in isolation – trying to work through a problem that has probably been experi-
enced and solved by an institution 20 miles up the road. This book provides a
means for sharing some of the good practice that schools have developed.
The strategies and resources in the book have all been developed and used by the
authors and their colleagues in schools in England. Shaun has worked with Mike in
his own school, Littlehampton Community School, to develop coaching with a
view to improving the quality of teaching and learning for three years. During this
period the school has seen a steady improvement in the examination outcomes of
its students. Mike has also worked with leaders in a number of other schools, many
of which have been in ‘challenging circumstances’ requiring swift improvement
following an inspection. He has worked with these schools to develop coaching. All
of these schools, have made significant improvements and have been successful in
addressing the issues raised following their inspection. We have taken the oppor-
tunity to reflect on and celebrate their successes in this book.
As coaching develops in a school, some of the things we put into place will work well
and serve to move coaching and, as a result, teaching and learning on, whilst other
initiatives will not work so well and will be abandoned or further developed. What
does happen though is that coaching will evolve and develop a life of its own – again,
like a virus!
What is clear, however, is that the skills of coaching are generic. They can be used
successfully with children and with adults in schools of all sizes, from small pri-
mary to large secondary, in urban and rural settings and in schools with a range of
strengths and weaknesses.
How you can use this book in your school

Chapters 1–3 are designed to help the practitioner to clarify what coaching is about
and to begin using it as a tool to support the development of learning and teaching.
Chapter 1 deals with the question, what is coaching? It then goes on to look at the
differences and similarities between mentoring and coaching. It also explores some
of the models that are available for the structuring of coaching conversations and
finally looks at the skills needed to become an effective coach.
Chapter 2 explores why coaching is a powerful developmental tool for teachers and
looks at the impact of coaching on teaching and learning compared to other pro-
fessional development activities.
xiii
xiv THE COACHING TOOLKIT
We hope that Chapter 3 will be especially useful to teachers who are relatively new
to coaching. Here we suggest:
– ways of practising coaching skills before ‘going live’ with coachees
– how to establish the ground rules for coaching conversations
– how to conduct coaching conversations
– how to give feedback on an observed lesson in coaching mode.
Chapters 4–6 examine the use of coaching for different purposes and will be of
value to practising coaches and school leaders alike.
In Chapter 4 we define specialist coaching and consider how school leaders can use
it to address specific developmental priorities within their school. We also look at
how coaching can play an integral role in performance management and consider
the wider issues of collaborative working within schools.
Chapter 5 explores how co-coaching can be used to develop Newly Qualified

Teachers (NQTs) and teachers in their second year of teaching.
In Chapter 6 we look at group coaching and suggest that knowledge of how adults
learn is important in the setting up of coaching groups. We then go on to look at
how different groups of staff could use coaching as a development tool for a vari-
ety of purposes.
Chapter 7 shows how coaching can rapidly develop and can have a significant
impact on teaching and learning, despite challenging circumstances. The case stud-
ies illustrate best practice in the development of coaching trios; the use of lead
teachers to drive the coaching process; how to support the work of a coaching
team; how coaching can be used to support the work of one department; how to
measure the impact of coaching. The lessons learned in the two schools can be
applied in a range of different school contexts.
Chapters 8–10 are of particular interest to school leaders and deal with many of the
organisational issues associated with setting up, sustaining and measuring the
impact of coaching in schools.
In Chapter 8 we suggest how to carry out a whole-school CPD audit, how to identify
and train potential coaches and how to establish whole-school coaching protocols.
Chapter 9 deals with some of the issues that arise as coaching develops in the
school. It also considers how to promote the idea of coaching to the whole school,
how to identify the needs of different coachees and match them with a coach and
how to meet the development needs of coaches.
In Chapter 10 we explore the issues around measuring the impact of coaching in

schools and suggest ways in which it can be done. Finally, we look at how to audit
the development of coaching.
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK xv
Whenever you see the downloadable resources icon materials are available from
the website to support this book and can be used and adapted for your context.
It is hoped that this book will provide school leaders at all levels, including teach-
ers who are leaders in their classrooms, with something that we couldn’t find when
trying to establish coaching in a range of different schools – a practical, hands-on
guide to developing coaching at your school.
We do not claim to be experts in this area; there are many more colleagues work-
ing in the field of performance coaching who have a far greater knowledge base of
the theory of coaching. However, we both have hands-on experience of setting up
coaching in a range of secondary schools. We have also been fortunate enough to
have worked with a number of very talented teachers and coaches, who have been
keen to share their expertise and experiences of coaching. We thank them.
1
What is coaching?
In this chapter we will look at:

• what coaching is
• the differences between mentoring and coaching
• a variety of coaching models that can be used in schools
• what makes a good coach.
Good teachers can be developed, providing they are working in a supportive and
positive environment where it is okay to try things out, make mistakes and then fur-
ther refine their ideas. They also need to be able to reflect on the issues that are
important to them with an encouraging colleague, who will listen and ask key ques-
tions to help them find their solution – not the ‘this is the way I do it, so you should
do the same’ approach. This, in our view, is the essence of coaching.
In the sixteenth century, the English language defined ‘coach’ as a carriage, a vehi-
cle for conveying valuable people from where they are, to where they want to be.
It is worth holding on to this definition when talking about coaching in schools.
The staff are the most valuable resource that a school has. They are the people that
make the difference to the young learners that come to our schools. We therefore
have a duty to help and support each other, to become the best teachers that we
can possibly be. Coaching is a vehicle to do this.
‘The good news is that as a teacher you make a difference. The bad news is that as a teacher
you make a difference.’ (Sir John Jones, speaking at the Accelerated Learning in Training
and Education (ALITE) conference, 2006)
Teachers are often all too aware of when things are not going well and how they
would like things to be – what is often called their ‘preferred future state’. What we
often struggle with is how to get there. What do I need to change? What can I do
differently? Why is it not working? A coach is a trusted colleague who asks the right
questions to help you find your own way to your preferred future state.
It is important to recognise that this is not new, not rocket science, nor is it a
panacea. Teachers in schools have been supporting each other in this way for many
years. The skills of a good coach will be examined later on but, put simply, they are
2 THE COACHING TOOLKIT
listening, questioning, clarifying and reflecting. To coach successfully in schools,

you do not need vast amounts of training or a certificate – you just need to have
experienced it and to have reflected on its value. We are not talking about life
coaching here nor about counselling, which are two very different things that
should most definitely be left to the experts. It is the simplicity of coaching in a
school setting that makes it such a useful, universal and powerful developmental
tool. However, it is only a tool – a very powerful one – but one of many that should
be stored and used in the professional development toolbox. It would be naïve to
believe that coaching is the ‘teacher’s cure-all’.
When examining definitions of ‘coaching’ it is clear that there are common threads
running through all of them. They all suggest that coaching is a professional relation-
ship, based on trust, where the coach helps the coachee to find the solutions to their
problems for themselves. Coaching is not about telling, it is about asking and focus-
ing. This is what separates mentoring from coaching. A mentor is often used when
somebody is either new to the profession, for example a teacher in training or NQT,
or is new to a particular role in the school. The mentor will have more experience
than the person being mentored in that particular role, and so passes on their knowl-
edge and skills. With coaching, the approach is different. It is more concerned with
drawing out the solutions to a problem, by effective questioning and listening. It is
non-hierarchical and does not depend on any expert/subject specific knowledge. In
fact, one of the most successful coaching relationships that we have seen involved a
NQT coaching an experienced teacher of nearly 30 years on how to effectively incor-
porate information and communication technology (ICT) into her lessons.
Case study: Sarah and Jan
Jan was a physical education (PE) teacher with nearly 30 years of teaching expe-
rience. She was a good and well-respected teacher, who had recently started
teaching English to Year 7. Sarah was an English NQT. Jan had identified that she
wanted to make her lessons more engaging by using her newly acquired inter-
active whiteboard. She didn’t want to attend a course on this but had been
impressed with some of the lessons of her colleague, Sarah, who taught next
door. Following a school training day on coaching, Jan asked Sarah if she could
coach her. The two soon struck up a highly effective coaching relationship,
which involved three coaching sessions and two lesson observations – each
observing the other. Jan described how she felt at the end of the process: ‘Sarah
helped me to clarify exactly what I wanted to achieve, and the steps I had to take
to get there. As a result, I now feel confident using my interactive whiteboard
and have achieved my goal – to deliver more interesting and engaging lessons’.
It is worth acknowledging that this relationship was an unusual one – in terms of

the difference in experience of the coach and the coachee. However, it does demon-
strate the non-hierarchical nature of coaching.
Many of the skills of good mentoring and good coaching overlap – and often a
blended approach of the two is most effective. When supporting a colleague, it is
important not to be constrained by the labels of ‘coaching’ and ‘mentoring’. By this
we mean that, if during a coaching conversation it becomes clear that no amount of
WHAT IS COACHING? 3
Continuum support and development
Mentoring Coaching
Instructing Questioning
Input Drawing out
Hierarchical Non-hierarchical
Assumes subject- Subject-specific
specific expertise expertise not
required
Figure 1.1 Continuum of support and development
questioning, reflecting, listening or clarifying is going to move the person on, then
sometimes you need to slip into mentoring mode and make a suggestion. There is
nothing wrong with this, although we suggest that it may be helpful to be explicit
when adopting a different stance by, for example, asking permission of your
colleague – ‘Would it be all right if I were to suggest a possible course of action here?’.
Alternatively, the coach may be able to tap into the coachee’s preferred future and ask
the coachee to visualise a possibility – ‘What would it look like if you were to …?’.
Mentoring and coaching should be seen as a continuum in terms of supporting and

developing teachers.
This blended approach is often evident when mentoring NQTs. When the NQTs are
starting out, it is very much a mentoring relationship. You will be imparting your
knowledge and skills to the NQTs, so that they can develop as teachers. As the mentees
become more confident and competent, the balance between mentoring and coaching
shifts further along the continuum towards coaching.
One other important difference between coaching and mentoring is that of mak-
ing judgements. Often a mentor has to make a judgement about the standard
reached by the person being mentored, for example has he or she met the qualified
teacher status (QTS) standards or the induction standards? This will result in quite
a different relationship from that between coach and coachee, where it is very
important not to be judgemental.
So, what are the skills that make a good coach? It is widely agreed that there are four:
• listening
• asking open questions
• clarifying points
• encouraging reflection.
Examples of these will be discussed later. Coaches also need to be good at:
• building rapport – using posture, gestures, eye contact and so on
• adopting a non-judgemental view of others
• challenging beliefs – a good coach must be willing to have difficult conversations

• seeing the big picture – this is at the heart of good coaching. Ask the question – ‘So
what do you want to achieve? What do you want to be better?’
• summing up – this helps to keep the conversation focused and on track. For
example, ‘So, what you’re saying is you want to improve …’
• encouraging others to agree on actions – an essential part of the coaching

process is committing people to action. For example, ‘So, following our discus-
sion you are going to …’
• acknowledging that they don’t have all the answers – this is fine. The role of the
coach is to elicit the answers from the coachee
• respecting confidentiality
• developing a mutual trust and respect
• adopting a solutions focus – once the issues have been uncovered, don’t allow
the conversation to descend into a spiral of negativity. Direct the coachee onto
what they are going to do about it
• holding a strong belief that colleagues have the capacity to learn, develop and
change.
They also have the following qualities:
• curiosity • optimism • honesty • trustworthiness
• patience • consistency • flexibility • creativity
• confidence • approachability • professionalism • openness
The importance of questioning in coaching

It should be clear by now that the principles behind coaching are straightforward.
It is fundamentally about using questioning and listening skills to help coachees to
resolve their own issues. However, there are a number of different coaching mod-
els that can be used to achieve this (see below). These models provide a framework
for the coaching conversation – the dialogue between the coach and the coachee.
With all of these models, if a coaching conversation is to be successful, the coach

will be required to use a range of different questioning strategies.
Clarifying questions
The purpose of this type of questioning is to clarify the issue – to get to the nuts
and bolts, and so clear the way for deeper thinking. For example:
• ‘Tell me more about …’
• ‘What aspect of this do you want to discuss today?’

WHAT IS COACHING? 5
• ‘When have you had success in this area? Tell me more about that’
• ‘I am interested to hear about …’
• ‘You say that your starters are too long. Is that always the case?’
• ‘What makes you think that this is an issue?’
Reflective questions
Reflective questions encourage the coachee to think about and reflect on their prac-
tice. For example:
• ‘What do you want your starter activities to achieve?’
• ‘What factors do you take into account when planning your lessons?’
• ‘What did you want the students to learn today?’
• ‘What would have to change in order for …?’
• ‘What do you wish …?’
• ‘What’s another way you might …?’
• ‘What would it look like if …?’
• ‘What do you think would happen if …?’
• ‘How was … different from …?’
• ‘What sort of an impact do you think …?’
• ‘What might you see happening in your classroom if …?’
• ‘What is your hunch about …?’
• ‘What was your intention when …?’
Summarising questions
These are useful when the conversation has drifted away and you want to get the
focus back. They are also useful to check that you have listened effectively and that
the coachee has communicated accurately. For example:
• ‘So, to summarise, you say that the following factors are resulting in your
starters taking too long … is that right?’
• ‘So, you are saying the key issue is …’
• ‘So, in order to achieve this, you say that you are going to …’
Outcome questions
Towards the end of the coaching conversation, you will want the coachee to commit
to action. The following questions may help:
• ‘What is your first step to achieve this?’
• ‘What will you do next?’
• ‘What support do you need?’
• ‘On a scale of 1 to 10, how compelled are you to do this?’
• ‘What will it look like, when you are successful?’
It should be noted that the majority of these are open questions. An open question
directs the respondent away from a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, but towards a longer and
more reflective response. Open questions will usually start with what, how and
describe, for example, what happened when you tried that strategy with this class?
What leads you to think that it will not work? How would you do that differently
next time? Can you describe one strategy you have used that has been successful? It
is helpful to avoid ‘why?’ questions as they may sound too critical. (See Chapter 3
Getting Started – The ‘shape’ of the conversation).
Listening: the most difficult skill!

When coaching we must work hard to focus on our coachee’s words, tone of voice,
body language and what is not being said, as well as what is, in order to ask the
right question at the right time. We must not anticipate or construct possible solu-
tions for our colleague – that is not our job. So, our listening skills need to be acute
and, of course, they will develop with practice.
It is useful to recognise that we listen at three different levels.
Internal listening
Here we are listening to the self-talk inside our heads. Our colleague’s comments can,
and often do, prompt thoughts of our own. How many times, whilst in conversation,
have you found yourself thinking, ‘That’s just what happened to me the other day … ’
or ‘I felt exactly the same when …’? Such internal listening acts as ‘interference’ and
prevents the coach from giving the client his or her undivided attention. With prac-
tice, coaches learn to filter out the interference and are able to listen actively.
Active listening
This occurs when the coach is paying full attention to the coachee’s words, tone of
voice, images and figures of speech. Then the coach is able to ask those (usually
open-ended) questions, as discussed above, that help the coachee to move towards
a solution. Moreover, by focusing all of his or her attention on the coachee, the
WHAT IS COACHING? 7
coach is motivating the coachee. There is, after all, something very special about
really being listened to in the hectic world of a busy school! This is likely to be very
important for the self-esteem and confidence of the coachees, especially if he or she
is, as we say, ‘in a bad place’.
Intuitive listening
When you are really tuned in as a coach, you begin to learn the thought patterns
of your colleague, detect areas that are left unsaid and sense the feelings that lie
under the surface of the conversation. You are beginning to listen intuitively
and this may lead you to ask questions that will help the coachee to explore
important and challenging aspects of issues. Such questions as, ‘What are your
feelings about …?’ or ‘Is it significant that you haven’t mentioned …?’ may be
helpful here.
Finally, before we move on to consider different coaching models, it is important

to urge the coach to allow thinking time and to resist shattering the silence with
yet another question! When the coachee is in important territory, he or she often
needs a lengthy pause in which to explore and formulate thoughts and feelings and
to summon up the courage before saying anything. Have the confidence to hold
the silence. Be attentive and encouraging, but don’t speak!
Coaching models
The acronyms that accompany the following coaching models provide prompts for
the different stages of the coaching conversation. This section will examine a range
of these models and discuss the differences between them.
STRIDE model
This model has been developed by Will Thomas, author of two very useful books:
Coaching Solutions: Practical Ways to Improve Performance in Education (Thomas and
Smith, 2004) and Coaching Solutions: Resource Book (Thomas, 2005). These are two
books that we strongly recommend for anybody wishing to explore the skills of
coaching in more detail. The STRIDE model is summarised as follows:
• Strengths: Affirm the positive throughout and draw attention to their strengths.
• Target: What do you want to achieve as a result of this process?
• Reality: What is the current situation like now and what obstacles are there to achiev-
ing your goals?
• Ideas: What could you do to address the situation?
• Decision: What are you going to do? What are the next steps?
• Evaluation: Check the decision: How committed are you to doing this? Over time: What
progress have you made towards meeting these targets?
The essential aspect of the STRIDE model is that it really celebrates the strengths of
the coachee so the whole process becomes a very positive experience. However, it
does encourage the coachee to consider what obstacles there may be, which could
prevent them from reaching their target, but they also have to consider how they
could overcome these obstacles. The job of the coach is to keep asking open-ended
questions to help the coachee to move towards a solution.
FLOW model
The FLOW model is explained in Powell et al. (2001).
• Find the challenge: What is the issue that you need to address?
• Look at reality: What are things like now?
• Open possibilities: What could you do about it?
• Win commitment: What are you going to do and when?
There are clear similarities between the STRIDE and FLOW models. One of the key
differences is that the STRIDE model starts by looking at the coachee’s preferred
future, whereas the FLOW model starts by talking about the challenge, that is, What
is it that you want to address? From this starting point will then come the discus-
sion about what the targets are. Both models emphasise the need to look at what the
reality is now. This is important, as it will open up a dialogue about what the obsta-
cles or blocks are which are stopping the coachee from making progress. Only once
these are brought to the fore can the issue really start to be addressed. It is surpris-
ing how often this is the key part of a coaching session and that by just seeing the
situation clearly (rather than what was thought or imagined to be the situation), the
resolution often becomes obvious and straightforward. Lastly, the STRIDE model
encourages the coachee to evaluate both the appropriateness of the target and the
progress towards it over time.
GROW model
The GROW model is one of the best known and most widely used coaching mod-
els, both within and outside education. It provides a simple yet powerful frame-
work for navigating a route through a problem, as well as providing a means of
finding your way when lost. It is described in a number of coaching books, includ-
ing John Whitmore’s excellent book, Coaching for Performance (2002).
• Goal: What is the outcome to be achieved? The goal should be as specific as possible
and it must be possible to measure whether it has been achieved. So, having
identified the goal, questions like ‘How will you know that you have achieved
that goal?’ are useful.
• Reality: What are things like now? What is stopping you from getting there?
(Continued)
WHAT IS COACHING? 9
(Continued)
• Options: What options do you have to help you get there?
• Wrap up: This is the What, Where, Why, When and How part of the process. At this stage,
having explored all of the options, the coachee makes a commitment to action.
The attraction of the GROW model is its simplicity. A useful metaphor for GROW
is a map: once you know where you are going (the goal) and where you are (cur-
rent reality), you can explore possible ways of making the journey (options) and
choose the best route.
OUTCOMES model
The OUTCOMES coaching model has been developed by Allan MacKintosh, of
PMC Scotland (www.pmcscotland.com). It was designed for managers and sales
managers to use, but it is clear to see how it could be adapted for teachers.
• O What are the employees’ specific Objectives?
• U Understand the exact reasons why they want to achieve these objectives.
• T Take stock of where they are at present in relation to each objective.
• C Clarify the gap that they have to fill.
• O What Options do they have in order to fill the gap?
• M Motivate to Action.
• E Offer continual Encouragement and Energy.
• S Clarify what Support is needed to ensure actions are carried out.
It is suggested that this in-depth approach to coaching will enable an increase in

the coachee’s understanding of the issue, which will result in motivation to change
and then commitment to action. Although this model needs a disciplined
approach to coaching, it is a model that, when used effectively, has been shown to
motivate and produce results for both coach and coachee.
CLEAR model
The CLEAR model was developed by Peter Hawkins and is discussed in Coaching,
Mentoring and Organizational Consultancy: Supervision and Development (Hawkins and
Smith, 2006).
• Contracting: Opening the discussion, setting the scope, establishing the desired outcomes
and agreeing the ground rules.
(Continued)
(Continued)
• Listening: Using active listening and catalytic interventions, the coach helps the coachee
to develop an understanding of the situation and generate personal insight.
• Exploring: (1) Helping the coachee to understand the personal impact the situation is
having on the self. (2) Challenging the coachee to think through possibilities
for future action in resolving the situation.
• Action: Supporting the coachee in choosing a way forward and deciding the next step.
• Review: Closing the intervention, reinforcing ground covered, decisions made and
value added. The coach also encourages feedback from the client on what
was helpful about the coaching process, what was difficult and what she or
he would like to be different in future coaching sessions.
The CLEAR model has a number of differences from the other models. It starts by
discussing the ‘contract’. This allows the ground rules to be set, so the coachee has
the opportunity to discuss how he or she would like to be coached. There is then a
big emphasis on listening – a key component of coaching. When we are being lis-
tened to we feel valued, when we feel valued our self-confidence rises and we are
more likely to commit to change. The review stage is also important, as it not only
reviews the outcome of the coaching session but also reviews the effectiveness of
the process. This is important. We should not just assume that the session has been
effective, particularly if there is going to be a further session. We should discuss
how useful the session was, and how we could make it even more useful next time.
OSKAR model
This model has been developed by Paul Z. Jackson and Mark McKergow at
Solutions Focus and is discussed in The Solutions Focus: Making Coaching and
Change SIMPLE (2007).
The whole principle of this model is not to look at the problem, as this very rarely
yields any solutions, but instead to look at what works well and to do more of this
and less of what does not work well.
• Outcome: What is the objective of this coaching? What do you want to achieve today?
• Scaling: On a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 representing the worst it has ever been and 10
the preferred future, where would you put the situation today? You are at n now; what
did you do to get this far? How would you know you had got to n+1?
• Know-how and resources: What helps you perform at n on the scale, rather than 0?
When does the outcome already happen for you – even a little bit? What did you do to
make that happen? How did you do that?
• Affirm and action: What’s already going well? What is the next small step? You are at
n now; what would it take to get you to n+1?
(Continued)
WHAT IS COACHING? 11
(Continued)
• Review: What’s better? What did you do that made the change happen? What effects
have the changes had? What do you think will change next?
The positive nature of this approach, coupled to the idea of scaling, makes it an
attractive model. This somehow makes the issue more tangible. This approach is
similar to the STRIDE model in that it really focuses on the strengths of the
coachees, and encourages them to consider how they could use these strengths to
address any issues that they may have.
HILDA model
One of the best bits of advice regarding coaching was also one of the simplest. It followed
a discussion with a colleague about the importance of not getting too hung up on fol-
lowing a script when it comes to coaching. We felt that it should be a natural and flow-
ing dialogue between two professionals and the coach should not have to constantly
refer to a bank of questions, whilst engaged in coaching. This is most off-putting for the
coachee and does not help to create the informal and relaxed atmosphere required for
coaching. With this in mind, it was suggested that the best type of person to become a
coach is a nosey person! Someone who will quite naturally ask question after question
in order to find out what they want – and in doing so, will also help the coachee to find
out. This simplicity seemed most appealing. Some readers might remember a character
called Hilda Ogden – the archetypal nosey neighbour – in Coronation Street (a long-run-
ning television soap, based in the north of England). What a fantastic coach she could
have made, with her continuous probing and incisive questioning. This led us to con-
sider an alternative, simple model for coaching – the HILDA model.
• Highlight the issue: What do the coachees want to address? What do they want to be
different and how?
• Identify the strengths: What do they already do well? How can these skills and attrib-
utes be used to address the particular issues?
• Look at the possibilities: In an ideal world, with no obstacles, what could they do to
address the issues? What is getting in the way of doing this? How could these obstacles
be overcome? What have they already tried? What worked and what didn’t?
• Decide and commit to action: What are they going to do to address the issues? When
are they going to do it? How are they going to do it?
• Analyse and evaluate the impact: How will they know if they have been successful?
What will it look like?
Although in its early days, we have used this model in schools with an encourag-
ing degree of success. Its simplicity makes the key stages easy to remember, within
the framework of a constant reminder to ask open questions throughout each of
the stages.

