Instructional coaching: Building theory about the role and organizational support for professional learning.

Gallucci, Chrysan, Van Lare, Michelle DeVoogt, Yoon, Irene H., & Boatright, Beth. (2010). Instructional coaching: Building theory about the role and organizational support for professional learning. American Educational Research Journal, 47(4), 919-963.

To be able to teach others, you first must be a learner yourself. That is the overwhelming message I took from this case study of one novice literacy coach’s development. It seems like a no-brainer, but too often we tend to think of instructional coaches as fully-formed “experts” who “transmit” their expertise to teachers. This article encourages us to view the coach first as a learner and then as a co-learner who also teaches his or her fellow teachers.

We follow ”Dan” through a period where he is learning about educational reforms being implemented in his school district at the same time he is learning to be a literacy coach. Dan first has to learn to implement new ways of teaching and appropriate them as part of his own practice as a teacher of middle school language arts. Only after he has done this is he able to share those new ways of teaching with others and help facilitate their learning. I really enjoyed reading about Dan’s process of learning, which was far from a linear one, as the authors note. As with any learner, his learning trajectory had its own unique, recursive, and sometimes circuitous path.

Dan openly revealed himself as a co-learner to the teachers he coached, and I think that was a vital piece of his growing effectiveness as a coach. If he had come in with the aura of an expert who knew it all, there might have been resistance to what he was trying to impart. Instead, he seemed to convey the idea that he was “one of them” and wanted them to try some things he had found worked with the students in that particular school. That relationship, and the relevance of doing the professional development right there in the context of that particular school, to me was what “made” the success of this reform effort. In fact, this entire reform effort was highly situated and embedded within the schools, with most professional development activities taking place right in the school and in authentic situations. I especially liked the idea of the “studio classroom” in which expert consultants actually modeled teaching techniques with students as teachers observed. I also liked the idea of classroom demonstrations, which Dan did. I have done some of this kind of situated professional development, and though it can be a bit stressful, since I as expert am thus required to show that I can practice what I preach, when it works, it is absolutely effective. When a teacher sees me implementing teaching strategies with her own students, and achieving good results, it adds a new dimension to the relationship between the two of us as professionals. Sometimes there are snags, too, and when that teacher sees me struggling and problem-solving and learning, that is valuable as well. The study invoked a model that was new to me as its theoretical base: The Vygotsky Space. I intend to look deeper into this model. The model discusses professional learning as a process involving appropriation, transformation, publication, and conventionalization of learning. This model provided a lens through which Dan’s learning was framed, and it really helped make his story more coherent.