• Who among your colleagues possesses the qualities of a good coach?
• With whom in your school could you explore ideas about coaching?
• Who might be interested in developing coaching in your school?
• What do you think the pros and cons of the different models we have
looked at might be in your own school?
Summary
• The principles of coaching are consistent throughout these models. What varies
is the way in which each of the models approaches coaching. You may, of
course, wish to devise your own, based on the best bits of all of the models
described above. The advantage of doing this, in collaboration with a range of
colleagues from within your school, is that the people using the model will feel
a sense of ownership over the approach.
• It is very easy to get bogged down with the theory of coaching – what is right
and what is wrong. A coaching conversation should never become a scripted
event, so whichever model you decide to use, do so carefully. It would be very
off-putting for a coachee to be faced by a coach with a clipboard and a list of
questions. It should be a natural dialogue, involving a great deal of listening by
the coach and open questioning, aimed at helping the coachee to find a solution.
Electronic resources
Go to www.sagepub.co.uk/allison for electronic resources for this chapter
Beliefs and principles of coaching
Beliefs about learning and teaching
Coaching, counselling and mentoring definitions
Peer coaching
The effective coach
Further reading
Jackson, P. Z. and McKergow, M. (2007) The Solutions Focus: Making Coaching and Change
SIMPLE (2nd edn). Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
Powell, G., Chambers, M. and Baxter, G. (2001) Pathways to Coaching. Bristol: TLO.
Thomas, W. (2005) Coaching Solutions: Resource Book. Stafford: Network Educational Press.
WHAT IS COACHING? 13
Thomas, W. and Smith, A. (2004) Coaching Solutions: Practical Ways to Improve Performance in
Education. Stafford: Network Educational Press.
Whitmore, J. (2002) Coaching for Performance. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
Useful websites
www.thesolutionsfocus.com
www.coachingnetwork.org.uk
www.curee-paccts.com/index.jsp
2
Why coaching?

• why coaching is a powerful developmental tool for teachers
• the impact of coaching compared with other professional develop-
ment activities.
Coaching, as a performance-enhancing tool, has its roots very much in the business
world. There, if something is not working, or not getting the required results, it is
changed rapidly – and often coaching is the tool for that change. Whilst we would
not subscribe to the fact that schools should be run and led like or by businesses,
there is something to be learned from this approach. There is a tendency, when
things are not going well for us, to view the problems as being outside of our con-
trol. To illustrate this from a teaching point of view, if students are not as focused
or as engaged as we might wish and as a result not making sufficient progress, then
we have a choice of action. We can either change our practice to adapt to the situ-
ation and hopefully improve things, or carry on regardless, thinking that the prob-
lems are not connected to our practice and that something outside of our control
might eventually change and address the situation.
This is where coaching comes in. Coaching is a tool that encourages teachers to look
at their practice and make changes. Coaching is able to achieve this because of the
fact that the person telling the coachee how to change is not an advisor, consultant,
leader from within the school or some other expert – it is themselves. The coachees
are setting the agenda – they determine the issue they want to look at, they come
up with the solutions and they determine the timeline for the action they decide to
take. Once people have decided for themselves to commit to action, this is a great
motivator for achieving their own goals. All the coach is doing is facilitating this
process and witnessing the commitment and the change. Do not underestimate the
power of the witness. People are far more likely to act if they have set their own tar-
gets in the presence of a colleague, the coach, who is genuinely interested in them.
Question for reflection and discussion

To what extent are the staff within your institution willing and able to find their
own solutions, when things are not going well?
WHY COACHING? 15
Julian Rotter (1954) came up with the idea of ‘locus of control’. In very simple terms,
this is concerned with an individual’s perception of the main causes of events in life.
Somebody with an ‘external locus of control’ will feel that their behaviour is guided
by fate and luck or other external circumstances. What happens to them is beyond
their control. On the other hand, somebody with an ‘internal locus of control’ will
feel that their behaviour is guided by personal decisions and efforts. They are respon-
sible for what happens in their life, and so their actions have a direct effect on their
future. A teacher with an external locus of control may view the behaviour of the stu-
dents as nothing to do with himself or herself – it is all to do with other factors – so
there is no need to do anything differently as it will have no effect on the students’
behaviour. Following a bad lesson, this teacher may blame the students, the weather,
the fact that the bulb on the overhead projector went, the previous lesson that the
students had – in fact, anything but themselves. On the other hand, the teacher with
an internal locus of control will view the situation differently. Their thought process,
following a bad lesson, would be more along the lines of: That didn’t go too well –
what did I do that didn’t work? What could I do next time to make it better?
Coaching can help colleagues to see the link between their actions – in terms of
relationships with students, teaching strategies, body language – and the learning,
engagement and progress of students. This awareness will then start to shift them
from an external to an internal locus of control.
Having introduced coaching, we examined the advantages of having a staff with an

internal locus of control achieved through coaching. Following the initial introduc-
tion of coaching we had about a dozen coaching pairs set up. After these pairs had
been through a coaching cycle, we asked the coachees if they could very simply jot
down their thoughts about the process.
This provided us with evidence of the following traits that were developing
amongst staff who had been involved in the coaching process:
• Self-sufficiency Staff who can solve their own problems become far more self-
sufficient. This is an effective way of working. Instead of problems lingering,
becoming worse and then having a bigger negative impact on the students’
learning, simply because they are not dealt with (because nobody knows how
to), they can be dealt with and addressed quickly and effectively. This minimises
the impact that issues have on the learning of the students.
‘The coach I worked with was really supportive. They helped me to work through the
issue myself and find a solution. And it worked! As a result, I felt more confident to
tackle issues on my own. Really good, thanks very much!’ (Maths teacher, five
years’ experience)
• Self-esteem Staff who feel that they are listened to, but who can deal with
their own issues, feel confident. Good teaching and learning is all about confi-
dence. Furthermore, the more confident staff feel, the better equipped they will
be to support and develop their peers.
‘The best CPD I have had in the last three years. Brilliant!’ (German teacher, three
years’ experience)
• Efficiency Working in this way enables individuals, groups and the whole
school to get to the nub of the problem quickly, to deal with it and move on. The
process enables staff to avoid getting distracted by other things that have nothing
to do with the real issue – which often wastes a great deal of time in school meet-
ings. However, for this to happen, there needs to be a no-blame culture through-
out the school so that people feel safe about discussing the issues they may have.
‘I took the ideas on board that I discussed with my coach, used them with my classes
and as a result felt more confident, organised and generally happier about how the first
meetings with my classes went. It has had a knock on effect throughout the year with
most of my classes’. (Science teacher, three years’ experience)
• Team work Coaching helps to foster a great team spirit. Why? Because you
don’t have to be an expert in the issue to coach somebody to help them resolve
the issue. This means that everybody has something to offer and so everyone
feels valued. Imagine working in a school like that!
‘Great to see the issue from another angle and come up with a solution … together’.
(Science teacher, two years’ experience)
• A dialogue about pedagogy Experience has shown us that as a school goes

down the path of coaching, teachers within the school begin to have more of an
open dialogue about pedagogy. This is when coaching becomes highly effective.
This process of reflecting on the coaching that had taken place was encouraging as it
confirmed what we thought – that coaching has the potential to help support and
develop the teaching staff. Although we did note that some of the conversations had
perhaps involved mentoring as some coaches had offered their ideas. We say ‘poten-
tial’ because, although we knew that the staff had enjoyed being coached and that
their perception of the process was that it was useful, we had not yet measured its
impact. Had the coaching really had a significant impact on the learning of the stu-
dents? This is a topic that we deal with in a later chapter. Nonetheless, if any whole
school initiative is to succeed, it needs to have the support and affirmation of the staff.
Coaching vs other CPD activities

What does CPD mean to the staff in your institution? What opportunities for a
range of CPD activities does your school provide for the staff?
In recent years, there has been a shift of emphasis towards CPD in school. This has
seen staff taking far more responsibility for their own CPD, with schools providing
a range of developmental activities for them to engage in. In the forward-thinking
school, CPD is less about staff training days and training courses and more about a
process of ongoing, collaborative professional learning – where professionals sup-
port and learn from each other.
In her book, The CPD Coordinator’s Toolkit, Sue Kelly describes CPD as: ‘any activity
which enhances the quality of teaching and learning within the school. It should
WHY COACHING? 17
develop the school and the individual and impact directly on what goes on in the
classroom’. (2007: 12) When talking about challenges facing CPD coordinators, she
says: ‘it is through our work and our vision of what constitutes creative and dynamic
CPD practices that we can transform the learning culture in our schools’ (2007: 1).
We would argue strongly that coaching meets the goals expressed in both of these
statements. It is certainly a strong driver for developing the quality of teaching and
learning, as well as establishing a learning culture amongst the staff. A school that
invests in coaching will be rewarded with contagious professionalism amongst its staff.
Bruce Joyce and Beverley Showers (2002) concluded from a study working with
teachers in North America that coaching had a dramatic impact on the transfer and
application of new learning. In fact, this application of new learning was signifi-
cantly higher when acquired through coaching than by other training methods.
The study looked at a range of teacher developmental activities such as:
• lectures on new teaching strategies, during external courses or workshops
• demonstrations of new teaching strategies by ‘expert’ teachers within the workshop
• practising these new strategies with colleagues attending the workshop
• feedback from the ‘expert’ teacher or course organiser
• working with a coach on these new strategies in the workplace.
Joyce and Showers then examined how each of these activities impacted on the acqui-
sition of knowledge and skills, and whether they resulted in new strategies being
applied to classroom practice. The research found that, while lecturing teachers
improved their knowledge of new teaching strategies, it did very little to develop their
skills or classroom practice. Seeing the new strategy demonstrated improved skills
acquisition slightly, but still did not translate to a change in classroom practice. Skills
acquisition did improve when the teacher practised the new strategies in the workshop,
but this still did not result in any long-term change in practice. In fact the only way that
a significant change was seen in skills/knowledge acquisition and classroom application
was when the teachers worked with a coach on the new strategy – in the workplace.
In our experience, this certainly holds true. Until recently, a vast amount of the
CPD budget at most schools has probably been spent on sending colleagues on
external training courses. They would then return armed with a folder and perhaps
a nice pen. However, the impact of the training in terms of changing their teach-
ing strategies was often difficult to see in the classroom. Similarly, any newly
acquired skills were not shared amongst colleagues. This seems to be a very expen-
sive and ineffective use of school resources. Unfortunately, staff do not always feel
the same way. Unless they have sat in a basement function room of a hotel and had
a substantial buffet at lunchtime, they do not feel that they have had proper CPD.
This requires a shift of culture and thinking. The range of CPD activities available
to staff, including coaching, needs to be sold to staff.
Before we started down the path of coaching, the other two main forms of CPD
that staff embarked on, apart from going on external courses, were mentoring
and following an MA (Education) programme. It could be argued that both of

these are more valid CPD activities, in terms of long-term impact, than external
courses. Mentoring, as already discussed, overlaps with coaching, but its uses are
limited to colleagues who are either new to teaching or new to a role. Although
following an MA course certainly encourages colleagues to think and reflect on
their work in school, the extent to which classroom practice changes as a result
can be variable. However, while these two activities serve a purpose, we still do
not think that they have such a long-term impact on transforming teaching and
learning as coaching does.
Summary
As learning institutions, schools have an obligation to provide a range of opportuni-
ties for their staff to engage in professional learning. Coaching facilitates this.
Evidence suggests that coaching is one of the most effective developmental tools in
schools in terms of long-term impact. As coaching is based on the idea that all staff
have the potential to develop each other, it serves to raise self-esteem and build the
capacity for sustained improvement within a school.
Coaching helps people to …
Coaching is based on …
Skills–motivation matrix
Why coaching? 1
Why coaching? 2
Further reading
Joyce, B. and Showers, B. (2002) Designing Training and Peer Coaching: Our Need for Learning.
Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Kelly, S. (2007) The CPD Coordinator’s Toolkit. London: Paul Chapman Publishing.
3
Getting started

• practising your coaching skills
• how to establish the ground rules for coaching
• conducting a coaching conversation
• how to give feedback on an observed lesson.
Practising your skills

We are assuming that as somebody working in a school, who is about to embark on
some work as a coach, you will have received some training in the skills and prin-
ciples behind coaching as outlined in the previous chapters. Perhaps your school
has invested in the services of an external trainer for a group of colleagues or has
introduced coaching to the whole staff on a training day. (See Chapter 8 for some
ideas about how to train teachers in coaching techniques.)
So, you are ready to begin. You may well be feeling anxious and reticent about tak-
ing the first steps – after all, you are no expert and don’t feel up to solving the class-
room problems of your colleagues. You have enough of your own! Of course, you
understand that coaching is not about having the answers or specific subject
expertise, but even so … This is where your fellow coaches come in. They may be
members of your small coaching group or indeed the whole staff. We suggest that
you begin working in a coaching trio with two fellow coaches as described below.
Within the trio, one person will act as a coach and use one of the coaching models
already described (STRIDE, FLOW or one of the others), to support the coachee with
an issue that is real to them. This is very important. This work does not involve role
play, rather it is dealing with real professional challenges. The observer will listen to
the conversation and take notes. You may decide that the observer should act as the
coach’s coach, in order to suggest alternative questions. It is useful to note the body
language of both parties, tone of voice, how naturally the conversation seems to flow,
whether the coach brings out the solution or resorts to ‘telling’ the coachee what to
do, and the types of questions that are being asked – are they open or closed? Which
questions move the issue forward? The three people would subsequently swap roles,
A Coach
B Coachee C Observer
Figure 3.1 Coaching trios to develop coaching skills
until all three have had the opportunity to be coach, coachee and observer and have
each had feedback about their performance as coach. You may have encountered the
power of trios in your training. Certainly, in our experience, they are invaluable in
the early stages of learning how to become an effective coach.
Case study: Littlehampton Community School – Introduction

to coaching
A mixed comprehensive school on the south coast of England, with approximately

1800 students on roll.
When coaching was first launched at Littlehampton, a group of 12 teachers
were identified and provided with initial training in coaching, during which
they experienced working in trios. The teachers within the group came from a
variety of subject areas and had a wide range of experience. Some were in their
first years of teaching and others were middle leaders. However, they were all
good classroom practitioners and exhibited many of the skills and qualities of a
good coach as described in previous chapters.
Before they went ‘live’ and worked with colleagues in school, it was clear that
they needed to gain further experience in coaching and being coached outside
of this training session. Even with all the necessary theory, coaches will only
become effective once they have coached and been coached themselves. To
this end, the coaches spent a summer term coaching each other. This gave
them the opportunity to practise and refine their coaching skills.
During this training and development stage it is important to provide the
coaches with the opportunity to meet up and discuss progress. This is a really
important and necessary stage of the process. It is only once people have had
a chance to do some ‘real’ coaching, that they come up with such issues as:
• How do we deal with long pauses?
• What happens when the conversation ranges over issues outside of school
and starts to slip towards counselling?
• What happens if I don’t know the answer?
The interesting point was that the coaches were now in a position to coach themselves
to answer these questions. They also commented that they felt reassured having had
the opportunity to make mistakes in a safe and supportive environment.
GETTING STARTED 21
As the confidence of the coaches grows, staff could be offered the opportunity to
work alongside one of the coaches. This then allows the coaches to put their skills
to work on colleagues with real issues that need resolving.
How to establish the ground rules for coaching

conversations
Once you have decided to begin to engage in coaching and you are about to enter
a coaching partnership, you will need to give some thought to the basic ground
rules with which coaching conversations will be conducted. Protocols are impor-
tant, as they clarify the parameters within which you are working. Coaching is a
very personal, and sometimes sensitive, process. So, if people are going to engage
with it, they need to feel secure in, for example, the knowledge that their confi-
dentiality will be respected. If this is not the case, they will not engage and you
will go nowhere with it. (For suggestions about how to set up whole-school proto-
cols, see Chapter 8.)
We recommend that you sit down with your coaching partner at your first meeting
and agree a set of simple ways of working with which you both feel comfortable
and which address some of the following questions:
• Will your discussions be confidential? (We assume that they will be!)
• Where and when do you intend to meet?
• What is to be the focus of the work? For example, are you looking to coach each
other in specific aspects of your practice (co-coaching) or is one person primarily
looking to use the other to bounce ideas off in order to clarify issues and
commit to action? Perhaps your colleague is hoping to use you as a specialist
coach, in order to achieve a performance management target. We assume that,
whatever the emphasis, you will be keen to establish that this is a collaborative,
non-judgemental and non-hierarchical process.
• What do you both want as desired outcomes of the coaching partnership?
• Is your work going to be time-limited? If so, how long do you intend to work
together?
• How are you going to keep a record of the conversations? Are you going to use
some sort of recording template (see Chapter 10)?
• If your work is going to involve classroom visits or lesson observations, how will
you organise them (see below)?
• How will you evaluate the impact of the coaching on your practice?
• Your school may ask you for feedback on the value of the coaching process.
How are you going to provide this? Are you being asked to fill in a question-
naire or some kind of summary sheet that gives an indication of the areas of
your work? If so, will you do this independently or jointly? How does this sit
with the principle of confidentiality? We deal with this issue in some detail in
Chapter 10 and take the view that any account of coaching that is given to a
third party needs to be carefully worded jointly by coach and coachee and
should respect the agreed confidences between them.
Your school may have devised a protocol for coaching which deals with some of
these questions. Although this may seem rather formal, it can be useful in that it
serves to outline what the process is and how it would work. The other advantage
of this approach is that it acts as a prompt, an ice-breaker, to generate discussion
on what coaching is all about before you begin.
Conducting a coaching conversation

Of course, a coaching conversation is not a scripted event. It should be allowed
to flow and will contain important silences as the coachee grapples with ideas
and uncertainties. In the early stages, it will be important to build rapport and
here the coach needs to demonstrate some of those key qualities that we identi-
fied in Chapter 2, notably respect for the coachee, a strong belief that the
coachee has the solutions within himself or herself, genuine curiosity and
unfailing optimism.
It is possible to manage some of the factors that impinge on the conversation,

notably the environment in which the conversation takes place and your own
responses to your colleague – how you listen, your physical posture and your tone
of voice. In addition you have in mind a model for the conversation (STRIDE,
FLOW, HILDA, and so on) that will help to give the dialogue some shape, as well
as some useful questions that you hope to be able to ask at appropriate moments!
Let’s have a look at each of these factors in a little more detail.
The environment
Clearly you will need to find a room in which you can establish a comfortable yet
professional atmosphere. Perhaps easy chairs will be available, water to drink and
maybe a low table between you if you suspect your colleague may need a ‘barrier’,
at least to begin with. It will be important to make and sustain good eye contact,
so check that there is no excessive glare in the room. Ensure that you are not likely
to be interrupted by people knocking on the door or by telephone calls and if you
make notes, do so discreetly and with the coachee’s permission.
Listening, physical posture and tone of voice

In Chapter 1 we discussed the importance of active, client-focused listening, as
opposed to listening to the conversation inside your own head. At the outset this
will be crucial in order to build rapport and to enable you to begin to tune in to the
speech patterns and body language of your colleague. The messages that we give
physically through how we sit in relation to other people are signals that we ignore
at our peril when coaching. This is best illustrated through an example.
GETTING STARTED 23
Case study: Mike and Jenny
Mike was to give coaching feedback on one of Jenny’s lessons that he had
observed. He had worked closely with Jenny for over a year or so and had estab-
lished good rapport with her. Jenny was the Head of Humanities, and in her sev-
enth year of teaching. The location for the conversation was ideal – easy chairs
with a low coffee table between them, and the lesson had been really interesting.
So he launched in enthusiastically with the first question, ‘How do you think that
went, Jenny?’, leaning forward across the table as he spoke. Immediately, Jenny
sat back and withdrew her legs under her chair, thus displaying a degree of dis-
comfort. Over the next few moments Mike slowly sat back to reflect Jenny’s seat-
ing position. As the conversation developed, Jenny moved forward in her seat as
she identified the good practice that had been evident in the lesson and her con-
fidence grew. By the end of the meeting she was thinking about how she might
use what she was doing with other members of her department. Jenny and Mike
were sitting with heads and torsos inclined towards each other across the table.
This is called mirroring and the important thing to note is that the coach, unlike Mike
at the start of the conversation, must take his or her physical cues from the coachee.
It really does put people at their ease, if done gently. It is a technique that needs prac-
tice and is something that you could work on with fellow coaches in a supportive trio.
Similarly you can tune or modify your tone of voice. For some people, as politicians
will avow, this is a difficult area! You will need to adopt a natural, positive tone that
encourages the coachee to relax, to say more and to reflect. Again, this is perhaps
something that you could work on with coaching colleagues in a trio. Try an exer-
cise in which the observer gives feedback examples of good (and then not-so-good)
vocal tone and discuss the impact of each on the coachee.
The ‘shape’ of the conversation

Much of this book is about what the literature calls ‘solution-focused coaching’.
Essentially, the coach encourages the coachee to work away from a problem and
towards a solution. As you will see in the examples below, the coach is constantly work-
ing to help the coachee to replace negative self-talk, which takes the form of ‘can’t do’
statements, with positive self-talk (‘can do’). This helps the coachee to avoid being stuck
merely describing problems rather than looking for solutions. By encouraging this pos-
itive mindset, the coach is giving the coachee the confidence to move forward.
When conducting a conversation, we suggest that you try to avoid ‘why?’ questions,
which can sound critical and may lead to defensiveness. Far better to ask, ‘What led
you to …’, rather than ‘Why did you start the lesson like that?’. Similarly, ‘What
makes you think that …?’ is a good substitute for ‘Why do you think that …?’
Be aware that the journey to a solution will not necessarily be a direct one. There
may be cul de sacs and diversions on the way. Nevertheless, whichever model for
coaching you have in your head, you are aiming to help the coachee to move
through the following stages.
Setting goals
In this phase you are helping the coachee to formulate a desired outcome. Here,
as elsewhere in the process, it will be important to help your colleague to see
possible solutions rather than problems, so it is useful to avoid questions such
as, ‘What is the issue?’ (problem focused) in favour of, ‘What will it be like when
you achieve your goal?’ (positive focus). You are trying to help the coachee to
tune into a preferred future state. Interestingly, the real goal may not be the first
one that the coachee expresses. Be prepared to ask ‘What else?’, and to return to
goal setting later in the conversation if necessary, as your colleague talks and
reflects.
Checking the current reality

Try to keep the focus on the positive aspects of the present situation. You may be
able to use the technique called scaling here to mitigate such totally negative self-
talk as, ‘I’m never successful with 8A’ or, ‘I can’t do plenaries’. Try asking, ‘On a
scale of 1 to 10, how successful are you right now with 8A?’. Very few people will
say ‘zero’ so the next question is, ‘You say you are working at 3, so what features
are effective to make it a 3?’ and remember that positive tone of voice! In other
words you are asking, what is already working, if only to a small degree? By asking
such questions you are likely to discover, and enable the coachee to identify, some
of his or her strengths and thus he or she will grow in confidence.
Considering options for action

Here you are helping the coachee to open up alternatives beyond the present,
apparently restricted situation. You could, of course, ask ‘What are your options in
planning your next lesson for 8A?’. However, if you think it advantageous to help
the coachee to stay in a positive future state, you might ask ‘If 8A were working
well, what would be happening?’ or ‘If there were no obstacles, what would you
do?’. These are what Will Thomas calls incisive questions that may help your col-
league to cut through to the nub of what success looks like. You could then move
on to ‘What might be the easiest (or most effective) thing to do?’. (See Chapter 2
of Will Thomas’s book, Coaching Solutions: Resource Book (2005), for a helpful taxon-
omy of questions that could be used in coaching conversations.)
Committing to action
Having heard your colleague weighing up several possibilities, it is now time to ask,
‘What do you reckon is the first step?’ or a similar question designed to begin the
process of focusing on action. Summing up could be useful at this point, during
which you use the coachee’s own words to reflect what he or she has decided to do.
(Be prepared to summarise or reflect back what you have heard at any stage in
the conversation. It is a useful check of whether you have understood and, for the
coachee, whether he or she has communicated what they intended.) Once more
you could ask your colleague to scale, this time as a measure of commitment.
The answer to a question such as, ‘On a scale of 1 to 10, how committed are you to
doing this?’, will speak volumes! If the answer is ‘Probably 3’, you will need to help
GETTING STARTED 25
your colleague to explore alternatives. You may even have to check reality by
asking, ‘What are the barriers to you doing this?’.
Revisiting the goal

Before the conversation ends it may be useful to reflect back to your colleague the
stated goal from earlier in the conversation and then to ask, ‘Is this a good place
to start?’. You will be amazed how many times this question will lead to the
response, ‘Well, maybe I would be better doing ___ first’. But of course you must
not imply that it is, or isn’t, a good place to start. Here you need to keep your voice
scrupulously neutral. In subsequent meetings you will need to help your colleague
to evaluate the impact of his or her actions and perhaps to set further goals.
Finally, before you agree the date and time of the next meeting, remember to ‘keep
the door open’, by saying something like, ‘Let me know how you get on’. This will
encourage informal, ‘on the hoof’ feedback and is an important signal of your gen-
uine interest in your colleague’s progress.
Giving feedback on an observed lesson

Clearly lesson observation is not a necessary part of coaching, although it often is
part of the process. It is important that the purpose of the observation is clear. Is
this an opportunity for the coach to be observed, in order for the coachee to see an
aspect of pedagogy being demonstrated? If so, formal feedback may not be neces-
sary or, if it is, it will involve coachee and coach de-constructing the lesson together
in order to make explicit some aspect of practice.
Assuming that the purpose is the more usual one – that of coach observing coachee
to subsequently ask questions, so that the coachee will focus on aspects of
practice to be developed – we recommend the following positive, non-judgemental
approach to the observation and feedback. It is very important to establish this
non-judgemental approach to observing lessons from the outset. In practice we
find that teachers find this very hard to do, and this is partly why we encourage
coaches to observe each other and to give the sort of feedback described below,
before they work with ‘real’ coachees.
Observing the lesson

• Negotiate the date, time and class to be observed and agree the focus of the
observation.
• Greet your colleague and the children on entering the classroom unless you
judge that this would disrupt the lesson.
• Give thought to where you will sit in the classroom in order to be least intrusive.
• Spend the first few minutes of the observation ‘tuning in’ to the class. Avoid mak-
ing eye contact at this stage in order to allow your colleague and the children to
behave as normally as possible. (It may be helpful to record any factual information
at the top of your observation form during this phase.)
• You may wish to talk unobtrusively to children about their work, during an
active part of the lesson. (Note the time during which you were not observing
on the lesson record.)
• It may be useful to observe discreetly two or three members of the class to ascertain
whether they are actively participating in the lesson and making progress.
• Write down exactly who does and says what and when in the lesson. The record
of the lesson is a factual account of what takes place.
• An account of classroom dialogue can be useful as an aid to recall when giving

feedback.
• It is helpful to record a timeline during the observation and to log the times at
which significant or unusual events take place (for example, ‘2.15: child entered
with note’ or ‘10.05: practical activity began’). This helps the observee to map
the passing of time. Bear in mind that managing time is a demanding skill for
most teachers.
• With practice you will develop a personal shorthand that will enable you to
record as much of what takes place as possible. Even then you will be able to
record no more than about two thirds of what occurs.
• At the end of the lesson thank your colleague once all the children have left the
room and confirm the time and place for the feedback. Do not be drawn into
offering judgements about the lesson.
Giving feedback
• The feedback needs to take place as soon as possible after the observation (cer-
tainly within five working days), in private and in a relaxed atmosphere. It can
be useful to provide the feedback in the room in which the observation took
place in order to recall individual children by indicating where they were sitting.
Do, however, give yourself thinking time beforehand. You may need to frame
specific questions as a result of what you saw.
• Begin by asking your colleague how the lesson went. This often enables the
teacher to express concerns about details of the lesson and to relax. Active lis-
tening is important at this stage.
• As in any coaching conversation, be aware of your colleague’s body language

during the feedback. It is effective to gently mirror his or her posture as the ses-
sion progresses.
• Start by saying something positive in the first sentence of the feedback. Then recount
the observation record in a matter-of-fact way, stopping as necessary to give and
receive comments and to ask questions for clarification.
GETTING STARTED 27
• Remember to maintain good eye contact with your colleague during your feedback.
• Be descriptive rather than judgemental and avoid ‘you should have …’ statements.
• It is important to focus on what happened in the lesson. In this method of giv-

ing feedback the observer is acting as a mirror to enable the coachee to see the les-
son and to draw conclusions for herself or himself.
• It can be useful to model the way in which your colleague did or said something
during the lesson. This technique should be used with caution and only in a
secure, professional, coaching relationship and with the coachee’s permission.
• As issues emerge, ask questions that will enable the coachee to open up possibil-
ities for change. For example, ‘What would it have looked like if …?’ and ‘What
led you to …?’. Sometimes the teacher will make a statement that can be
explored with the question ‘Could you tell me a bit more about …?’.
Alternatively, it may be helpful to reflect something that he or she said earlier in
the conversation. In other words, use your coaching skills.
• At the end of the feedback the observee should be encouraged to reflect on the
feedback and to draw out the strengths of the lesson and any issues that he or
she wishes to tackle. ‘So, what do you now feel about the lesson?’ or ‘What did
you see in the feedback?’ or ‘What do you think having heard the feedback?’ are
all useful ways of encouraging this self-reflection.
• The coachee may decide, as a result of the coach’s questioning, to specify targets
to be worked on subsequently.
• A copy of the observation record may be given to the observee. It is also helpful for
the coach to provide a written summary of the observation. This should state the
strengths of the lesson and any actions that the coachee intends to take. It should
be a summary of the points raised in the feedback and should contain nothing new.
It may be useful to leave the coachee with one or two questions during the feed-
back to prompt reflection. These questions should be written in the summary.
• At the end of the feedback both parties should feel positive about the experience.
• If further observations are planned, the coach must allow sufficient time to
elapse before returning. In the meantime, updates and advice can be exchanged
informally in the staff room. It is important to allow the coachee time to con-
solidate the skills that have been targeted. Teachers, like other learners, may
regress before they progress!

• Which coaching skills do I currently use in my work?
• Which coaching skills do I need to develop?
• How will I do this?
• What support is to be provided for coaches in the early stages of their work?
Summary
• It is important to find opportunities to practise your coaching skills before ‘going
live’ with coachees.
• Coaches need to pay attention to the environment in which they hold coaching
conversations as well as to their physical posture and tone of voice.
• They also need to establish some mutually acceptable ground rules for the
coaching work.
• It is important to keep in mind the ‘shape’ of the conversation when coaching.
• When giving feedback on observed lessons as a coach, concentrate on giving a
factual account of what happens in the lesson.
Record of coaching conversation (FLOW)
Record of coaching conversation (STRIDE)
Self-talk and performance success task
Further reading
Flaherty, J. (1999) Coaching: Evoking Excellence in Others. London: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Starr, J. (2003) The Coaching Manual. London: Prentice Hall Business.
Thomas, W. (2005) Coaching Solutions: Resource Book. Stafford: Network Educational Press.
4
Specialist coaching

• what we mean by specialist coaching
• how school leaders can use specialist coaching to address specific
developmental priorities within their school
• how coaching can play an integral role in performance management
• the wider issues of collaborative working within schools.
As part of a school’s own self-evaluation, there will be specific areas of teaching and
learning that will be highlighted as areas for development and these will be
included in the school’s development plan. It is at this stage that there is often a
gap. Having identified areas for development, schools do not always make adequate
provision to address the issues. At best, there may be a slot during a staff training
day to explore the issue. It is unlikely, however, that this will be followed up in any
widespread and sustained way and, as a result, the momentum usually gets lost. At
worst, it may be left to chance for this area of weakness to become an area of
strength – this will very rarely happen.
Specialist coaching allows schools to address these specific issues in a targeted and
sustained way. When we refer to specialist coaching, we are talking about teachers
who have a strength in a particular area, for example behaviour management, work-
ing alongside and coaching colleagues who want to develop this area of their prac-
tice. This approach can be used to develop specific areas of teaching and learning,
such as how to give effective instructions or how to check what has been learned dur-
ing a lesson. These will be seen as key areas that need to be developed within the
school and will of course vary from one school to another. Staff who are known to be
good practitioners in these areas can then be asked if they would be willing to work
with colleagues as coaches. This approach requires schools to have effective monitor-
ing systems in place enabling them to identify who amongst their teaching staff is
good at what. In our experience, when staff are offered the opportunity to work with
a coach on specific areas of teaching and learning – as opposed to a more generic offer
of coaching – the response has been positive. Why? This is not clear, but one possi-
ble reason, emerging from discussions with staff, is that it takes away the need for
teachers to identify an area that they need to develop – it is done for them.
This approach can be taken a stage further, and in one school we have worked with
it has now become an integral part of the performance management process. This
could be seen as a contentious approach by those who hold the view that coaching
has no role to play in performance management. We would argue, strongly, that
this does not need to be the case. Performance management should be about set-
ting challenging and professional targets for teachers that will develop them pro-
fessionally and improve standards in schools. However, this should be strongly
underpinned by looking at how the professional development needs of staff will be
met to enable them to reach these targets. This is where coaching comes in. It is
one of many professional development activities that can be offered to staff, to help
them address these targets. The recent review of performance management arrange-
ments in England (Rewards and Incentives Group, 2007) has gone a long way to
addressing this by making it obligatory for reviewers to devise a CPD action plan
for individuals when setting their performance management targets. Furthermore,
if the performance management process is to be a success, all parties concerned
need to have a sense of ownership over it. If it is simply something that is ‘done to
you’, then people are less likely to engage with it and strive to meet the targets that
may be set. With this in mind, the performance management meeting between the
reviewer and reviewee should be run like a coaching session where the reviewee is
encouraged to find the solutions to help them meet their objectives themselves.

Performance management should be a key driver for delivering the school
development plan and focusing on the professional development needs of the
staff. To what extent is this the case in your school?
Coaching can play two important roles in the performance management process.
1 It encourages the reviewee to come up with their own developmental targets and
ways of addressing them during the planning meeting. The reviewer becomes the
coach and the reviewee becomes the coachee. As a result, the reviewee feels a greater
sense of ownership in the process and is therefore more likely to engage with it.
2 It serves as a developmental activity to support staff in achieving their targets – for

example, the provision of specialist coaching in an aspect of pedagogy and practice.
Case study: Littlehampton Community School – performance

management
At Littlehampton, when colleagues carry out their Performance Management
Planning/Review Meeting, they complete a CPD action plan. As part of this, they
are offered the opportunity to work alongside a coach on any aspect of teach-
ing and learning that they wish to develop. Alternatively, they can opt to work
with a specialist coach on one of the following aspects of teaching and learning:
• assessment for learning
• behaviour for learning
(Continued)
SPECIALIST COACHING 31
(Continued)
• developing literacy skills
• using Information Technology as an effective teaching and learning tool.
Interestingly, this tied in with one of the requests made by teaching staff on
how they would like to see coaching progress at the school – a number of staff
stated that all teachers should be offered the opportunity to work alongside a
coach. In terms of opening up coaching, this has been extremely successful.
At least 50% of those who returned their CPD action plans, following their
performance review meetings, asked either to work alongside a coach in a specific
area, or to observe a colleague teaching with a view to focusing on an area of
their teaching that they wish to develop. The latter will tend to result in the
development of a coaching relationship.
The success of this approach was further aided by time being put aside on a school clo-
sure day for colleagues to meet and have their review meetings and complete their
CPD action plans. This, in our minds, is an essential part of the process. If we want the
process of performance management, and the associated discussions regarding CPD,
to become an effective coaching conversation, then schools need to give staff the time
to carry out the process in a relaxed and stress-free atmosphere. Only then will mean-
ingful discussions take place that may then lead to positive outcomes. This is not nec-
essarily the case if the performance management process takes place after a busy day
of teaching. Coaching takes time.
Those who are carrying out the performance management review meetings will
need some guidance on how the meetings should run, in order to achieve more of
a coaching focus. If this is not done, then they may well revert to form and end up
telling the reviewee what they need to do better and how. Firstly, they will all need
to have had some training in the principles and skills of coaching. Secondly, they
will need to be fully briefed on how the meetings should run within a coaching
model. This will almost certainly require some briefing sessions with the reviewers,
before they embark on their meetings. This investment in time beforehand will pay
dividends in terms of the quality of the performance management process.
The important role of the CPD co-ordinator in setting up coaching, has been dis-
cussed elsewhere in this book. This role becomes pivotal if a performance manage-
ment process that is linked to CPD, such as the one described at Littlehampton, is to
be successful. Here teaching staff hand their CPD action plans to the CPD co-ordina-
tor, who is then charged with analysing the many coaching requests on these plans
and with pairing colleagues up accordingly. Clearly, this can only be effective if the
school has a very good working knowledge of the strengths of its teaching staff – and
this will only be the case if the school has a strong self-evaluation structure in place.
At Littlehampton, the long-term plan was always to dovetail the processes of school
self-evaluation, the school development plan, performance management and CPD.
Incorporating the CPD action plan into the performance management process
seemed to be the final part of the jigsaw.
It is clear to see how coaching, particularly specialist coaching, plays a key role
throughout this process.
Self-evaluation
form
School
development
plan
Lesson
Monitoring by Frequent coaching
observations; School
school self- Subject meetings between
walk-throughs; improvement
evaluation action plans subject leader
subject leader cycle
process and leadership link
Interviews
Individual
performance
management
objectives
High-quality and
focused CPD, e.g.
coaching
Figure 4.1 School improvement cycle
• The school development plan, based on developmental priorities from the

self-evaluation form, feeds into subject action plans. Within these plans, sub-
ject teams identify how they will address specific whole-school developmen-
tal priorities. For many subjects, this may involve setting up a peer-coaching
programme or focusing on a specific area of teaching and learning, for exam-
ple, assessment for learning. The subject leaders then meet regularly with a
leadership link (somebody from the school leadership team) to be coached on
leading this process.
• These subject action plans form a framework for teachers to focus on their indi-
vidual developmental needs during their performance management review
meetings. As a part of this process, they complete their CPD action plan and can
opt to work with a specialist coach in that area, for example assessment for
learning, from a different subject.
• During the monitoring process, school leaders and subject leaders observe les-
sons. While making a judgement on the quality of teaching and learning is a
key part of this process, more important is the coaching conversation
between the observer and the teacher that should happen following the
observation.
This can be further developed at Littlehampton, with a view to having a whole-

school push on consistency of approach, in terms of classroom practice, in the
following key areas:
• Teaching for Learning
• Assessment for Learning (AfL)
• Behaviour for Learning
• Literacy for Learning.
Case study: Littlehampton Community School – The

Learning Toolkit
In order to achieve this integrated process of school self-evaluation, school
development, performence management and CPD at Littlehampton, a docu-
ment has been produced called ‘The Learning Toolkit’. This is a key document
for the school in terms of outlining what is expected in terms of effective teaching
and learning. It contains four sections – on Teaching for Learning, Assessment
for Learning, Behaviour for Learning, and Literacy for Learning – and each
section is then divided into key sub-sections:
• Principles – the importance of the approach
• Practice – what the principles should look like in the classroom
• Strategies – suggested strategies to help put the principles into practice.
Specialist coaching is being used to support teachers at the school to turn the
principles within the document into practice. Three teachers have been
appointed to a coaching role, called ‘professional tutors’. Each of these profes-
sional tutors has been allocated to a cluster of subject areas, and is then charged
with using their coaching skills to support the subject leader in embedding the
aspects of the toolkit into the day-to-day teaching within that area. The school
self-evaluation process is used to identify areas of need, where this specialist
coaching can then be targeted. Furthermore, the coaches will facilitate the
sharing of best practice between subject areas within their clusters. So, for
example, if a teacher in history is very skilled at developing the literacy skills of
low-ability students, he or she should be asked to coach a teacher in science
who wishes to develop this aspect of teaching and learning.
There is also evidence of specialist coaching being used within teams. The science
department at Littlehampton Community School has identified AfL as being a key
priority for development this year. The subject leaders for science have bought in
some excellent AfL resources, however they are mindful of the fact that it is not
enough to just buy the resources – they have to become embedded into the
teaching of all science teachers. To facilitate this, they have identified teachers
within the team who demonstrate good AfL practice. These colleagues have then
been paired up with other science teachers. The pairs will then co-plan an AfL-rich
lesson using the new resources. They will observe each other delivering the les-
son, then feed back to each other in a coaching style. The best practice will then
be shared with the whole department, during departmental meeting time.
Another example of this sharing of expertise has been seen with the English
department and other departments within the school. Following an after-
school session on developing literacy strategies, members of the English
(Continued)
(Continued)
department paired up with colleagues from the geography department who

wanted to develop literacy strategies within their subject. The colleagues
within the English department then coached their colleagues by co-planning
a literacy-based activity with them. They then observed the activity in action
in the classroom, followed by a coaching conversation after the lesson on the
effectiveness of the strategy.

Does your school have systems in place to facilitate the sharing of best practice
amongst the staff?
It is clear that the landscape of school leadership is changing towards a more col-
laborative approach between schools. In order to prepare our future leaders for this,
we need to facilitate this process within schools and encourage colleagues to move
outside of the comfort zone of their own subject areas – especially in large second-
ary schools. Specialist coaching provides us with the opportunity to do this by
encouraging colleagues from one subject area who wish to develop an aspect of
their practice, to work with a good practitioner in this aspect of practice from a dif-
ferent subject area.
This should not be left to chance. In smaller primary schools, it tends to happen
quite naturally due to a lack of subject-based compartmentalisation – and the most
effective primary schools ensure that it happens regularly. Secondary schools need
to re-evaluate how they structure themselves, in order to move towards a more
effective, internal collaborative approach and this may involve asking questions
about the effectiveness of subject-based compartmentalisation.
A common structure for secondary schools is the faculty structure. In this model,
subjects with some commonality – for example, physical education, drama, dance
and so on – are placed together, often with a head of faculty and then heads of
department beneath that. This may work fine. However, if the subjects within that
faculty are not working effectively, then who can colleagues learn from? This prob-
lem may be exacerbated if there are issues of poor leadership within that faculty. If
the subjects within the faculty have all identified, for example, differentiation
for the less able as a development priority, but then only ever meet together as a
faculty group, how are they going to be able to learn from another subject area not
in their faculty which demonstrates good practice in this area?
Would a more sensible alternative to the ‘faculty’ approach be to group subject

areas together according to developmental needs, areas of strength and leadership
capacity, irrespective of tenuous subject-based links? For example, why not group
four or five unrelated subject areas together as ‘school improvement teams’? Each
of these small clusters of subjects could be strategically put together to include
some subjects areas with strengths in certain areas of pedagogy, coupled with
strong leadership, alongside other subject areas which need to develop certain areas
of their practice, and which may lack the leadership capacity to drive this through.
Amongst these school improvement teams could be set up some strong specialist
coaching, based on pedagogy, avoiding an over-emphasis on subject-related issues.
This model could be a very powerful driver for a more collaborative and effective
form of middle leadership within secondary schools.

Does your school departmental structure facilitate the sharing of best practice
and collaborative working between subject areas?
Summary
School self-evaluation needs to be used to identify areas of whole-school develop-
mental focus. There will then be a wealth of expertise within the staffroom that
should be used in a coaching capacity to develop these areas of teaching and learning.
The performance management process should also be used to enable staff to identify
their CPD needs, with regards to these areas of focus, and then commit to action.
Underlying all of this is the need for schools to look at their structures, systems and
procedures to ensure that there are opportunities for staff to work collaboratively
and share best practice.
5
Using coaching for new teachers

• how co-coaching can be used to develop newly qualified teachers
• how coaching can be used to develop teachers in their second year
of teaching.
Working with trainee and newly qualified teachers (NQTs) can be a highly rewarding
part of the job. It is also often a privilege. Their energy and enthusiasm for teaching
often translates into excellent classroom practice, even very early in their careers. They
are usually highly reflective about what they do and eager to learn how to improve.
They will question why things are done in ‘that particular way’ and not just accept the
status quo. These attributes make for good coachees, but also good coaches.
Co-coaching has been described by CUREE (Centre for Use of Research and
Evidence in Education) as ‘a structured, sustained process between two or more pro-
fessional learners to enable them to embed new knowledge and skills from special-
ist sources in day-to-day practice’. (Source: The National Framework for Mentoring
and Coaching: CUREE)
With this in mind, it makes perfect sense to use co-coaching to support and
develop the work of trainee and newly qualified teachers. Teachers early on in their
careers have many questions as to how they might improve their practice and they
also have many of the solutions. Mentors can answer many of these questions, and
do a brilliant job. However, if we want to move away from dependency to inde-
pendence, we need to encourage these young teachers to engage in coaching.

Are NQTs given the opportunity to work collaboratively within your school?
The Career Entry Development Profile (CEDP), developed by the TDA (Training and
Development Agency for schools, UK), is an online resource that encourages trainees
and NQTs to focus on achievements and goals early on in their careers, and also to
discuss their professional development needs. It does this by providing a series of
USING COACHING FOR NEW TEACHERS 37
questions for NQTs to reflect on at various stages in their training and induction
periods. For example:
• What do you consider to be the most important professional development

priorities for your induction period?
• Why are these issues the most important for you now?
• How have your priorities changed since the end of your training?
• How would you prioritise your needs across the induction period?
• What preparation, support or development opportunities do you feel would

help you move forward with these priorities?
(Source: Career entry and development profile (CEDP) 2008/9: TDA)
This provides a perfect (and ready-made) framework to use when setting up co-coaching
with NQTs. As well as discussing these questions with their mentor, they could also
pair up and use them as prompts during the early stages of a co-coaching session.
Facilitating this process of NQTs working alongside their peers in co-coaching relation-
ships is a very useful strategy which we decided to adopt at Littlehampton. The process
was launched at an NQT meeting. Co-coaching was to be used for four main reasons:
• to encourage NQTs to discuss teaching and learning outside of their own subject
• to share best practice
• to raise self-esteem
• to encourage a ‘can-do’ approach.
The session started with a general discussion of what co-coaching was and why it
could be useful. The NQTs were then asked to find partners (from a different sub-
ject to their own) and to ask each other the following questions:
• What is going well?
• What do I want to develop further?
They were told that they could not make any judgements and were to avoid giving
ideas. They just had to focus on listening and asking open questions. There was a
lot of very intense discussion going on. We then stopped to consider the rest of the
process, which is outlined below.
NQT co-coaching: the process

1 Identification of issue
NQTs identify issues that they wish to address.

2 Initial meeting
NQTs select co-coachees to work with.
Pairs meet to discuss issues.
3 Observation
NQTs observe each other.
Focus is kept on the issue that has been identified. Elements of best practice are
also noted.
4 Feedback meeting
Pairs meet to discuss the lesson observations, return to the original issues and
share best practice.
5 Follow-up
Pairs may decide to do follow-up developmental activities related to their focus,

for example visit another school that shows best practice in this area or observe
other teachers.
Stages one and two had already been addressed during this initial meeting. For
those pairs who found it difficult to find a focus for their discussion, prompt
cards were provided. These simple cards have various teaching and learning
themes noted on them and they were used by the pairs to prompt discussion on
areas of strength and areas for development. Sample cards are provided in Figure
5.1. For many, these cards acted as a very useful prompt. In fact, they are now
used widely throughout the school in a number of different contexts, for exam-
ple NQT/mentoring meetings, performance management meetings and depart-
ment meetings.
After the initial meeting, the pairs then had to arrange a time to observe each other.
They were all very keen to do this. A simple lesson observation review sheet was
used to focus the observation. This was completed by the teachers being observed
beforehand, to highlight the areas that they wanted the observers to look for.
During the observation, the observer then commented on these points. This kept
the ownership of the issue with the teacher being observed, but also served to keep
the observation focused. A template is provided in Figure 5.2 on page 40. This com-
pleted review sheet should not be copied and remains the property of the coachee.
Once they had observed each other, they met up again to have a mutual feedback
session. It had been agreed that the feedback would focus on the issue that the NQT
had identified as an area for development – the review sheet helped to focus the
conversation on this. It was, however, fine to focus also on other aspects of good
practice that were observed.
Most interesting was the follow-up that resulted from this process. One pair, that
was focusing on assessment for learning strategies, arranged to observe another
Use of voice Monitoring pupil progress
Inclusion – meeting all pupils’ learning Coping with workload

needs
Engaging and maintaining pupils’ Clearly focused learning objectives

interest
Questioning skills Use of ICT
Managing activity transition Knowledge of the National Curriculum
Differentiation Subject knowledge
Working with learning support Managing class discussions

assistants
Effective body language Record keeping
The three part lesson Managing pupil behaviour
Effective lesson planning Assessment for learning
Starters and plenaries Using assessment data
Pace Learning styles
Figure 5.1 Coaching prompt cards
Photocopiable:
The Coaching Toolkit © Shaun Allison and Michael Harbour, (SAGE) 2009.
Lesson observation review sheet
Name _________________ Co-coach _______________ Date __________
Key questions for the lesson – Comments/Observations/Questions –

agreed by coach and coachee from the coach and coachee
Figure 5.2 NQT co-coaching
Photocopiable:
The Coaching Toolkit © Shaun Allison and Michael Harbour, 2009 (SAGE)
teacher, who was known to be very good at using learning objectives to drive the
learning in his lesson. Another pair, interested in transition, went on a visit to one
of the feeder primary schools.
The NQTs were asked to evaluate the experience by answering a short question-
naire. The questions used and some of their responses follow.
Has the process been useful? Why?

‘It has been a very useful process because I was able to observe some of the same
students as I had taught in my co-coaching class. This gave me the opportunity to
observe those pupils in a different environment and to observe different techniques
and strategies that I could incorporate into my lessons.’
‘The process has been useful because observing another teacher and discussing it
with them has given me ideas for my own teaching.’
‘Really useful to watch a class I teach in another subject – and then to discuss strate-
gies that work with them, with another NQT.’
What did you learn from the process?

‘I have learnt that we are constantly developing and that we can all benefit from
this experience. I have picked up new ideas and ways of both helping my teaching
and also my behaviour management.’
‘That other NQTs have similar issues to me, and that they can be resolved.’
‘That I had a lot of the solutions to my issues already – I just had to think it
through. Talking it through with someone else really helped.’
What good practice did you observe?

‘I observed a colleague, teaching a year 8 class, with some of the pupils that I teach
in there. He had a starter activity set up for them to complete straight away which
really helped settle them down. He also kept them on task all lesson and had exten-
sion tasks for those who had finished the previous task.’
‘The use of a seating plan. Students working independently, whilst the teacher facil-
itated the process.’
How will this impact on your own teaching?

‘Using a starter activity as soon as they enter the room is something that I will use
with my year 8 class; it helps settle them immediately and helps with the lesson. I
will also make sure that all pupils are on task all of the time and that there is extra
work for those pupils who finish their task.’
‘I will give my students more time to work independently.’
‘More student-focused teaching and less teacher-focused.’
Next steps: Will you develop this work further? If so, how?
‘I could develop this work further by building up a range of starter and plenary
activities that will engage the pupils straight away. I will also try to break my les-
sons up into micro-chunks so that pupils can focus on key areas at a time.’
‘Work with my co-coach on implementing the use of the interactive white board
into my own teaching.’
This whole process proved to be successful – it certainly managed to achieve all of

the objectives that were set out at the start of the programme. The NQTs were all
very positive about the experience. They learned a great deal from each other, and
from themselves through self-reflection. While using coaching in this way for
NQTs and trainee teachers is not a substitute for mentoring, it certainly adds
another important element to the support and professional development that
they are offered. From a school’s point of view, it goes a long way towards build-
ing capacity for growth by developing staff who are better equipped to finding the
solutions to their own issues.
Coaching for recently qualified teachers

In order not to lose the momentum with coaching amongst our NQTs, it has also
become an integral part of our Early Professional Development (EPD) pro-
gramme for Recently Qualified Teachers (RQTs), that is, teachers in their second
year of teaching. It has always seemed bizarre, that in the UK at least, a large
amount of time and energy is rightly invested in supporting teachers in their
first year of teaching. However, for some reason, usually financial, much of this
support is taken away during the second year, and these new teachers are then
left to sink or swim. This is wrong. It is so important that we continue to sup-
port and develop these teachers, so that they can become as good as possible.
The support offered needs to be personalised and different from the mentoring
they received during their first year – but it still needs to be there. Coaching is
the key to this.
At the end of their induction year, NQTs are asked to identify two or three areas
of teaching and learning that they would like to develop. When they then begin
their second year of teaching they are allocated a coach, who will support them
in devising an action plan to address these issues. The coaches are allocated in
consultation with each of the RQTs and may be somebody from the leadership
group, their NQT mentor or a peer. They then meet up regularly, at least once
every half-term, for a coaching conversation on how the work is going. The
coaches are there purely to support the RQTs through this important develop-
mental stage of their careers.
The issues that have been selected are many and varied. However, the most impor-
tant aspect of the process is that they are chosen by the RQT themselves – so that
they are real and in context. Some examples are:
• ‘What effective strategies are there to support the learning of EAL (English as an
Additional Language) students in my lessons?’
• ‘Developing kinaesthetic maths activities to engage and motivate low-ability

students.’
• ‘How the Levels Mountains approach can be used in ICT to raise student aware-
ness of assessment criteria.’
• ‘Developing an effective bridging programme in science.’

Following their NQT year, is there a structured programme of support and guidance
available to second-year teachers in your school?
This is an important and pivotal piece of developmental work for these teachers,
for which there should be some kind of formal professional recognition.
Fortunately, the General Teaching Council (GTC) for England, has set up the
Teacher Learning Academy (TLA), that gives teachers the opportunity to obtain this
recognition. By submitting a short presentation of their learning journey, during
which they have been supported by their coaches, the teachers receive certificated
professional recognition for the developmental work they have carried out as a part
of the school’s EPD programme.
Another advantage of this approach is that it has proven to be a good introduction

to the performance management process for these relatively new teachers. The
areas that they choose to look at with their coach also tend to become part of their
performance management targets, thereby providing them with another layer of
support to help them meet their performance review objectives.
There are clear long-term advantages for a school that wants to establish a ‘culture
of coaching’ with new teachers in this way. The more opportunities these new
teachers are given to engage with co-coaching, the more they will be refining and
developing their own coaching skills. This is a solid investment for any school, as
these staff will then be able to continue to use these coaching skills with other
members of staff as they become more experienced – a ‘home-grown’ approach to
developing coaching within a school.
Summary
NQTs have the ability to co-coach each other, and should be encouraged to do
so. As they are experiencing many of the same issues, they can also provide each
other with the solutions. They can prove to be a valuable and effective resource
for each other.
Coaching is also a very powerful tool for supporting teachers in their second year
of teaching. It can provide them with the support and encouragement to set their
own developmental targets and then address them with a clear and effective
action plan.
Coaching prompt cards
NQT co-coaching – lesson observation review sheet
Useful websites
www.curee-paccts.com/
www.tda.gov.uk/teachers/induction/cedp.aspx
6
Group coaching

• what we mean by group coaching
• the important links between adult learning and group coaching
• how coaching can be used to develop groups of staff.
Much of the coaching that has been discussed up until this point involves two (or
three) people engaging in a coaching conversation. Group coaching takes this a
stage further. It is where a group of staff identify a common issue or CPD need,
which is then addressed in a group setting, usually facilitated by one or more col-
leagues – the coach or coaches. There is an important point to be made here.
Anybody who is going to be facilitating such a group session needs to have a good
understanding of how adults learn best. We must be very careful not to make the
assumption that a good teacher who knows how to facilitate the learning of chil-
dren will naturally be able to work in the same way and be effective with adults.
The field of adult learning was pioneered by Malcolm Knowles and colleagues
(2005). He identified the following characteristics of adult learners:
• They are autonomous and self-directed so a group coach needs to facilitate their
learning and to engage them actively in the learning process. The learning
should be done ‘with them’ and not ‘to them’.
• They have accumulated a foundation of life experiences and knowledge that will
include professional knowledge. The coach needs to be able to draw this out and
link it to the learning.
• They are goal-oriented. The coach, therefore, must show colleagues how the session
will help them to achieve their goals.
• They are relevancy-oriented so the learning must be relevant to their role and of
value to them.
• They are practical. What will they be able to take away from the session that will
help them to do their job better?
These characteristics need to be considered by anyone who is planning a group

coaching session in schools.

• How could a school provide good quality time for group coaching sessions?
• How can the groups be brought together?
As we move towards a more personalised learning experience for pupils, it is impor-

tant that we adopt a similar philosophy for the CPD needs of our staff. Schools have
a very large and varied staff in terms of skills, experience and motivation – with this
comes a wide range of development needs. It is therefore important that staff are
given a range of CPD activities, including group coaching, to address these needs.
One approach to achieving this is to move away from the ‘one size fits all’ approach
to traditional school closure days, where all teachers sit together in a hall and are
presented with the same training. This time could be more effectively disaggregated
into after-school twilight sessions.
Case study: Littlehampton Community School – group

coaching
This model has been adopted at Littlehampton to good effect. Staff choose six after-
school twilight sessions (from a menu of about 60) to attend, instead of two whole-
school closure days. Staff have seen this as a hugely positive and useful initiative.
One piece of feedback from the first year of the sessions was that it would be
good to have strands of twilights for people at different stages of their careers.
We addressed this, the next year, by having four. This was then extended to five
strands for the following year – an assessment for learning strand has been
added to reflect the importance of this aspect of teaching and learning in the
School Development Plan.
The details of these sessions follow:
• General Twilights in this strand address general pedagogical issues such
as starters and plenaries, behaviour for learning, differentiation, literacy.
• Assessment for learning A range of sessions AfL-based: using learning
objectives, questioning skills, peer and self-assessment.
• Developing excellence This strand of twilights is aimed at colleagues who
may be interested in Advanced Skills Teacher (AST) or Excellent Teacher (ET)
status and deals with such issues as brain-based learning and what makes
outstanding learning.
• Middle leaders Addressing issues that are specific to middle leaders such
as managing and leading an intervention strategy, working with staff and
improving learning in the subject.
• Aspiring school leaders For middle leaders who are looking at whole-school
leadership roles – includes topics such as The Production and Implementation
of a School Development Plan and From Management to Leadership.
(Continued)
GROUP COACHING 47
(Continued)
Departments are also offered the opportunity to run one of their own twilights,
specific to their own needs and linked to the Department Development Plan.
The teachers have responded very well to these sessions. Many staff com-
mented favourably on being able to choose the focus for their CPD. The suc-
cess of the sessions has been largely due to the fact that staff have a great deal
of respect for their peers and have enjoyed hearing about how they have
approached a particular issue. Having your own colleagues leading the ses-
sions puts the topic into context and allows staff to follow up any issues with
the person who led the session. This is usually not possible when you attend
an external training course.
At its inception, this model was never really intended to be a coaching-based
initiative. It was simply a way of facilitating the sharing of best practice
amongst staff. However, over the years, the sessions have certainly evolved
into group coaching sessions. Although the people leading the sessions will
have exhibited best practice in those particular fields, they do not claim to be
experts. They are there to share their own practice and to facilitate discussion,
sharing and learning among their peers. This is often done by posing chal-
lenging questions and encouraging colleagues to share their practice and find
the solutions to their own problems – all attributes of effective coaching.
To ensure approaches, such as the one described at Littlehampton, work well in any
setting, it is worth briefing the session facilitator on the following points:
• Enable all members of the group to have their say – draw out their experiences.
• Clarify what you hope to get out of the session – and, also, what they hope to
get out of the session.
• Use challenging questioning.
• Encourage colleagues to listen to each other and reflect.
• Provide a sensitive and thorough explanation of the goals for the session.
• Make it clear that you are not the font of all knowledge, but are happy to share
your experiences with them in order to develop their work.
• Encourage colleagues to commit to action!
So, when planning such a session, consider the following:
• Clear objectives for the session – what do you hope staff will get out of the session?
• Personal goals and ‘live’ issues – what do your colleagues hope to gain from
the session? What concerns do they have about the issue that they would like
to be explored during the session? Remember, it is fine if you don’t have the
answers, but what you can do is facilitate discussion within the group to help
find a solution.
• Your perspective and experiences on the issues being discussed – you have been
asked to lead the session because you have demonstrated best practice in this
area. Share this with your colleagues – What works? What doesn’t? What have
you learned about the issue?
• Sharing the experiences of the whole group related to the issue – you will have
a wealth of experience within your group – make sure you tease out and share
all the good practice that already exists within it.
• Some kind of activity that involves colleagues working in small groups on a

topic related to the issue.
• Time for group discussion – this is one of the most valuable elements of the
sessions – the opportunity to discuss the issue with colleagues that you may not
normally work with.
• A few concrete examples of strategies to go away and try in order to address the
issue.
• Encouraging the group to commit to action! What are they going to do differ-
ently to address the issue?
As well as the obvious advantages of transferring new skills, there have also been a
number of ‘added bonuses’ from these sessions:
• The self-esteem of staff has been raised as they are now facilitating the profes-
sional development of others. This makes them feel valued.
• We are beginning to see a shift in culture at the school – colleagues now feel
more comfortable working outside their subject areas (a familiar problem in sec-
ondary schools).
• Pedagogy is no longer a dirty word.
• Staff feel a sense of ownership over their own CPD.
• Excellent value for money – the only costs involved in running such a pro-
gramme are for tea, coffee and biscuits! However, we would argue that the
impact is much greater than, for example, sending somebody on a course that
costs £500 at a venue a hundred miles away.
It is worth exploring the other ways in which teams can use coaching to galvanise
and develop themselves. In this sense, a ‘team’ can be a group of individuals with
a common purpose but brought together for a variety of reasons such as:
• they all work within the same area, for example subject or pastoral teams
• they all have a similar role, for example middle leaders
• they all work in the same school.

GROUP COACHING 49
Developing subject-based teams

Consider the following scenario:
Case study: Initiating group coaching
A relatively new head of department inherited a fairly disparate group of peo-

ple in the department. There was no collective vision for what good teaching
and learning were like and very little sharing of best practice. This was a great
shame, as many of the teachers in the department had a great deal to offer.
Coupled with this, and for a variety of not unrelated reasons, morale was low.
As a result, people had retreated back into their own classrooms and pretty
much ‘did their own thing’. Department meetings had become a combination
of administrative announcements and tasks, and the downwardly spiralling dis-
cussion of the negative. Teaching and learning were off the agenda!
However, the head of department was also very conscious of the fact that the
team needed a sense of ownership over the issues and the solutions. They also
needed to be talking about pedagogy and sharing best practice. Most impor-
tantly, he wanted people to start to feel positive about themselves. So he estab-
lished a peer observation programme.
The process began in a department meeting, where he opened up a discussion
about what the team thought good teaching and learning looked like. The dis-
cussion began to flow and some key points began to emerge. Following the
meeting, these were used to create a checklist of what the department thought
a good lesson should look like. This was important in terms of the team having
ownership over the issue. The head of department did not want to impose his
views on the team – it needed to be a collaborative process. Not surprisingly,
the list that they came up with was very similar to what the head of department
would have suggested.
Armed with the collective criteria for good teaching and learning, the teachers
were then paired up. This was done strategically, with good practitioners being
put with colleagues for whom it was known that there were areas needing
development. At the next meeting, the team was told of their pairings and that
they had to observe each other teach. During the observations, they completed
a tick-list for the criteria that they had all agreed on and these were returned to
the head of department following the observations.
Most importantly, once the observations had been completed, each pair had to
meet and have a conversation about the lessons. The staff were expected to ask
each other two key questions:
• What went well?
• How would you make it even better?
Many other questions and a great deal of very useful discussion were also gener-
ated by these conversations. In one case, a NQT (who was excellent in the class-
room) and a teacher with over 20 years’ experience at the school, struck up a highly
effective coaching relationship. They were often seen going in and out of each
other’s lessons in a very informal way, and then sharing their thoughts about what
they had observed. This, in our minds, is when coaching is becoming embedded.
(Continued)
(Continued)
As a follow-up to this process, the head of department also analysed the tick-lists
that were completed during the observations. The team then looked to see if the
things that they thought made for effective teaching and learning were actually
observed during the lessons. Of course, some were and some were not. This was
fine, as the aspects that were not observed could then become an area of devel-
opment for the whole department with a view to turning weaknesses into
strengths. Again, the useful aspect of this approach was that the members of the
team were, in effect, judging themselves. They had chosen the criteria, made a
judgement about how effectively as a group they were meeting these criteria,
and then devised some action points to address the deficiencies.
Developing middle leaders

Middle leaders play a pivotal role in the success, or failure, of a school.
A good middle leader would be able to answer the following questions
confidently:
• What is the quality of teaching and learning like in my team?
• What are our strengths?
• What do we need to improve?
• What have we improved over the last 12 to 18 months?
A middle leader who is struggling, for whatever reason, will find these questions
difficult. This is where coaching can play an important role and, again, in a variety
of different ways:
• If possible, enrol middle leaders on the National College for School Leadership
programmes. Leading from the Middle and the newer programme, Leadership
Pathways, both require middle leaders to carry out a diagnostic that looks at
their leadership skills and qualities. They then work alongside a school-based
coach to help them develop their leadership skills.
• Devise an in-house Middle Leader Development Programme where an experi-

enced facilitator leads development sessions, examining the changing role of
the middle leader. These sessions need not be presentations on how to do it, but
rather sessions that require the leaders to work in groups to question each other
in a supportive, yet challenging way.
• Change the way you run your subject leader meetings. Move away from dull,
ineffective, information-driven meetings, with very little developmental discus-
sion, towards meetings with a coaching focus. Have a key question for each
meeting (for example, how can we develop effective plenaries?) and ask the
middle leaders to question each other in pairs or trios on this issue, using the
following prompts:
GROUP COACHING 51
– What do you currently do that works?
– What would this look like if it was even better?
– What could you do to make it better?
• Develop a line-management structure that is based on a coaching relationship

and ensure that meetings happen regularly. Each subject leader could have a
leadership group link person whom they meet with once a fortnight. These
meetings could have a developmental focus for the department and run like
coaching conversations. This is important, as it builds capacity within the sub-
ject leaders and avoids a dependency culture where the subject leader simply
seeks solutions from the leadership group link.
Developing the whole staff as a team

If, as a school leader, the aim is to develop a ‘team ethos’ amongst the staff, then it
is sensible to use as many opportunities as possible to get staff working with col-
leagues that perhaps they would not usually work with.
• Staff meetings – in many institutions these need to be radically overhauled to have far
more of a developmental focus. Why not sit staff in cross-curricular groups and discuss
a specific issue important to the school, for example developing children’s writing of
explanations? Colleagues could then be encouraged to question each other in differ-
ent subject areas with a view to sharing best practice. This could then be shared with
the whole staff in a feedback session and disseminated within the subject teams.
• Inset days should offer opportunities to use coaching to share and disseminate best
practice. A good way to do this is to use the ‘Pedagogy and Practice’ pack (2004), dis-
tributed to schools by the DfES (www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/secondary/keystage3/
all/respub/sec_pptl0). Ask staff to choose one of the units that is of interest to them –
there are 20, so there is plenty of choice. During the Inset day, in groups of people
who opted for the same unit, ask each group to use the booklet and their own
expertise to come up with a list of top tips for the topic in their unit. Once collated
and distributed to all staff they make a very useful resource for staff to dip in to.
Case study: Bognor Regis Community College
A large 11–18 school with approximately 1600 students, Bognor Regis

Community College wanted to develop the use of lesson starters during an
Inset day. Six teachers were each asked to prepare an exemplar lesson that
included a starter. The rest of the staff were then divided up into classes of
approximately 15 people who rotated around these ‘lessons’, experiencing a
range of different starters. Each lesson also included time to question the
‘teacher’ on the strategy, and staff then coached each other on how they could
develop that particular starter activity in their lessons.
Summary
Group coaching can be an effective way to engage teachers in professional learning.
It is also an effective team development tool. When implementing group coaching,
ensure that those people facilitating the session have an appreciation and under-
standing of the principles of adult learning.
Further reading
Knowles, M., Holton, E. and Swanson, R. (2005) The Adult Learner. Boston, MA: Butterworth-
Heinemann.
7
Coaching in challenging
circumstances
This chapter is of particular interest to school leaders. In it we will:

• look at how two schools used coaching to help them to move out of special
measures
• consider how the coaching model may be used in different ways in
challenging circumstances – for whole-staff training and for the
development of the practice of individuals and departments.
The integrity of the coaching process can certainly come under pressure, and yet
it can be a key to improvement in schools that are working in challenging
circumstances, including those that have been categorised as requiring a Notice
to Improve or Special Measures. Schools in such circumstances exhibit common
features:
• Improvement in performance becomes urgent and school leaders begin looking

for strategies that will have an immediate impact.
• Initially the school may enter a phase of denial and teachers will certainly expe-
rience a severe dip in morale. The self-esteem of even the most accomplished
and confident teachers may take a tumble.
• Fairly quickly, if the school is to respond positively to its situation, key weak-
nesses in teaching and learning will be recognised and CPD arrangements will be
put in place to support teachers in making rapid progress in, for example, deliv-
ering effective three-part lessons or introducing useful assessment strategies.
• As the process continues, teachers will begin to feel that they are being inspected
and judged at every turn. They will therefore often welcome opportunities for
professional dialogue without the risk of being graded 1 to 4.
This is where coaching can be crucial in helping colleagues to internalise rapidly

the necessary skills that will lead, over a relatively short period of time, to signifi-
cant improvements in teaching and learning. Given the right sort of leadership,
teachers do become liberated by their situation and become willing to take more
risks in the classroom than they might have done in normal circumstances.
The distinctions between mentoring and coaching may well become blurred as good
practitioners seek to support colleagues who may feel, and indeed be, de-skilled.
Systems for running a coaching programme may be invented ‘on the hoof’ during
or indeed after the event. The school should be pragmatic and use its good teach-
ers to make a difference to the practice of others. Improvement in practice across a
school with significant challenges can be dramatic if a climate of trust is created
and when coaching and mentoring become central platforms, as the following case
studies demonstrate.
Case study: The Mayfield School experience
A mixed comprehensive 11–16 school in Portsmouth.

Prior to being put into special measures, the school had unsuccessfully launched
a peer coaching initiative. A group of good practitioners had been trained and a
flyer had been produced inviting colleagues to participate but there had been lit-
tle interest. With hindsight the school’s CPD co-ordinator, Bill Whiting, and lead
coach, Vicky Whitlock, felt that, at that time, teachers saw the need for coach-
ing as a mark of failure and therefore did not sign up to it. However, the climate
quickly changed with the advent of special measures. As Vicky observed, ‘there
was no fear – things couldn’t get much worse than special measures – there was
nothing to lose’. In these circumstances, ‘people seek help more’.
Mayfield, in common with all schools, had a number of very good practition-
ers. By the end of the summer term, two years after special measures, an audit
of the skills of these teachers had been conducted following observations of
their lessons. The audit involved self-assessment against an inventory of class-
room management and teaching skills. Each teacher was asked to decide what
he or she was good at and what he or she could demonstrate to others. This
inventory became a directory which colleagues are able to access when they
need help with a particular aspect of their practice and ‘the knowledge’ was
held by Bill Whiting, a long-serving and trusted colleague with whom staff felt
comfortable and able to discuss their professional needs.
During the following academic year potential coaches met to share their prac-
tice and to explore the issues around peer coaching and mentoring colleagues.
Early in the year, all teachers were invited to use the coaching ‘service’ and a
protocol was established which clarified the ground rules by which coaches and
coachees would operate. Four or five colleagues took up the opportunity and
had positive experiences of the coaching process.
Each inexperienced teacher on the staff was offered a coach as a matter of
course. The coach was, in principle, not a member of their department. This
was done to avoid any feeling on the part of the inexperienced teachers that
they were being assessed or inspected by the coaches in a climate where
scrutiny and accountability were inevitably the norm.
Over two or three years the school had recruited untrained teachers, ten of
whom qualified through the Graduate Teacher Training Programme. All of these
(Continued)
COACHING IN CHALLENGING CIRCUMSTANCES 55
(Continued)
teachers were allocated a coach during their training and observed coaches
teaching as part of their induction. Two of the coaches were trained in pupil
behaviour modification and contributed to the graduates’ programme and to
whole-staff training to ensure that behaviour management was, as far as possi-
ble, based on consistent principles and to help teachers develop an appropriate
repertoire of pupil management strategies.
At this stage, the impact of the coaching process was particularly marked for
the graduate trainees and was evaluated both by lesson observation and by
feedback from the graduate teachers themselves. Moreover, all the teachers
who had offered their time to support others actually improved their own prac-
tice. This is not really a surprise. After all, they had to reflect on what they were
doing in order to explain and demonstrate to others.
In the report which led to special measures being withdrawn from the school,
three years after it was instigated, HMI observed: ‘Many lessons taken by the
new trainees were taught well and adhered to the good practice guidance
issued by the school. The school has begun to tackle the long-term weaknesses
in teaching with increased vigour’.
What happened next?

When HMI returned and confirmed that the school was continuing to make progress
beyond special measures, they commented that the graduate training programme
was ‘successfully bringing a new group of teachers into the school’. They also stated,
‘In addition, the lessons learned through this programme are being used effectively
as the cornerstones of the school’s continuing professional development (CPD) pro-
gramme. Successful and experienced teachers have made a good impact as coaches
and mentors in another innovative element of the CPD programme’. The success of
the graduate trainees did not, of course, go unnoticed by the rest of the staff.
Beyond special measures and the use of coaching trios

The school had already arranged for 20 members of the coaching group to receive
a day’s training shortly after the final HMI visit. This experience was invaluable in
making coaching skills explicit and in giving the team confidence that they were
heading in the right direction.
Following this training it was decided to disseminate the good practice that was
being developed in the school by organising the whole staff into coaching trios.
CPD sessions were delivered on aspects of the teaching repertoire – assessment for
learning, questioning, modelling and explaining – using coaching trios. Colleagues
were asked to develop their practice by working together in a variety of ways
including sharing ideas, joint planning, observing each other using a specific skill
in the classroom, and helping each other to develop their repertoire by acting as
critical friends (see Figure 7.1). These trios were:
• carefully balanced in terms of background and experience
• from three different departments
• given time to meet regularly to coach each other.

Teacher A
All three take turns to:

• be coached
• coach
• observe/help to
clarify/give feedback
about the process
Teacher B Teacher C
Figure 7.1 Coaching trios to develop the teaching repertoire
Bill Whiting used the audit of teaching and learning and his knowledge of the staff
to ensure that the trios had the right sort of chemistry. He watched the process
closely, took feedback from colleagues and adjusted the groupings when they did
not appear to be functioning well. After working with two colleagues on assessment
for learning, one teacher commented:
It felt like someone had invented the thing I had been trying to create for some
time. It was that powerful. We developed an assessment tool to use across all years
and all abilities.
How coaching trios are put together will be a strategic decision for individual
schools. You may wish to consider the following:
1 A, B and C are all equal – for example, they are good practitioners who are all
looking to develop their coaching skills.
2 A, B and C are all from different subject areas within a school. One of these areas
may be a strength of the school, whilst the other two may require some
improvement.
3 A is a teacher with a particular talent in a specific area, for example using group
work. B and C are teachers who wish (need) to develop this area.
At Mayfield it quickly became apparent that the colleagues in the most successful trios:
• gave each other confidence
• shared their ideas freely
• enabled each other to reflect on their teaching and to commit to trying out new
strategies
• developed their coaching skills.
After the work on assessment for learning, a follow-up training day was arranged
during which a range of practice was shared in a ‘show and tell’ session. This was
highly significant. For example, the headteacher had been involved in one trio that
had helped an outstanding graduate trainee to develop an excellent peer assessment
strategy for her year 7 English class. She observed at the time:
You can learn so much from your peers. It’s great to listen to other people’s ideas and
it’s a great confidence booster when other people like yours. I was initially nervous
about the idea of the coaching trio – particularly as I had the headteacher in my
group.
Despite any initial nervousness, the experience was a success and the head’s
involvement indicated the importance that the school attached to coaching.
Moreover, some of the ideas on show had been developed by colleagues whose
practice was not seen as outstanding. So the message was clear – coaching works
for all sorts of teachers at all levels of experience and is endorsed by the senior
team.
After about a year, as colleagues moved on, the trios were seen to be losing their
impact so Bill began to organise CPD coaching into groups of six in order to revi-
talise the sharing of good practice.
Three years on
Lessons were now being recorded on video for analysis in coaching conversations
and the school had the technology to enable coaches to talk to teachers via an ear-
piece whilst lessons were being observed.
The school had developed a tightly knit coaching team that was managed by Vicky
Whitlock, now an advanced skills teacher (AST), and had instituted a teaching and
learning group which was useful in identifying pedagogical issues that could be
addressed through one-to-one coaching or through the school’s CPD arrangements.
Performance management also routinely helped colleagues to identify needs for
which they could volunteer for coaching.
On reflection, Bill likened coaching to a virus that adapts to the climate of the
school. At Mayfield it had clearly gone through several ‘mutations’. As the climate
had improved, beyond special measures, people wanted to improve their practice
and began to ‘walk through the door’ into the school’s coaching programme.
Vicky’s own practice had developed significantly. She noted that coaching had
helped her to stop trying to soak up other people’s problems like a sponge. She was
now a mirror that reflected back. Coaching was about ‘stepping into their coachee’s
world and seeing things from their perspective’ and, by asking questions, enabling
them to see their own problems and to find their own solutions. People solved
problems for themselves in the long term, she said, so being coached was not a
quick fix but a life-changing experience.
She was clear about the importance of helping her coachees to set their own tar-
gets and had developed an interesting strategy. At the end of a coaching conver-
sation she would produce a small box into which the coachee would place the
target for the week. The box, which could be held by either Vicky or her colleague
would then be produced at the start of the next meeting and the coachee would
remove the slip of paper and discuss whether the target had been achieved – a sim-
ple technique that is likely to increase the commitment of teachers to carry out
their stated intentions.
Case study: Bognor Regis Community College and

special measures
A large 11–18 school with approximately 1600 students.

After Bognor Regis Community College was placed in special measures, the
school began by providing initial training for a group of 22 teachers who were
seen as having the potential to become coaches. Soon afterwards Julia Vincent,
deputy head and the CPD co-ordinator, announced a clear intention to train
the whole staff, non-teachers and teachers alike. This goal was achieved within
a year by withdrawing groups of about six colleagues at a time from their usual
duties to receive training.
During special measures, Julia kept a database of the quality of teaching, and the
school quickly developed a policy that teachers who were observed as unsatis-
factory or at best satisfactory would be offered one of the school’s four ASTs, or
a peer coach from a different department, to support them in moving their
practice to a satisfactory or good standard. In addition they would be mentored
by a manager, usually their head of department or second in department. The
headteacher made it clear that colleagues could reject the offer of coaching but
not the departmental mentoring. In many cases teachers did take up the offer
of coaching and a significant proportion improved their teaching so that, when
observed, their lessons were judged to be satisfactory and sometimes good. As
at Mayfield, the practice of the coaches rapidly improved so that they were reg-
ularly observed teaching lessons that were judged to be good or better.
Throughout this work, the coaches and ASTs operated a protocol of confidential-
ity, and they certainly did not make judgements about the coachees – this task
was left to the appropriate managers. However, they did face the need, on occa-
sions, to suggest a way forward or to demonstrate a skill, in effect to assume the
role of mentor (see Chapter 2). As Julie Woodward, one of the coaching team at
the time, reflected later, ‘In a school, and particularly one in challenging circum-
stances, coaching and mentoring is blurred. Coaching shouldn’t be judgemen-
tal but someone needs to be. Judgements have to be made’.
The coaches kept a log of their activities which was shared with their coachees
and with Julia. By comparing the coaches’ records of their work with the lesson
feedback forms, including Ofsted judgements, that she was receiving from
mentors and line managers, Julia was able to gain some measure of the impact
of the coaching. Colleagues realised that this was important, given the special
measures designation, and accepted the coaching logs as a necessary part of
the school’s evidence of improvement.
The school maintained clarity about who was being supportive and non-
judgemental (that is, the coaches) and who was monitoring the progress of
teaching and learning and making the necessary judgements. At all times these
roles were kept separate.
At the end of special measures, when asked what the factors were that had
enabled the school to improve its teaching and learning so quickly, one col-
league summed up as follows:
Being confident and wanting to deliver a lesson that was more than satisfac-
tory. Through CPD, coaching, mentoring, modelling of good practice and
self-evaluation, most colleagues recognised the features of a good lesson and
were starting to feel confident that they could deliver to this standard.
After special measures: refocusing the coaching team

After successfully coming out of special measures, Julie Woodward and Sue Bond,
both active coaches while the school was in special measures, were given joint
responsibility, as lead coaches, to move the initiative forward. Julie was to lead on
literacy and would be based in the upper school and Sue would lead developments
on the lower school site.
Julia Vincent, Sue and Julie met with a group of 12 good practitioners, who had
demonstrated their impact as coaches during special measures, to outline the strat-
egy for re-launching coaching on the two sites. Initially, some coaches were to be
deployed within clusters of departments in discrete zones in the lower school and
others were to work alongside the ASTs and were allocated to specific departments
in the upper school.
Support was provided by Lesley Smith from the local authority’s School Improvement
Service, who is a skilled trainer and coach. Her input was critical to the success of the
coaches’ work. She initially provided training by setting up coaching trios compris-
ing members of the school’s coaching team, each supported by herself. She encour-
aged the coaches to observe each other teaching, with a focus that was agreed in
advance, and she then facilitated the feedback. She continued throughout the devel-
opment of this team to coach the coaches and her interventions have been seen as
highly significant in sustaining the confidence of the coaches and in helping them
to refine and develop their skills.
Later, Trevor Pask, one of the team members, commented on how much he had
learned from Lesley and from his colleagues in the trio and that a range of coach-
ing conversations had ensued. Julie and Trevor agreed that this phase had helped
to hone the coaches’ skills, specifically around listening, questioning, avoiding
‘telling’ and tuning into the feelings of their peers, and by embedding a model for
a coaching conversation. Significantly, Trevor felt that it had been important that
the coaching team did not engage with the whole staff until they were comfortable
with each other and with the coaching process.
The initial focus of their work had been with teachers of years 7 and 8 in the
lower school, where teachers needed support to establish clear boundaries and to
give a consistent message to students. This work had a positive impact but suspi-
cion was growing that coaching may only be for weak practitioners. To address
this, Julie and Sue pulled off a master stroke. They organised a staff training ses-
sion, at which the coaching team stated who had coached them and in which
aspects of their practice, before launching into role plays that demonstrated what
coaching conversations looked like. Flyers were then sent out to all teachers
stressing the confidentiality of the process and inviting them to participate in
coaching. Photos of the coaches were displayed in both staffrooms as this is a
split-site school.
Colleagues now felt more confident to put themselves forward and the message was
clear – if you were a good practitioner, you would want to be coached. Throughout
this phase, the coaches maintained the practice of keeping a simple log of the meet-
ings but the content was deliberately not recorded. Details of the coaching process
were not shared, except at the coachees’ request.
Another impetus to the development of coaching was the work that the school was
undertaking in developing literacy strategies (see the science department case study
below). As Julie Woodward put it, ‘for the literacy to work, it had to sit on a bed of
coaching’.
The lead coaches developed several ideas that raised the profile of coaching in the
school. For example, they provided teaching and learning boxes that contained use-
ful materials to enable teachers to widen their repertoire, and they instituted Tell
Forms that teachers were asked to complete when they had successfully tried out a
new idea. Each week the department that had been the most innovative received a
prize at the Friday staff briefing! These strategies helped to create a climate in which
colleagues were willing to try out new ideas and to be coached in applying them.
The lead coaches also took care of the coaching team. They were available for coach-
ing conversations with members of the team and they set up regular meetings for the
coaches to share their ideas and concerns, providing tea and doughnuts as a thank you.
Trevor is very clear that the sustainability and success of coaching was in no small part
due to the leadership provided by Sue and Julie. He regarded them as key drivers of the
programme, essentially because they led from the front, organised further training,
liaised with members of the senior team and kept morale buoyant when the going got
tough. He reflected, ‘Beware of taking coaches for granted. They need to be recognised’.
Julie endorsed this view and made some telling points about the management of
coaching in a large comprehensive school:
– coaches need line managers
– the school needs to develop a climate in which all leaders understand the value
of coaching and are supportive of it
– time is needed for ongoing training for the coaches and, for example, for video
coaching conversations.
Case study: Bognor Regis Community College – the science

department
A year after coming out of special measures, a short-term plan had been
established to support the science department by the head of department, a
senior team member and the local authority science adviser. The plan had the
following objectives:
• to improve the practice in the science department
• to make lessons fun for students
• to further develop AfL strategies
• to celebrate improvements in teaching and learning and thus raise staff
morale
• to improve teachers’ planning
• to enable students to feel positive about their progress in science.
(Continued)
(Continued)
The plan included, as one of its actions, the appointment of a coach for each
member of the department, including temporary staff. The intention was that the
coaches would work alongside the teachers to plan lessons for specific groups of
children that were identified by the teachers as posing significant challenges.
A joint planning meeting was held between the coaches and the science teach-
ers at the start of the term. This was a difficult situation that carried consider-
able risks. Nevertheless by the end of the meeting it was clear that the coaches
and members of the department had begun to build rapport and requests were
made by department members to be paired with specific coaches.
As the initiative got under way, joint planning between coaches and coachees
did indeed take place but this was in practice only a small part of the collabo-
rative work that was undertaken. For example, the coaches offered their science
colleagues Inset sessions that were based on the school’s good practice in the
development of literacy for learning. This training, in the opinion of the school’s
lead literacy coach, was a key to the success of the project because it provided
some tools that the teachers could use to help their students to talk and write
more effectively about their science – an issue that the scientists had recognised
from the outset – and it was something that did not encroach directly on their
expertise as science teachers.
In addition, there were one-to-one coaching conversations to support the
implementation of the work on literacy and some partnerships focused on
active engagement strategies, classroom management and dealing with ‘stuck’
pupils. In some cases the coaches provided in-class support and others were
present in the science corridors at lesson changeovers to help to settle the chil-
dren. In effect, the coaches responded to the needs of the science teachers as
they emerged and did so positively, non-judgementally and with empathy.
At the outset, it was the coaches who provided the positive energy and unfailing
optimism that is needed for things to improve, but as the process continued it
became clear to Julie Woodward that the science team was developing what she
called ‘the Dunkirk spirit’. They were supporting each other, sharing ideas about
teaching and class management and, in doing so, the morale of the department
was rising. Over the period of the initiative, the department won the school’s weekly
prize for sharing innovative ideas for teaching on three occasions, and this undoubtedly
contributed to the teachers feeling good about themselves and their work.
At the end of term, Sue Bond summed up the benefits of the programme, as
she saw them, as follows:
• it had helped the science teachers to refocus their energies on teaching and
learning
• the morale of the department had improved
• sharing ideas and talking about teaching and learning had become the norm.
The lead coaches prepared a report in which they included the following quan-
titative data that was helpful in evaluating the impact of the initiative:
• staff absences declined in the department by over 60% during the term
• the department’s use of the school’s on-call system dropped by over 30%
during the term, compared with the previous four months
• the teachers massively increased their use of key learning and teaching
strategies.
Ingredients of good teaching and learning Increase during initiative (%)
Good subject knowledge displayed 20
Planning enabling learning 20
Sharing AfL targets with students 40
Sharing format of lessons (Starter, Learning 63

objectives, Actvities, Plenary = SLAP)
Including a relevant starter activity 34
Addressing learning style preferences – visual, 100

auditory and kinaesthetic (VAK)
Meeting the needs of different learners 48
An appropriate range of activities 80
Use of plenaries and mini plenaries 60
Sharing of success criteria 47
Independent and collaborative work by students 52
Use of formative feedback 80
Effective questioning 92
Peer assessment undertaken by students 40
Evidence of pace and challenge 52
A positive learning environment was created 13
Evidence of a good climate for learning, 30

expectations and positive relationships
Use of specific literacy strategies 55
Evidence of setting targets for the next stage 73

of learning
Active engagement of students 60
Figure 7.2 Ingredients of good teaching and learning
Figure 7.2 summarises these improvements and is based on the school’s walk-through
monitoring of the department before and towards the end of the initiative. In addi-
tion, qualitative data was obtained from interviews with teachers and students. Some
of the most telling comments are included below:
Science staff
• The coaches have had a huge impact in terms of support.
• It has been nice to know that [coach] was interested in what I was doing and was
there if I needed her.
• Meeting with the coaches has given me the confidence to develop new ideas.
• I think it was a fantastic idea. It definitely raised morale.
• People are sharing and talking about teaching again.
Students
• Our teacher has changed and become nicer.
• Our teacher jokes with us now.
• We do experiments every day! It’s well good.
Case study: Bognor Regis Community College – Ian’s story

Ian is an experienced science teacher who, by his own admission, had been
feeling isolated in his classroom and adrift from the rest of the department in
the lower school. He had been observed teaching during one of the walk-
through monitoring periods and the change in his practice was extraordinary.
The students were actively engaged in their learning by, for example, playing a
starter game that was designed to tease out definitions of scientific terms, and
Ian was clearly relaxed and enjoying his teaching once more.
When Ian was interviewed at the end of the term to find out what he thought
about the science coaching initiative, he explained that he had been considering
for some time the possibility of adapting the science department’s thinking frames,
in the light of the school’s training on AfL. The assistant headteacher, with a respon-
sibility for the development of literacy strategies, had introduced the notion of PEE
(Point, Evidence, Explain) as a way of helping to structure sentences but Ian had
struggled to apply this to science. A coaching session with Julie had resulted in the
idea of organising thinking into four sections – topic, development, support and
conclusion – and this seemed to work. He also took the idea of ‘caterpillars’ from
INSET, provided as part of the science coaching, and used it successfully to help
children to develop their scientific explanations. He explained that the coaching
dialogue had helped to clarify his thinking and that this literacy work with his year
7 classes had resulted in children of all abilities exceeding their targets. He was now
considering how to differentiate more effectively in the classroom and was ponder-
ing the value of using children’s literacy levels to group them for learning in science.
In summing up, he remarked, ‘It’s improved my teaching. It’s improved my
quality of life in general. I’m much happier’.
(Continued)
(Continued)
And what did his students think? They had certainly seen a change and had
commented in the feedback:
‘Our teacher is wicked – great!’
‘It’s fun.’
‘We’ve had loads of great lessons.’

Is there any good practice described in this chapter that could be adapted to
your context?
Summary
With the right leadership, which can clearly come from different places in the organi-
sation, teachers in challenging schools can be persuaded to see coaching as a positive
way of addressing their immediate professional needs. However, it is clear that the
whole-hearted and long-term support of senior leadership is needed for coaching to be
accepted and to become a significant factor in school improvement.
Schools, particularly when under the pressure of regular inspection visits, need to
identify key staff who will drive the coaching initiative and who will provide good
leadership and management of the coaching team.
It is important to ensure that the coaches develop their confidence and skills by
working with each other, after their initial training, before they take on the job of
supporting their colleagues across the school.
Ongoing training will be needed for the coaches as well as opportunities for them
to meet to discuss their work and to be coached.
Some means will need to be found to measure the impact of coaching on teaching
and learning. This issue is explored in more detail in Chapter 10.
Be prepared to allow the coaching model in the school to change, or to ‘mutate’,
as the climate in the school and the needs of the staff change.
8
The first steps for school
leaders
This chapter is of particular interest to school leaders and will

consider:
• how to carry out a whole-school CPD audit
• how to identify and train potential coaches
• how to establish whole-school coaching protocols.
As we move towards a more personalised learning experience for pupils, it is

important that we adopt a similar philosophy for the CPD needs of our staff. To
continue to be effective teachers in the classroom, we need to ensure that our own
CPD needs are met. At the moment there is a general move away from seeing CPD
as an entitlement, to a view that CPD is the personal responsibility of all staff. This
requires a shift away from the view that CPD is all about ‘going on a course’ and
towards a view of CPD as a continuous, sustained and active process, which
involves teachers developing each other from the huge range of skills and expert-
ise that already exists in any school. In this sense, coaching is the purest form of
staff development and should form the basis of a varied and comprehensive CPD
programme within a school.

Does your school offer its staff a varied and personalised diet of CPD activities?
As school leaders, it is important to have a very clear insight into the CPD needs of
our staff and we recommend surveying staff CPD needs on a regular basis, using a
questionnaire (see Figure 8.1 for an example).
CPD activity How well used is I would like to
this type of CPD? be offered
more
Very good
opportunities
Good
for this type
Poor
OK
of activity
Subject
Attending external course/event
Closure day: external trainer (whole school)
Closure day: sharing of staff expertise
Closure day: working within faculties/
departments
Sharing expertise
Self-evaluation
Observing colleagues at work
Collaborative planning, teaching
and review
Reading literature
Mentoring/coaching with feedback
on performance
Working with colleagues from other
schools as part of a project
Working with colleagues from other
schools as part of a network
Developing resources with colleagues
Shadowing colleagues
Sharing good practice at meetings
Working with the AIS/consultants
in schools
Carrying out small-scale research
Working alongside an ‘expert’
Write your additional comments here:
Figure 8.1 CPD staff questionnaire
Photocopiable:
THE FIRST STEPS FOR SCHOOL LEADERS 67
Case study: Littlehampton Community School – conducting

a CPD audit
The following questionnaires (Figure 8.2 and Figure 8.3) were completed at
Littlehampton Community School.
CPD activity Rating
Attending external course/event 3.0

Self-evaluation 2.6
Mentoring/coaching with feedback on performance 2.6
Closure day: external speaker (whole school) 2.6
Collaborative planning, teaching and review 2.6
Observing colleagues at work 2.5
Developing resources with colleagues 2.4
Reading literature 2.3
Sharing good practice at meetings 2.3
Closure day: working within faculties/departments 2.3
Sharing expertise 2.2
Working with colleagues from other schools as part of a network 2.2
Working alongside an ‘expert’ 2.1
Working with colleagues from other schools as part of a project 2.1
Closure day: sharing of LCS staff expertise 2.1
Carrying out small-scale research 1.9
Working with the AIS/consultants in schools 1.9
Shadowing colleagues 1.8
4 = very good
3 = good
2 = okay
1 = poor
Figure 8.2 CPD activities rated by how well they were being used at Littlehampton
CPD activity More opps (%)
Developing resources with colleagues 31.9

Closure day: working within faculties/departments 31.9
Attending external course/event 29.8
Sharing expertise 27.7
Closure day: sharing of LCS staff expertise 27.7
Collaborative planning, teaching and review 23.4
Mentoring/coaching with feedback on performance 21.3
Working with colleagues from other schools as part of a project 21.3
Observing colleagues at work 17.0
Working with colleagues from other schools as part of a network 17.0
Shadowing colleagues 17.0
Working alongside an ‘expert’ 14.9
Carrying out small-scale research 12.8
Sharing good practice at meetings 10.6
Reading literature 8.5
Working with the AIS/consultants in schools 8.5
Self-evaluation 4.3
Closure day: external speaker (whole school) 4.3
Figure 8.3 CPD activities rated by the percentage of staff that wanted more opportunities
to engage in that type of CPD
(Continued)
(Continued)
Some interesting comments made by staff about their CPD included the following:
• ‘I feel that we have some excellent expertise in school and need more
opportunity to share this between colleagues.’
• ‘I think that working with other schools who exhibit best practice in your
subject is a useful strategy for improving your own.’
• ‘I would really like cross-school observations to see departments and classes
across the county.’
• ‘Sitting in the hall all day, being talked at, is generally viewed as a waste of
precious time. Even if the speakers are good, it is often repetitive. Could at
least some of them be optional for those who wish to focus on that aspect?’
• ‘Much more shared planning and observation of other staff would be excel-
lent as would time to plan within faculties.’
• ‘I would like more opportunity to observe and be observed by my peers – in
a non-judgemental way.’
It is a good idea then to offer a range of CPD activities that allow staff to develop their
own teaching skills, from the existing good practice of their colleagues. The ‘one size
fits all’ approach does not work, so avoid having everyone sit in the hall for a day
being spoken to by an external speaker. We suggest that good CPD should involve:
• sharing existing expertise with colleagues
• observing and being observed by peers – in a non-judgemental way
• planning collaboratively (within or across departments)
• developing resources with colleagues.
These are all issues that can be addressed by coaching. The questionnaire is a useful
resource, as it can give a very clear indication of whether the climate within a school
is right for coaching.
It is very important to be clear about what you want to achieve from coaching.
When we start working with a school on coaching, it soon becomes clear that there
is a large number of excellent teachers within the school, many of whom have the
capacity to develop others. In essence, this is the objective of coaching – to use the
expertise that already exists within the school to draw out and develop the skills of
other teachers. This is not a new idea – and it certainly isn’t rocket science. What we
need to do, at every possible opportunity, is to provide opportunities for colleagues
to talk to each other and work with each other on aspects of teaching and learning.
Once you are clear about what you want coaching to do for you, consider what
would be the most appropriate coaching model for your school. For example:
• a small group of teaching and learning coaches to work with colleagues on an

issue of their choice
• developing coaching skills with the whole staff

• using specialist coaches – coaches who develop the practice of others in a

particular area, for example AfL or facilitating the achievement of specific
performance management targets
• coaching for a specific group such as middle leaders.
In terms of getting coaching under way, schools could start by identifying the teach-
ers who they know are good, consistent practitioners and who also demonstrate
many of the skills that are important for coaching. This poses a couple of interesting
questions. Firstly, does a coach need to be a good teacher? The coaching purists would
argue not, due to the fact that coaching is about drawing out the solutions to some-
body’s issues by listening and effective questioning. It does not require the coach to
have all the answers and should not involve the coach telling the coachee what to
do. We take a far more pragmatic view of this and believe that it depends very much
on the approach to coaching that you are adopting. If you are setting up a small team
of coaches to work alongside colleagues then, from a credibility point of view, they
need to be sound practitioners. Is a teacher who is struggling with behaviour man-
agement really going to be keen to be coached by somebody who regularly has their
students swinging from the light fittings? Probably not! On the other hand, if you are
expecting all of your staff to adopt a coaching approach, then of course this will not
be an issue. We are rapidly coming to the conclusion that there are few hard and fast
rules for coaching. You do what works for your institution and your context.
One starting point would be to have a small group of trained coaches. So, how are
the coaches identified? Your school will hold a wealth of information about the fea-
tures of teaching and learning and the qualities of the teachers themselves. This will
include feedback from formal lesson observations, outcomes of informal conversa-
tions between teachers and their heads of departments, records of performance man-
agement interviews, feedback from department and year monitoring walk-throughs
(brief monitoring visits to classrooms) and anecdotal evidence from colleagues who
have observed each other teach or who may have done some team teaching together.
Some schools even hold information about observed lessons on a central database.
A useful starting point might be for teachers to audit their skills, using a tool such as
the Teaching Audit (see this book’s accompanying website) or the National Strategy
questionnaire (see Pedagogy and Practice: Teaching and Learning in Secondary Schools:
Leadership Guide 5 using the Teaching and learning evaluation schedule (DfES, 2004).
This approach will provide the school with a ‘directory of good practice’ and will, of
course, be useful in the identification of individuals who possess a good range of ped-
agogy. It could also be helpful in focusing whole-school training needs or indeed the
areas of practice that individuals wish to work on in their coaching partnerships.
Whatever the sources of the information, someone will need to use it to take a hard
look both at the technical capabilities of the teachers and at their interpersonal
qualities, in order to identify the potential of colleagues to act as coaches. In many
large secondary schools, the person well placed to do this is the training manager/CPD
co-ordinator because he or she will probably know more about the teachers than
any other individual in the school. Alternatively, the senior team may decide to
pool their knowledge or to invite curriculum leaders to put forward the names of
colleagues in their departments who have already had an impact on the teaching
of others.
Using one of these routes you will identify potential coaches who should then be
invited to attend training in order to find out more about coaching and to consider
whether they would wish to commit to playing a key role in the development of
the school’s coaching programme (see Chapter 9 for an outline of an initial train-
ing day). Of course, the training experience will be useful in helping you to decide
which of your colleagues have the necessary qualities and skills to become effective
coaches. Sometimes the training identifies colleagues who are temperamentally not
suited to coaching, because they simply cannot overcome the desire to tell others
what to do!
Following the training, it will be useful for the coaches to carry on practising their
skills on each other by conducting mutual lesson observations, giving non-
judgemental feedback (as described in Chapter 3) and conducting coaching conver-
sations to develop further the four key skills (listening, reflecting, clarifying and
questioning). In the meantime the school will need to put in place the other essentials –
a coaching protocol (see Chapter 9) and mechanisms for identifying the needs of
coachees and for matching coachee to coach.
The alternative approach to having a group of trained coaches is to have the whole
staff undergo some kind of coaching training. The obvious advantage to this is that
you then have a huge pool of potential coaches to draw from. If all the staff have
undergone some basic coaching training, then colleagues are able to support each
other in this way.
Case study: Littlehampton Community School – training a

group of coaches
At Littlehampton, our initial approach with coaching was to have a small group of
trained coaches. We did this for a number of reasons. Firstly, and probably most
importantly, was the fact that coaching was new to us, so we wanted to start small.
This would then allow us to monitor, evaluate and review the process closely. The
other issue was that of training the staff. It would be easier to train a small group
in the skills of coaching than the whole staff – which in our case was 140! The idea
was that these coaches would then offer their services to colleagues, who would
then opt to work with one of the coaches on an issue of their choice.
Initially, all the potential coaches knew was that they were going to be involved
in coaching. They didn’t really know what it was, how they would do it and
how it would work. The group was split in two and a day was spent with each
half delivering the following programme:
Objectives
• To understand the rationale behind coaching and the differences between
coaching and mentoring
• To explore some of the live issues in developing coaching at Littlehampton
• To make the skills of coaching explicit, to use coaching skills and to experience
the benefits of coaching
(Continued)
(Continued)
Programme for the day
• Exploring our own beliefs about learning and teaching
• Coaching and mentoring: the rationale, definitions and benefits
• Live issues for setting up coaching at Littlehampton
• Skills for coaching
• Putting the skills into practice – trying out coaching on each other by working
in trios
• The next steps – how we implement coaching at Littlehampton
The days were a great success. The coaches really bonded as a group and were
beginning to get a clear picture about what coaching was and the part they
could play in making it a success at Littlehampton.
Establishing protocols
Once you have decided what you want to achieve from coaching at your school, you
need to consider how you are going to do it. It is worth spending some time think-
ing through some protocols, and getting them in place, before you start any coach-
ing. This is particularly the case if you are planning some one-to-one coaching
conversations. Consider the following questions:
• What are our principles of coaching?
• What protocols will we work to?
• How will these protocols be established?
• What will a coaching relationship look like in our school?
As we discussed in Chapter 3, ground rules for coaching are important because they
clarify the parameters within which you are working. There are broadly two ways
of establishing these protocols – top down or bottom up. For the top-down
approach, those setting up the coaching programme decide on a set of protocols
and present them to the staff. They are told that this is the way the school thinks
coaching should work and that these are the protocols that have been established.
When we first started along the journey of coaching, this was the approach that we
took. The protocol that we used is similar to Figure 8.5.
When entering into a coaching relationship, both the coach and the coachee should
be asked to read and sign the document. Although this may seem rather formal, it sim-
ply serves to outline what the process would involve and how it would work. It is
important that everything is transparent and open and, by doing this, people feel
comfortable enough to engage with the process. The other advantage of this approach
is that it acts as a prompt, generating discussion on what coaching is all about.
Similarly, it is important to explain that lesson observation, if part of the coaching

process, should not be judgemental.
Dear ___________
We are currently in the process of setting up a teaching and learning coaching

programme at ___________ School. The principles of this are very simple – good,
effective and reflective classroom practitioners are trained in the skills of coaching
to work alongside other colleagues, with a view to drawing out and developing
good practice.
We very much appreciate the work that you do at __________ School and would
like to ask you to consider being a part of the programme – as a coach. This would
involve the following:
• attending a one-day training course on coaching skills

• developing these coaching skills further, by practising on each other in pairs,
for the rest of this academic year – before going ‘live’
• attending a further one-day training course towards the end of the summer
term to review progress and to plan for the year ahead
• starting to work with a colleague (who has volunteered for the programme) in
a coaching pair from ____________.
The plan is to have ____ coaches trained and in place by _____________, with a
view to training a further ____ by _______________. The Department for Children,
Schools and Families (DCSF) recognises that coaching is an essential skill for
potential school leaders, as well as one of the key criteria for passing through the
performance thresholds. So from the point of view of your own professional
development, being involved in this programme would be invaluable.
I would be really grateful if you would contact me before the end of this week
so that we can make an appointment for early next half-term to discuss your
involvement in this programme.
I look forward to chatting with you soon.
Regards
(Coaching Co-ordinator)
Figure 8.4 Sample coach invite letter
Photocopiable:
1 The objective of peer coaching is to improve the quality of teaching by developing and sharing good
practice. It is a collaborative process.
2 Colleagues have been identified who are willing to share their practice and to support the development of teach-
ing and classroom management skills in others. In the process, they too will develop their skills.
3 Teachers may volunteer to work in coaching partnerships.
4 No one will enter a coaching relationship without the agreement of both parties.
5 Coaches are willing to:
• offer coaching in lesson planning, classroom management and learning and teaching strategies
• observe the teaching of others and be observed themselves
• give detailed, positive feedback about the lessons which they observe
• demonstrate particular teaching skills and strategies
• work alongside colleagues in the classroom to an agreed plan
• contribute to the school’s professional development programme.
6 Coaching partnerships will adhere to the following code of conduct:
• The focus of their work will be the sharing and development of good practice.
• The desired outcomes of the coaching partnership will be mutually agreed.
• Discussions will be confidential.
• The dates and times of any classroom visits will be negotiated.
• Verbal and written feedback as a result of a classroom visit will be given within five working days of the visit.
• All conversations about the teaching will take place in private and in a relaxed but professional atmosphere.
• Any lesson observation notes will remain the property of the teacher.
• It is recommended that the partners each keep a reflective log. In addition, each partnership will keep a brief,
confidential written record of the work that is mutually agreed.
• The decision to commit to further action or to change practice is the prerogative of the individual.
Signed:__________________________________________
__________________________________________
Date: _________________________________________
Figure 8.5 Protocol for peer coaching
Photocopiable:
The alternative approach to setting protocols is to do it from the bottom up, allow-
ing the staff to decide what the protocols would be. This is an important process
for the staff to go through, as it will achieve two objectives:
1 Demystifying coaching – by coming up with the protocols themselves, staff are able
to work through some of the issues that they might otherwise have had with it.
2 Ownership – by coming up with the protocols themselves, the staff would be

clear that this is not something being done to them, but in fact is a process over
which they have control.
Case study: Littlehampton Community School – establishing

protocols
At Littlehampton, establishing protocols was done very simply during a
coaching Inset day. Once staff had been introduced to the idea of coaching
and had the opportunity to try it out, they were then asked to consider two
questions:
1 How would you want coaching to work at our school?
2 How would you like to see coaching developed at our school?
In response to the first question, which in a sense was asking the staff to come up
with their own set of protocols for coaching, they had the following suggestions:
• clear ground rules set
• trust
• respect
• non-judgemental
• friendship
• no paper
• a mutual interest
• confidentiality
• reliability.
The staff response to this question was quite significant. It was evident that the
teachers wanted the process to be clear and transparent, but also that the
coaching pairing had to be right. It had to be one built on mutual trust and
respect, as well as being non-judgemental and confidential. The climate was
therefore right for peer coaching at our school, and the staff were ready to
move on with it.
The responses to the second question gave the following useful suggestions for
establishing coaching within a school:
• Set up coaching partnerships for all staff.
• Volunteer for coaching – marrying up coaches and coachees – both parties
must be happy with choices to enable a successful partnership.
• Use informal, non-judgemental coaching.
• Allow it to develop through staff being able to chat informally about an area
or problem.
• Promote it as a norm – perhaps most staff could have a ‘named’ coach who
they can speak with should they wish. They don’t have to but they can.
(Continued)
(Continued)
• Create a culture of trust and positivity.
• Give staff the opportunity to observe their peers.
• Make all staff aware of what coaching is and that it can be very specific to
their needs.
• Ensure staff realise that it is non-judgemental and confidential.
• Give new and existing staff the opportunity to choose their coach to ensure
good relationships, trust and respect.
• Focus on making it a sharing experience. Lots of classroom teachers are
quite good at this already – sometimes ‘responsibility’ gives people a front
that discourages sharing. They sometimes hide behind the appearance of
‘coping’ or ‘knowing better’.
This process was hugely significant. It was interesting to see that many of the sug-
gestions were far more ambitious than would have been otherwise suggested. For
example, the notion of allocating everybody a coach was not something that we
had contemplated. Although this is very positive and affirming it may not have
been the right thing to do. Coaching will only work if the person wants to be
coached and if that person has some control over whom she or he will work with.
To allocate everybody a coach, whether they want it or not, goes against these two
important premises. The suggestion that people should volunteer to coach and be
coached was more in line with the way successful coaching develops. What was
coming through quite strongly was the notion that people saw this as a positive
process and that they were interested.
If you are starting from scratch in terms of setting up coaching as a whole-school

process, we would almost certainly suggest the bottom-up approach to establishing
coaching protocols. Why?
• It gives staff a sense of ownership over the process – it is something that they are
in control of and it is not something that is being done to them.
• It allows staff to air and address their concerns over the process.
As a result, they are far more likely to engage in coaching.
Case study: Clarendon College, Trowbridge, Wiltshire
A mixed comprehensive school in the south of England with approximately

1300 students on roll.
Introduction
The role of teacher coach was established at Clarendon College and two full-
time teachers took it on following a selection process that included a lesson
observation, that could take place at any time over two weeks, and then an
(Continued)
(Continued)
interview discussing various fictional coaching scenarios. After the first year,
these two teachers left the school and therefore the role was available again.
Katie Morgan became one of two teacher coaches and the roles have been
developing since then.
Coaching is non-judgemental and confidential, and is an important part of the
CPD process within the college. Although it has to be evaluated and reported
on to senior leadership, they are unaware of who has been coached. Evaluations
are kept anonymous and feedback is used to improve what is offered.
Process
Teacher coaches are available for all staff to use throughout the year – it is not
simply a process for teachers who are experiencing difficulties or underperform-
ing. Currently, all NQTs and second-year teachers go through the coaching
process as part of their school induction support and services are also offered to
all staff, including unqualified teachers and classroom supervisors. A group of
ten teachers who are currently on the Clarendon Middle Leadership Course
have been worked with this year, the intention being that they recommend
coaching to colleagues they line manage.
Five lessons are identified for coaching over a two-week timetable. One of these
lessons is used for a meeting with the line manager and the other four are for
lesson observations and feedback sessions. An observation is arranged and the
coach and coachee agree on one or two areas to concentrate on. The feedback
session takes place a couple of days after the observation and is an informal
conversation about the lesson and how to move the teacher forward. Teachers
can then decide if they would like the coach to return to observe them with the
same class or a different class after an agreed period of time. Some teachers
choose to have only one session whereas others use the coaches on a regular
basis throughout the year.
Impact
The process has been carried out with approximately 20 teachers so far this year
and initial feedback has been very positive. Evaluations from last year have
shown that coaching has made a significant contribution to raising standards of
teaching and learning within the college and this has had an impact on lesson
observations using Ofsted-style gradings.
Summary
It is important to think carefully about what you want coaching to achieve in your
school and to carry out a CPD audit to determine where coaching may already be
happening and where there may be gaps in provision.
Deciding on the approach that is right for your school is also vital as there is no ‘one
size fits all’ approach to coaching – it has to be right for your context. To ensure that
you are using the right approach, it is important to think carefully about who to
train initially in the skills of coaching and how you will do it. Be clear about how you
will set up coaching protocols – top down or bottom up – and ensure that these
protocols are adhered to by staff.
Teaching audit
Procedures for peer coaching
CPD staff questionnaire
Protocol for peer coaching
Sample coach invite letter
Further reading
Fleming, I. and Taylor, A. (1998) The Coaching Pocketbook. Alresford: Management Pocketbooks.
9
Establishing peer coaching across
the school
This chapter is of particular interest to school leaders and will

consider:
• issues that arise regarding coaching and how to deal with them
• selling the idea of coaching to the whole school
• identifying the needs of coachees and matching them with a coach
• meeting the needs of the coaches.
So, you have decided that you are going to use coaching to develop the quality of
teaching and learning at your school. You are clear about the purpose of coaching
and what you want it to do. You may have some trained coaches in place – all ready
to go. You may even have had the whole staff trained. You have also developed
some agreed protocols for coaching. The difficult bit is getting staff to subscribe to
coaching and then doing it. Only then will it actually begin to have any impact.
This chapter will examine how to do that.
There are many potential pitfalls with coaching. Some of these can be anticipated
and addressed, in order to avoid them becoming an impediment to developing
coaching in your school. Some of the issues or questions that staff may have
regarding coaching are outlined below, along with some possible ways to address
them.
Do I get paid for coaching?

Coaching is a skill that we should all be developing in order to support and
develop our colleagues. Clearly, this will be happening to different degrees with
different people. For example, a subject leader or an AST will be using coaching
skills to a greater degree than a class teacher who is informally supporting a
colleague – but they will all be using the skills. The underlying principle is that it
is just a decent way of working for all of us and is therefore not something we
would be paid for.
ESTABLISHING PEER COACHING ACROSS THE SCHOOL 79
Where do I find the time to coach?

When a school has established a real culture of coaching, this will not be an issue.
Coaching will not be seen as something separate to the other things that we do –
it will become a part of how we do it. So, the conversation over the coffee machine,
the development activity in a department meeting, or the whole-staff meeting will
all contain an element of coaching. When a more formal arrangement is required,
for example when teacher A wants to work with teacher B in a coaching relation-
ship to develop her AfL work, then schools can be creative to accommodate this.
You could try turning Inset days into CPD twilight sessions and have staff attend
six throughout the year, to get the two disaggregated days off school. However, if
teachers are engaged in some coaching work, then they need only attend say four
of these sessions in recognition of the work that they are putting into coaching.
A forward-thinking team in a school will remove a lot of the ‘stuff’ on meeting

agendas to make way for coaching conversations to happen. This will be a chal-
lenge for many teams, especially those that feel that the discussion regarding the
number of exercise books that need to be ordered for next year is of great pedagog-
ical importance! In any event, coaching can be done ‘on the hoof’. Practised
coaches learn to have coaching conversations in chunks when necessary, with each
part of the session being conducted at a different time. In these circumstances it is
really useful to end each mini session with a summing up or a key question for the
coachee to consider before the next meeting.
I’m doing it already

To be honest, this is probably true. When setting up coaching in schools, you will
be refining many of the skills that already exist amongst staff. Coaching is not
rocket science and many good teachers do it quite naturally. If this is the case, great –
but how can these colleagues develop coaching skills in others? Engaging in the
school’s coaching programme will refine their skills and make them better placed
to develop future coaches.
I have no issues to address, so I don’t need it

This assumes that coaching is always about addressing a weakness. This is not the
case. It can be about taking something that you already do well, and doing it
better. Starting with a first cohort of staff who are trained in coaching skills and are
all strong teachers with credibility amongst their peers is a strong position to build
on. It gives an important message to staff that coaching could serve a purpose for
everyone and is not just about targeting weak teachers.
Why not me?

When the first cohort of teachers are trained in coaching, many staff may respond
by asking ‘What’s special about them? Why can’t I do it?’ – and they have a point.
The approach to coaching can be adapted to give all staff some coaching training,
so in theory anyone could coach anyone. People who then want to take it further,
should be given the opportunity to do so.
Demystify coaching
This ties in with the point above and is key to the success of coaching in schools.
A big breakthrough is made with coaching when it is presented, explained and
discussed with all staff. They can then see the purpose of it and also its poten-
tial. However, this can only really happen once all staff have had the opportu-
nity to try it out for themselves. Nevertheless, it may be worth devoting some
time at a staff meeting to explaining the rationale behind coaching and initial
plans before going too far. (See the initial slides in the Coaching for Performance
PowerPoint presentation, included in the electronic resources for this chapter,
for some ideas.)
I haven’t got time for this, why can’t I just tell them what to do?
A common and perfectly natural response – bearing in mind the hectic and busy
ways in which schools operate. However, if this is all we ever do, then all our col-
leagues will do is continue to ask instead of looking to find the solutions for them-
selves. Coaching is about breaking the cycle of dependency, which in turn results
in sustainable progress.
Why can’t all staff be involved with coaching?

They can, but if it is to be successful, some planning is worthwhile. Experience
has shown us that the most effective way to sell coaching to all staff, is through
the staff sharing their experiences of coaching informally. Just telling colleagues
that it is a good idea, is not enough. From a practical point of view, it may be
worth getting a few people involved in it first of all. Following this, provide
opportunities for them to tell their colleagues that it is a worthwhile and useful
process and wait for it to snowball. Then provide further opportunities for all
staff to be involved. A word of warning at this point – it will then seem to go very
quiet on the coaching front, and you will think that it is not happening.
However, if you ask people casually ‘how’s the coaching?’, you will be surprised
to hear just how much is going on. When you get to this point, you are definitely
moving in the right direction, towards developing a culture of coaching.

Which of these issues will be particularly relevant to your institution? Consider
the answers, in your own context, before embarking on coaching.
Just as we have argued for the value of trios in the training of a small group of
coaches, so learning sets of threes can be an effective way of maintaining coaching
across the staff.
One advantage of developing coaching trios is that the focus is very much on
planning and sharing ideas rather than necessarily on lesson observation and feed-
back. This addresses a problem that was identified by Joyce and Showers in their
work on peer coaching teams (1996: 12–16). They observed that:
when teachers try to give one another feedback, collaborative activity tends to disin-
tegrate. Peer coaches told us they found themselves slipping into ‘supervisory, evalu-
ative comments’ despite their intentions to avoid them … [Teachers] often pressured
their coaches to go beyond technical feedback and give them ‘the real scoop’.
Their solution was to move away from the observation and discussion format to
coaching teams, which are not unlike our trios.
The other group of people who need to subscribe to the idea of coaching, if it is
going to be a success in your school, is the leadership team. They need to be mod-
elling a coaching approach when dealing with colleagues, if it is going to become
a common way of working within the school. How can this be done?
• Initially, you may need to explain the rationale behind coaching to the senior
leadership team (SLT). Unpacking Joyce and Showers’ research (2002 and see
Chapter 2) and exploring the advantages of coaching as opposed to other forms
of CPD have proved to be useful starting points in some schools.
• Train the senior team in coaching skills. Suggest that they go through the ini-
tial training programme, either as a group or mixed in with other staff, depend-
ing on their availability and on the messages that they wish to send to their
colleagues.
• Encourage them to attend and participate in coaching-based Inset days. You

have seen at Mayfield School (Chapter 7) what a powerful message is sent to the
staff when, for example, the headteacher takes a clear and visible coaching role
as part of a school’s CPD activity.
• Engage school leaders with National College for School Leadership (NCSL) pro-
grammes such as Leading from the Middle, Leadership Pathways and the
National Professional Qualification for Headteachers, all of which use coaching
as part of the training process.

To what extent does the leadership team within your school use coaching as a
leadership style?
Identifying the needs of coachees

As we suggested in Chapter 8, a self-audit of teaching could be a good starting point
for identifying the specific needs of teachers which could be voluntarily shared at
the outset of the coaching relationship.
Some schools will have specific areas of focus that arise from their monitoring of
teaching and learning. So, for example, the starting point for coaching may be AfL
or the development of effective plenary opportunities in lessons. In this case, the

whole staff, or a sub-group of teachers, would be expected to work on the chosen
aspect of teaching and learning for a period of time and those teachers who have
volunteered to engage in coaching would then use the coaching programme to
develop that specific aspect of their pedagogy, whether they are advanced practi-
tioners or not.
Subject leaders should have a clear idea about the areas for development in their
staff and may be helpful in steering colleagues towards a coaching partnership.
They will need to do so with tact and sensitivity.
Some schools invite teachers to engage in coaching by distributing a request for

coaching form (see Figure 9.1), usually following a CPD session in which the prin-
ciples and advantages of coaching are explored.
Whatever strategies are adopted to help colleagues to identify their needs as

coachees, it is clear that the coaching process will not work unless the coachees
are willing participants in the process and not conscripts. It is equally clear that,
as the coaching relationship develops, the real targets and challenges become
evident.
Coaches also have needs

As the coaching process gets under way in your school, it will become clear that the
coaches will need support to fulfil their role. Common issues that confront coaches
in the early stages of their work are:
• being held at a distance by a potential coachee who is feeling insecure or hesi-

tant about taking the plunge
• difficulties in knowing how to start – how to help focus a coachee who may have
a whole raft of apparent challenges to overcome
• feeling that their positive energy is being drained by colleagues whose demands
seem relentless
• feeling unskilled
• feeling unable to rise to the challenge
• feeling undervalued by the school’s leadership.
These are common responses in the early days. So what mechanisms does the
school have to support the coaches?
Firstly, the coaches have each other as a support group which we suggest should
meet every half-term in a coaching forum, perhaps under the chairmanship of the
school’s coaching co-ordinator, to review progress and to share helpful strategies
Name: ________________________________________
Department: ___________________________________
Date: __________________________________________
For which aspect(s) of your role would you like coaching support?
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
Please pass this request form to the coaching co-ordinator.
What will happen next?
• The coaching co-ordinator will talk with you confidentially to clarify the issues
and to find the most suitable coaching match for you.
• A coach will then be identified for you to work with.
• You and the coach will meet to agree a focus and a plan.
• You will review the work that you do together each half-term, or earlier if the
coaching process is completed in less time.
• The coaching protocol will be followed throughout the process.
Figure 9.1 Request for coaching form
Photocopiable:
and the training needs of the coaches. Establish a clear protocol for the work of the
forum. Commonly, it is useful to agree that the names of the coachees are never
used in discussions. It may also be useful to require that the half-termly reviews
between coaches and coachees have been completed before the coaching forum
takes place. The reflections of all parties to the coaching process, summarised in
this way, give a greater focus to the meeting.
It may be useful to organise the coaches into self-support pairs or trios tasked to
provide ongoing coaching support for each other. After all, the coaches, in com-
mon with all staff, will need coaching from time to time. Alternatively, the coach-
ing co-ordinator could provide coaching support for the coaches, either directly or
by engaging the services of an external consultant. It would be usual for the on-
going training needs of the coaches to be identified through one or other of the
mechanisms suggested above.
Finally, it is important that the school finds ways of acknowledging the demand-
ing work that the coaches have undertaken.
Matching coachee and coach

Having trained coaches, established protocols for lesson observations and coaching
conversations, identified the school’s teaching strengths and areas for develop-
ment, set up a method of inviting teachers to engage in coaching and set up a
coaching forum, the school will now need to empower a colleague to match
coachees with coaches in a sensitive and carefully considered manner. This person
will need to enjoy the trust and confidence of teachers and will need to have a good
knowledge of the staff, their strengths and weaknesses as teachers, as well as what
makes them tick as people. He or she could well be the school’s coaching co-ordinator
or possibly a key member of the coaching team.
It is the job of this wise and highly-regarded colleague to act as go-between so

that coaching partnerships are established in which the coachee and coach feel
comfortable working with each other. The process will involve careful consider-
ation of the expressed needs of the coachee. At this point the go-between will
need to make a confidential approach to two or three coaches who might fit the
bill in order to establish whether they would all be prepared, if chosen, to
engage in a coaching relationship with that particular coachee. Armed, hope-
fully with their positive responses, the go-between is then able to offer
the coachee some alternatives from which to choose. It is important that the
coachees make real choices as this is likely to increase their commitment to
the coaching relationship.

In your institution who has the knowledge and skills to match up coach and
coachee?
It is worth remembering, when setting up coaching partnerships, the following

words of James Flaherty (1999):
It is dangerous for coaches to imagine that the use of any technique, however powerful,
will allow them to escape engaging fully with the other person with openness, courage
and curiosity. Techniques cannot replace the human heart and creativity in coaching.
Above all, the challenge for the go-between is to use emotional intelligence to iden-
tify those colleagues who are likely to strike up good rapport and to engage ‘the
human heart’ in the coaching process.
Monitoring the coaching relationship – how long

will it last?
Suggestions for monitoring and evaluating the impact of coaching, both at the
individual and institutional level, are given in Chapter 10. We take the view that
coaching partnerships usually need at least half a term to enable the coaching cycle
to be completed and targets to be met. Following a review, towards the end of the
half-term, it may be that further work needs to be done.
Summary
It is important to have a clear strategy of how you are going to sell coaching to your
staff and get all members involved. This can be done by setting up coaching trios
or clusters across departments and giving these groups specific tasks to carry out
which will impact on the quality of teaching and learning in your school.
It is also important to dedicate time to sharing ideas about how to teach, for exam-
ple by providing opportunities on training days for colleagues to discuss and
demonstrate what they have been doing, and to find opportunities for recognising
the work of the coaches.
By encouraging your senior team to get involved in coaching you will encourage
more people to take it up, but do remember that considerable tact and sensitivity
are needed when pairing up colleagues into coaching partnerships.
The coaching cycle
Coaching for performance – PowerPoint presentation
Coaching for performance – training plan
Coaching for performance – programme
Request for coaching form

10
Measuring impact
This chapter is of particular interest to school leaders. In it we

will look at:
• why the impact of coaching on teaching and learning needs to be
measured
• the different ways in which this can be done
• how to review how coaching is developing in your school.
If any school is to succeed, it is not enough to have a good idea and then put it
into practice. A good idea is only good when it translates into positive outcomes –
until then, it is just an idea. This is the case for coaching in schools. In earlier chap-
ters, we discussed the need to establish a school’s vision for coaching – what do you
want it to become and what do you want it to achieve? With this in mind, it is
imperative to consider how you will monitor and evaluate whether or not coaching
is achieving these objectives.

• Can coaches and coachees contribute to the review of success while main-
taining confidentiality and trust?
• What data could be gathered to infer or confirm that the coaching process
has been successful?
• What is the role of other colleagues (other than coach and coachee) in mon-
itoring the impact of coaching?
• What role could the children play in confirming the success of coaching?
It is worth taking some time to consider why we should monitor and evaluate the
impact of any CPD activity, such as coaching, in schools.
Here are some possible reasons:
• To improve the coaching process, with a view to further improving teaching and
learning.
MEASURING IMPACT 87
• To improve the self-esteem of the coachees. If they feel that the process has been
useful and has made a difference, they will feel better about themselves. This
will undoubtedly have a positive effect on their performance.
• To provide an evidence bank for Ofsted inspections. The fact that schools are
engaging in coaching will be viewed as a positive move. If it can be demon-
strated that coaching is having a positive impact on teaching and learning,
even better.
• To justify the process to stakeholders. It is highly likely that coaching will draw
on the school’s resources. It will be easier to justify this to stakeholders such as
the governing body if positive outcomes can be identified.
• To grow and develop coaching. Once reluctant colleagues see that it works, they
may be more likely to engage with coaching.
However, the process of monitoring and evaluating the impact of coaching is fraught
with difficulties. It could be argued that it goes against the whole principle of coaching.
Firstly, coaching is meant to be a confidential and non-judgemental process. As soon as
you start measuring the effectiveness of it, these principles could be compromised.
Secondly, coaching is just one of many interventions that could be having an impact
on teaching and learning. There will be many other variables involved, for example
other discussions with colleagues, reading an article in a journal, own self-reflection,
a discussion at a staff or department meeting and so on. It is very difficult to draw a
direct link between an improvement in the quality of teaching and learning and any
coaching that the teacher may have engaged in. These two issues can be addressed by
considering what can be measured to evaluate impact and how this can be done.
Feedback from coachees

At the outset of the coaching process, some kind of self-analysis may have been
carried out by the coachees. This will have been used to establish how happy they
are with a particular aspect of their job. Examples may include:
Job performance pie

Colleagues are asked to draw a pie chart that includes the main aspects of their role,
or the main parts of their role that they are interested in addressing by coaching. The
size of each segment, relates to their level of satisfaction with this part of their role.
Clearly, the person represented in Figure 10.1 is equally satisfied with each part of their
role! However, if this process is carried out at the beginning and at the end of the
coaching process, then one might expect to see an increase in the size of the segment
which relates to the focus of the coaching.

Working on a similar principle, a chart or graph could be used to measure how
satisfied a colleague is with the different aspects of their work. This can be used at
the start of the coaching process and again at the end. Comparisons can then be
made and progress measured. The advantage of the faces included in Figure 10.2 is
Starters Plenaries
Learning objectives Differentiation
Figure 10.1 Job performance pie
Aspect of teaching
Starters
Plenaries
Learning objectives
Differentiation
Figure 10.2 Job satisfaction chart
that they are not as threatening as a numerical value. The chart is concerned with
how people feel about themselves. However, from an analytical point of view, there
is nothing to stop these being turned into numerical values, making a quantitative
analysis of the impact possible.
A star diagram can also be used for coaching purposes. The example in Figure
10.3 focuses on the criteria for a ‘good’ lesson. Teachers are encouraged to assess
themselves along each of the five spines, on a three-point grading system. They
can then join each of the five points to obtain a visual representation of their
own performance.
Questionnaire
Another way to get qualitative information from the coachee is by way of a simple
questionnaire. Although not as easy to anaylse in a numerical way, it will certainly
give feedback on the process. Some questions to consider include:
• Has the coaching process been useful? Why?
• What have been the main learning points for you from the process?
• How has your practice changed as a result?

MEASURING IMPACT 89
Behaviour of students is good and

built around strong teacher/student
relationships. Students are focused
and on task.
Assessment is regular, useful and

Tasks are differentiated,
enables students to make
allowing students of all abilities
progress – including teacher, self-
to make progress.
and/or peer assessment.
There is a good pace and structure

Learning objectives are shared,
to the lesson – including a starter, a
discussed and reviewed during the
range of engaging activities
lesson. Activities relate directly to
(individual and collaborative group
these objectives.
work) and plenaries.
Figure 10.3 ‘Good’ lesson star diagram
• What has been the impact of this change on the learning of your students?
• What are your next steps?
• How else can we continue to develop coaching at school? What changes should
we introduce for next year?
The last question is very important. Colleagues who have been coached often have
very good ideas about how to move coaching on in a school.
Coaching log
In Chapter 8, it was suggested that it is good practice for both the coach and the
coachee to keep a reflective coaching log that will enable them to focus further con-
versations and to record the progress of the coachee against his or her self-determined
targets. This log will provide evidence of progress over time. It is useful, perhaps
every half-term, to devote a coaching conversation to reviewing progress. The
coach will need to ask good questions to elicit the coachee’s realistic self-review and
to avoid negative self-talk. Any notes that are made in this meeting should be
agreed and should remain the property of the coachee (see Figure. 10.4 for an
example of a coaching review template).
Coaching review
Date and time Action taken What is the evidence What next?
(What have you of success? (Have you any
done differently? (What have been the targets for the next
What steps have outcomes for you and steps?)
you taken?) for the students?)
Signed: (Coachee) (Coach)
Figure 10.4 Coaching review template
Photocopiable:
MEASURING IMPACT 91
However, if coaching is used positively by a teacher to support the achievement of

a performance management target, the teacher may choose to use evidence from
the coaching log, corroborated by, for example, a lesson observation or data on
student attainment, to show that he or she has achieved that particular target.
There would be nothing to prevent the headteacher from totalling the number of
instances when a target was met with the support of coaching, when reading the
performance management summaries. This collection of data clearly would not
breach any confidences.
Feedback from coaches

We now come to the vexed question: what, if anything, from a coaching review
conversation could be shared with other colleagues? We take the view that the
details of the conversation should remain confidential but that target areas could be
described (for example, ‘work on plenaries’) and outcomes could be evaluated. This
could be shared with the school’s coaching co-ordinator, perhaps each half-term.
We feel that such an approach would need the full agreement of both the coach and
coachee and that any statement of progress should be jointly written or agreed.
Feedback from students

It is probably fairly accurate to assume that most schools have some kind of
‘student voice’ process in place. When it is most effective, student voice is
used to get feedback from students on their own classroom experiences and their
view on what good teaching is and how this helps their learning. If a school is
engaging in specialist coaching, for example in the development of AfL, it would
seem sensible to question the student voice panel on this topic. Clearly, the ques-
tions would need to be carefully phrased, but this would give honest and direct
feedback on whether or not the coaching in that area is having any impact.
This approach was adopted by John McKee, an Assistant Headteacher working in

Brighton. John has been using coaching to embed AfL practice into teaching and
learning at his school. He then used a student questionnaire to measure the impact
of the coaching on the learning experiences of the students. The questionnaire John
used was based on one that was developed by Tracy Smith, Deputy Headteacher at
Seven Kings High School in Ilford, Essex (see Figure 10.5). It is easy to see how such
a strategy could be used before and after coaching in order to monitor the impact.
The questionnaire could also be adapted, for other aspects of teaching and learning.
The quality of teaching and learning

As a part of the school self-evaluation process, schools should have a system in place
to measure the quality of teaching and learning. This may include full-lesson obser-
vations, lesson ‘walk-throughs’ (where a number of lessons are visited in one
period), student work scrutiny and subject leader interviews. Clearly, these processes
should also provide evidence for the impact of coaching on teaching and learning.
We will listen to you
How do you learn?
At the moment, we are carrying out some research about how students at our
school learn.
We are developing ways to help you improve your learning. This is called
Assessment for Learning and is a major part of the work of the school. In order to
help us develop this work, we need to know what you think about some of the
things that happen in lessons.
We will be taking your responses seriously so please try to answer as sensibly and
honestly as possible. Please think carefully about your responses to the questions –
they only require you to put a tick or a cross in the relevant box.
The questionnaire is confidential – all we want to know is your year group and
whether you are male or female.
Thank you for your help with this.
Instructions
• The first three columns ask whether or not a particular practice happens. The
other column is about your preferences.
• Tick one box in the first three columns. Then tick or cross the last column to
indicate whether you would like this to happen or not.
• After completing the questionnaire, hand it back to your tutor.
Year group
Male
Female
(Continued)
(Continued)
When teachers ask you questions in class do they:
Yes No Sometimes Preferred/not

preferred
Allow thinking time
before expecting an
answer
Allow you to explore
the answers in pairs
before expecting an answer
Use a no-hands-up
approach
Use wrong answers to
develop your understanding
of a topic
Ask different types of
questions that require different
types of answers (e.g. one-
word answers, extended
answers, answers about your
thoughts and ideas)
Ask ‘big’ questions that you
need to think about or discuss
with a partner before
answering
Follow up one question
with another
Allow time for you to ask
questions
When teachers assess your work do they:
Yes No Sometimes Preferred/

not preferred
Use a system that tells you
how much you have
understood about the lesson
(e.g. traffic lights, smiley faces)
Give you detailed
explanations about what
is expected
Give you detailed explanations
about what you have to do to
be successful
Give you examples of work to
show you what is expected
Show you how they have
assessed your work
Get you to mark the work of
another student
Get you to mark your own work
(Continued)
(Continued)
When teachers mark your work do they:
Yes No Sometimes Preferred/

not preferred
Tell you what they are
looking for when they
set the work
Tell you what you

did well
Tell you what you did badly
Give advice about what

you need to do to
improve
Give a grade
Give targets
Give comments
Give an effort grade
Ask you to act on the

feedback that they have
given you
Talk to you about your

work as well as give you
written feedback
Talk to you about your

work instead of giving
written feedback
Thank you very much for completing the questionnaire.
Figure 10.5 Student survey
Photocopiable:
MEASURING IMPACT 95
Again, it is easier to make links between the coaching and the impact on teaching
and learning if the coaching has had a specific focus, for example on developing
the use of lesson starters.
There may be additional data available that could indicate the success in the coach-
ing process. Perhaps a colleague has been coached in establishing positive relation-
ships with children and clear rules and expectations in the classroom. In this case
it would be appropriate to look at the data on, for example, the teacher’s use of the
school’s formal rewards and sanctions systems. Possibly a teacher has experienced
low self-esteem or stress symptoms as a result of difficulties and is reporting a more
positive feeling about the job as a result of peer coaching. This could be evidenced
in improved attendance by that teacher.
Student outcomes
It may be fair to assume that if coaching is being effective, then the quality of
teaching and learning should improve and, as a result, so should the student out-
comes. This is a somewhat simplistic assumption to make. We have already men-
tioned the fact that there are many other factors at play when it comes to student
outcomes. With this in mind, it may be useful to focus the criteria more specifi-
cally. For example, if a teacher is being coached on improving the performance of
his or her students in their GCSE Science coursework, then it may be more realis-
tic to use the coursework scores of those students as a yardstick of success in terms
of the coaching.
Attitudinal surveys
Experience has shown that coaching, if done well, will definitely improve the self-
esteem and confidence of the coachee. This is difficult to measure, however a gen-
eral attitudinal survey issued to staff will give you an insight into the impact of
coaching. It is important to give some careful thought to what you want to find out
from the survey and a quick internet search for ‘teacher attitude survey’ will offer
guidance. For example, if a school wanted to gauge the willingness of staff to take
risks and try new strategies as a result of coaching, the survey provided in Figure
10.6 could be used.
The coaching co-ordinator’s role in gathering

evidence of impact
To sum up, there is a range of evidence available in any school that could be
useful in assessing the impact of coaching. This could include feedback from
coaches and coachees on progress made, the results of formal lesson observations,
data on the use of rewards and sanctions, attitudinal surveys; staff attendance
Aspect of practice Agree Disagree
strongly strongly
I am currently enjoying my teaching
My students enjoy my lessons
I am a reflective practitioner
I enjoy discussing teaching strategies

with colleagues
I tend to stick to tried and tested

teaching strategies
I want to develop new and

innovative teaching strategies
I am happy to take risks in the

classroom and try things out
I seek advice from others on how

to develop my teaching
I am able to evaluate my teaching

and come up with ways to improve
my teaching
Figure 10.6 Teacher attitudinal survey
Photocopiable:
MEASURING IMPACT 97
Feedback from
coachee/coach reviews
Coaching
co-ordinator
Data from monitoring (lesson

Feedback from teachers
observations, use of rewards
and students
and sanctions, staff
(attitudinal surveys, student
attendance, student
interviews)
outcomes)
Figure 10.7 Coaching co-ordinator’s role in assessing coaching
data, findings from interviews with students, and student outcomes. This infor-
mation is usually held by different colleagues in a large comprehensive school.
It could become the role of the coaching co-ordinator to gather this informa-
tion in order to assess the impact of the coaching process (see Figure 10.7).
Schools often invest a good deal of resources in setting up coaching, and so
they need to develop effective mechanisms to ensure that the time and money
is well used.
Reviewing how coaching is developing in your school

The more that coaching develops at a school, the more convinced we are that
there are many more opportunities for coaching outside the usual pattern of two
people sitting down and having a formal coaching meeting. We would advocate
looking for as many opportunities as possible to use coaching as a tool for staff to
support and develop each other. It is worth undertaking an audit of coaching to
assess where it is happening well and developing, and where it needs to be further
developed (see Figure 10.8).
This exercise could be usefully completed at the outset of planning any coaching
work. However, it is also worthwhile at a later stage in the development of coaching.
Having established coaching in the school, the coaching co-ordinator can some-
times feel that he or she is losing control of it. A reflective exercise such as an audit
is, if nothing else, reassuring in that it highlights where coaching is happening. Of
course, it also shows you where energy and resources are needed to embed coach-
ing in all its guises.
Aspect of coaching Embedded as a part Developing Area for further
of our practice – strength development
a strength
Peer coaching
Teacher is coached
by a peer on an area
of their choice
Specialist coaching
Teacher is coached
by a peer in a
specific area,
e.g. AfL
Co-coaching
Two teachers coach
each other
Team coaching
Coaching occurs
within a team,
e.g. department, on
a topic of interest
to them
Group coaching
One or two teachers
coach a group
Leadership coaching
Coaching is focused
specifically on
leadership
Figure 10.8 A whole-school coaching audit
Photocopiable:
MEASURING IMPACT 99
Summary
On its own, none of the strategies described above will enable you to measure fully
the impact of coaching or how it is developing in your school. However, when used
together the strategies described they will certainly go a long way towards giving a
very clear indication as to whether or not coaching is having an impact. We believe
that coaching can contribute to a major cultural shift in schools – something that is
difficult to measure. When coaching becomes truly embedded, staff are more recep-
tive to change, more open to discussing what goes on in their classrooms, more will-
ing to share aspects of their best practice and more confident about what they are
doing. When this happens, then you know that coaching is really making a difference.
Coaching review template
Teacher attitudinal survey
Whole-school Coaching
Student survey
Suggested timeline for implementing
a coaching programme
Steps to take Questions to consider
1 Establish within the school’s sen- • What evidence is there to sug-

ior leadership team: gest that the school is ready to
• a shared understanding of embrace coaching?
what coaching is • What is likely to be the focus of
• its potential in your context coaching for the school in the
• a commitment to developing first year of operation?
coaching in the school. • Who will present the case for
coaching to the senior team (e.g.
headteacher, CPD coordinator,
lead teacher(s))?
(See Chapters 1 and 2 for some
ideas)
2 Formulate an action plan for the • What are the staff needs that
introduction of coaching into the coaching may help to address
school (first year). How do you know?
• What will be the intial contexts
for coaching in your school?
(e.g. experienced teachers, trainee
teachers, children, new teachers,
all staff)?
• To what extent will topics for
coaching conversations be
directed?
• What are your success criteria
for year 1?
• How will you monitor and eval-
uate the impact of coaching?
• Who will lead the initiative at
the start?
• Who will write the action plan?
(See Chapters 8 and 10)
3 Raise staff awareness about: • How will you do this? In what
• what coaching is forum? At what stage in the devel-
• the power of coaching to develop opment of coaching? Who is able
good practice to ‘sell’ coaching to colleagues
• the plans for coaching in the without threatening or patronis-
school. ing them?
(See Chapters 1, 2 and 9)
(Continued)
SUGGESTED TIMELINE FOR IMPLEMENTING A COACHING PROGRAMME 101
(Continued)
4 Identify teachers who have the • What criteria will you use to
potential to become effective identify potential coaches?
coaches. • Do any staff have prior experi-
ence of coaching?
• Have you decided to train all
staff in ‘the basics’?
(See Chapters 1 and 8)
5 Train staff in the skills of coaching. • Who will train the staff? Over
what period of time? How many
staff will be trained?
• To what extent will the training
need to be differentiated?
(See Chapter 8)
6 Set up opportunities for colleagues • Will all the staff be able to prac-
to practise their coaching skills. tise coaching skills as part of
their CPD?
• Will coaches work with each
other before ‘going live’ with
coachees?
• Do you intend to provide oppor-
tunities for coaches to be
coached in the early stages of
their work?
(See Chapter 3)
7 Develop protocols and proce- • Who will be involved in setting
dures for conducting coaching. out the ground rules for coach-
ing in your school?
• Do your protocols and proce-
dures include:
− a code of conduct for coach-
ing that includes a clear state-
ment about confidentiality?
– mechanisms for establishing
coaching partnerships and
for dissolving them when the
work is completed, or if the
process is found to be of no
benefit?
– clarity about the use of time
for coaching?
– a method for evaluating the
impact of coaching?
(See Chapters 3, 8, and 9)
8 Establish working coaching • Will all staff be expected to engage
partnerships. in a coaching relationship?
(Continued)
• How will coaching partner-

ships be established? How will
personalities and needs be
matched?
(See Chapter 9)
9 Set up a forum for the discussion • Will the forum be for all staff or
of issues arising from the coach- for a group of identified coaches?
ing process. • Who will chair the meetings?
• How will confidentiality be
maintained?
(See Chapter 9)
10 Evaluate the impact of coaching • How should coaches, coachees,
on pedagogy and practice. children and colleagues with a
monitoring role contribute to the
evaluation of the impact of
coaching in the school?
• How will confidentiality be
maintained when evaluating the
success of the programme?
(See Chapter 10)
11 Review the development and • Have the targets been met?
impact of coaching in the school • In the second year, will coaching
and consider the steps for year 2. have a different focus?
• Who will lead the second year of
development?
(See Chapters 4–7 for ideas about
different uses and contexts for
coaching)
12 Write the action plan for year 2. • See step 2.
GLOSSARY
Active listening: Occurs when the coach pays full attention to the coachee’s lan-
guage, tone of voice, verbal images and figures of speech without being distracted
by his or her own thoughts or internal listening.
Clarifying questions: Help the coachee to identify the issue with precision and
to deepen thinking as well as to sort out misconceptions.
Coaching: A non-directive helping process that enables people to identify and

clarify issues, solve problems, commit to action, develop their skills, motivation
and self-esteem. The coach enables the coachee to find his or her own solutions by
using the skills of listening, questioning, reflecting and clarifying.
Co-coaching: An activity in which two colleagues coach each other in order to

develop aspects of their practice.
Group coaching: When one or two teachers coach a group of colleagues who
may have similar issues.
Incisive questions: Questions that are intended to get to the nub of an issue and
to cut through perceived limitations. They may present the coachee with real chal-
lenge. They should therefore be used with care.
Internal listening: The self-talk that goes on inside one’s head that can act as
‘interference’ in a coaching conversation.
Intuitive listening: This occurs when the coach tunes in to the coachee’s
thoughts and feelings, to what is implied or suggested by non-verbal cues, to what
lies under the surface of the conversation.
Leadership coaching: Coaching that focuses specifically on leadership issues.
Locus of control: The mechanisms that people perceive are present to guide
and control the events in their lives and their behaviours. These may be internal
(determined by self) or external (determined by others). In coaching, the aim is to
help the coachee to identify which aspects of the situation are truly within their
control.
Mentoring: A helping process in which the mentor will offer expert knowledge,
advice and guidance. While the mentor may use the skills of coaching (listening,
104 GLOSSARY
questioning, reflecting and clarifying), they have a responsibility to oversee col-

leagues and for the evaluation of progress.
Mirroring: Used by the coach to reflect the body posture of the coachee in order
to put them at ease. This will require the coach to observe small signs in the body
language of the colleague and to respond appropriately. It may involve, for exam-
ple, adopting a similar seating position or respecting the coachee’s sense of what
constitutes a safe distance between the two individuals.
Outcome questions: Useful towards the end of the conversation when the
coachee wishes to commit to action.
Peer coaching: A term used to stress that coaching is a relationship of equals.
Preferred future state: An imagined future in which issues are resolved. Coaches
often help their clients to visualise this state in order to begin to formulate the first
steps towards it.
Reflective questions: Help coachees to think about their practice and why they
behave as they do as well as how they might change.
Scaling: A tool used in coaching to test the degree of success so far or to check com-
mitment to future action. The coach may ask the coachee to assess, for example on a
scale of one to ten, the likelihood of taking the next step. A low score in this case is
likely to indicate lack of commitment or uncertainty about the course of action.
Self-talk (negative): The state of mind in which we feel that we cannot control
or improve our situation. The task of the coach is to assist the coachee to adopt realistic,
positive self-talk rather than the action-sapping negative.
Self-talk (positive): The talk that goes on in our heads in which we adopt a pos-
itive ‘can do’ attitude to our challenges.
Solution-focused coaching: A term used in the literature to stress the positive,

action-focused nature of coaching – that it is concerned to assist the coachee to
work away from a problem and towards a solution.
Specialist coaching: This occurs when a teacher uses specific expertise to support
the development of a particular aspect of a colleague’s practice. It may require real
restraint on the part of the coach in order to avoid telling the coachee what to do.
Summarising questions: Help to focus the conversation and to clarify what has
been said.
Team coaching: This occurs when a department or other distinct team within
the staff use coaching techniques to develop their practice.
References
Department for Education and Skills (2004) Pedagogy and Practice: Teaching and
Learning in Secondary Schools: London: DfES.
Flaherty, J. (1999) Coaching: Evoking Excellence in Others. London: Butterworth-
Heinemann.
Fleming, I. and Taylor, A. (1998) The Coaching Pocketbook. Alresford: Management
Pocketbooks.
Harbour, M. (1996) ‘Collaboration, Competition and Cross-phase Liaison: The North
Lowestoft Schools Network’, in D. Bridges and C. Husbands (eds) Consorting and
Collaborating in the Education Marketplace. London: Falmer Press.
Hawkins, P. and Smith, N. (2006) Coaching, Mentoring and Organizational
Consultancy: Supervision and Development. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Jackson, P.Z. and McKergow, M. (2007) The Solutions Focus: Making Coaching and
Change SIMPLE (2nd edn). London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
Joyce, B. and Showers, B. (1996) ‘The Evolution of Peer Coaching’, Educational Leadership,
53(6): 12–16.
Joyce, B. and Showers, B. (2002) Designing Training and Peer Coaching: Our Need for
Learning. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Kelly, S. (2007) The CPD Coordinator’s Toolkit. London: Paul Chapman Publishing.
Knowles, M., Holton, E. and Swanson, R. (2005) The Adult Learner. Boston, MA:
Butterworth-Heinemann
Powell, G., Chambers, M. and Baxter, G. (2001) Pathways to Coaching. Bristol: TLO.
Rewards and Incentives Group (2007) Performance Management for Teachers and
Head Teachers – Guidance. London: DfES.
Rotter, J.B. (1954) Social Learning and Clinical Psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Starr, J. (2003) The Coaching Manual. London: Prentice Hall Business.
Thomas, W. (2005) Coaching Solutions: Resource Book. Stafford: Network Educational
Press.
Thomas, W. and Smith, A. (2004) Coaching Solutions: Practical Ways to Improve
Performance in Education. Stafford: Network Educational Press.
Whitmore, J. (2002) Coaching for Performance. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
Index
Added to a page number ‘f’ denotes a figure.
A coaching cont.
action audits 97, 98f
committing to 24–5 case studies see case studies
considering options for 24 in challenging circumstances 53–64
active listening 6–7 checking current reality 24
adult learners 45–6 continuum of support and development 3f
attitudinal surveys 95, 96f conversations
audits conducting 22–3
coaching 97, 98f establishing ground rules 21–2
conducting CPD 67–8 coordinators 95–7
defining 1–4
B demystifying 74, 80
Bognor Regis Community College feedback see feedback
coaching goals
after special measures 60–1 revisiting 25
Ian’s story 63–4 setting 24
team development 51 group sessions 45–52
under challenging circumstances 58 listening 6–7, 22–3
bottom-up approach, establishing protocols 74–5 logs 89–91
management 60
C measuring impact of 86–99
Career Entry Development Profile (CEPD) 36–7 and mentoring 2–3
case studies models 7–11
coaching for new teachers 36–44
after special measures 60–1 ownership of 30, 38, 74, 75
in challenging circumstances 54–5, partnerships, setting up 85
58, 63–4 programme timeline 100–2
conversation 23 prompt cards 39f
in group 46–7, 49–50, 51 protocols 21, 71–6
in performance management process 30–1 qualities 3–4
relationship 2 questioning 4–6, 23, 24
trio 20 reasons for 14–18
conducting CPD audit 67–8 relationships 2, 85
The Learning Toolkit 33–4 request for (form) 83f
Clarendon College 75–6 review template 90f
clarifying questions 4–5 reviewing 97
CLEAR model 9–10 skills see skills
co-coaching 36, 37–44 solution-focused coaching 23
coachees specialist 29–35
feedback from 87–9 trios 19–20, 55–6, 80–1
matching coaches and 84–5 vs other CPD activities 16–18
coaches Coaching, Mentoring and Organizational
feedback from 91 Consultancy: Supervision and Development 9
identifying needs of 81–4 Coaching for Performance 8
identifying potential 29, 69–70 Coaching Solutions: Practical Ways to Improve
matching coachees and 84–5 Performance in Education 7
sample invite letter 72f Coaching Solutions: Resource Book 7, 24
training a group of (case study) 70–1 collaborative leadership 34
coaching continuing professional development see CPD
action contract (coaching) 10
committing to 24–5 conversations
considering options for 24 conducting 22–3
appropriate, considering 68–9 establishing ground rules 21–2
108 INDEX
coordinators lesson observation

coaching 95–7 feedback 25–7
CPD 17, 31, 69 review sheet 40f
CPD line-management structures 51
action plans 30, 31, 32 listening 6–7, 22–3
activities 67f, 68 Littlehampton Community School
audit (case study) 67–8 conducting a CPD audit 67–8
coaching vs 16–18 establishing protocols 74–5
staff questionnaire 66f group coaching 46–7
The CPD Coordinator’s Toolkit 16–17 introduction to coaching 20
culture of coaching 43, 79 performance management 30–1
The Learning Toolkit 33–4
D training a group of coaches 70
dialogue about pedagogy 16 locus of control 15
logs (coaching) 89–91
E
efficiency 15–16 M
environments, for MA education programmes 18
conversation 22 Mayfield School 54–5
external locus of control 15 mentoring 2–3, 18
Middle Leader Development Programme 50
F middle leaders, developing 50–1
faculty approach 34 mirroring 23, 27
feedback monitoring
from coachees 87–9 for identifying coaches 29
from coaches 91 relationships 85
from students 91
lesson observation 25–7 N
FLOW model 8 National College for School Leadership 50
negative self-talk 23, 24
G newly qualified teachers
glossary 103–4 Career Entry Development Profile 36–7
go-betweens 84 co-coaching process 37–42
goals
revisiting 25 O
setting 24 open questions 6
group coaching 45–52 OSKAR model 10–11
GROW model 8–9 outcome questions 6
OUTCOMES model 9
H ownership of coaching 30, 38, 74, 75
HILDA model 11
P
I partnerships, setting up 85
incisive questions 24 pedagogy, dialogue about 16
inset days 51 ‘Pedagogy and Practice’ pack 51
interference, in listening 6 peer coaching 73f, 78–85
internal listening 6 performance management
internal locus of control 15 coaching in 30–1, 43
intuitive listening 7 review meetings 31
performance-enhancing, coaching as 14
J positive future state 24
job performance pie 87, 88f positive self-talk 23
job satisfaction chart 87, 88f posture 22–3
preferred future state 1, 8, 24
K professionalism 17
knowledge acquisition 17 prompt cards 39f
protocols 21, 71–6
L
leadership 34 Q
Leadership Pathways 50 questioning 4–6, 23, 24
Leading from the Middle 50 questionnaires, feedback 88–9
learning
application of new 17 R
measuring quality of 91–5 reality, checking current 24
The Learning Toolkit 33–4 recently qualified teachers 42–3
INDEX 109
reflective logs 89–91 STRIDE model 7–8

reflective questions 5 student feedback 91
relationships (coaching) 2, 85 student outcomes 95
review sheet, lesson observation 40f student survey 94f
review stage 10, 97 subject action plans 32
review template 90f subject leader meetings 50
subject-based compartmentalisation 34
S subject-based teams 49–51
scaling 11, 24 summarising questions 5
school development plans 29, 32 support and development,
school improvement cycle 32f continuum 3f
school improvement teams 34–5
school leadership 34 T
schools, in challenging circumstances 53 teacher attitudinal survey 96f
self-esteem 15 Teacher Learning Academy (TLA) 43
self-sufficiency 15 teachers
self-talk 23, 24 coaching for new 36–44
skills 3 skills audit 69
acquisition 17 teaching, measuring quality of 91–5
audit 69 team development 51
practising 19–21 team work 16
solution-focused coaching 23 tone of voice 23
The Solution Focus: Making Coaching and Change training (case study) 70–1
SIMPLE 10
specialist coaching 29–35 V
staff voice, tone of 23
CPD questionnaire 66f
meetings 51 W
team development 51 whole-school audit 98
star diagrams 88, 89f ‘why’ questions, avoiding 23
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The Coaching Toolkit

The Coaching Toolkit

A Practical Guide for Your School

Shaun Allison and Michael Harbour

First published 2009

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of

All material on the accompanying website can be printed

SAGE Publications Ltd

SAGE Publications Inc.

SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd

SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd

Library of Congress Control Number 2007937710

British Library Cataloguing in Publication data

Typeset by C&M Digitals (P) Ltd, Chennai, India

About the authors vii

List of electronic resource materials xi

How to use this book xii

5 Using coaching for new teachers 36

7 Coaching in challenging circumstances 53

8 The first steps for school leaders 65

9 Establishing peer coaching across the school 78

Suggested timeline for implementing a coaching programme 100

We would like to thank colleagues at Patcham High School, in particular Paula

Questions for reflection and discussion

Electronic resource available from website

Wherever you see the icon, downloadable material can be found at

a tool to address failure and weakness

How you can use this book in your school

– ways of practising coaching skills before ‘going live’ with coachees

– how to establish the ground rules for coaching conversations

– how to conduct coaching conversations

– how to give feedback on an observed lesson in coaching mode.

Chapter 5 explores how co-coaching can be used to develop Newly Qualified

In Chapter 10 we explore the issues around measuring the impact of coaching in

In this chapter we will look at:

listening, questioning, clarifying and reflecting. To coach successfully in schools,

Case study: Sarah and Jan

It is worth acknowledging that this relationship was an unusual one – in terms of

Continuum support and development

Figure 1.1 Continuum of support and development

Mentoring and coaching should be seen as a continuum in terms of supporting and

• asking open questions

• building rapport – using posture, gestures, eye contact and so on

• adopting a non-judgemental view of others

• challenging beliefs – a good coach must be willing to have difficult conversations

• encouraging others to agree on actions – an essential part of the coaching

• developing a mutual trust and respect

They also have the following qualities:

• curiosity • optimism • honesty • trustworthiness

• patience • consistency • flexibility • creativity

• confidence • approachability • professionalism • openness

The importance of questioning in coaching

With all of these models, if a coaching conversation is to be successful, the coach

• ‘Tell me more about …’

• ‘What aspect of this do you want to discuss today?’

• ‘I am interested to hear about …’

• ‘What makes you think that this is an issue?’

• ‘What do you want your starter activities to achieve?’

• ‘What did you want the students to learn today?’