You may have noticed a new approach to professional development being talked up on social media and at online conferences recently: instructional coaching.

It’s a method that is exciting many senior leaders: a trained coach works with teachers one-to-one to help them develop their teaching - and there is plenty of evidence to back up its efficacy. In a talk at the 2018 ResearchEd National Conference, education researcher Sam Sims argued that “instructional coaching is currently the best-evidenced form of professional development we have”.

Rather than using graded observations, which encourage teachers to focus more on being “good” than on getting better, instructional coaching - when implemented well - reportedly results in a more reflective and supportive form of CPD.

But when people have rolled out instructional coaching, some teaching and learning leads have found it not to be the changemaker they thought it might prove.

So, what’s going wrong? Problems commonly occur where a coaching approach is introduced in a school that doesn’t have the culture to support it. If the culture isn’t right, then coaching will never be as successful as the research promises it can be.

After all, many teachers have never been asked to engage in deliberate practice before; in fact, it’s entirely possible that they may find the very idea of performing their teaching techniques regularly and repeatedly to be a condescending one.

What’s more, without buy-in across the school, coaching feedback can involve lots of discussion and little action, with staff feeling uncomfortable about coaches visiting their lessons.

So, how can leaders remove the barriers to the culture they want, while building in the elements that will help a coaching culture to thrive?

1. Improving, not proving

To borrow a phrase from coaching guru Chris Moyse, head of staff development at the Bridgwater College Trust, a culture where teachers are asked to “prove” the quality of their teaching is an anathema to one where staff are motivated to make constant improvements to their practice.

It’s vital to either remove or ring-fence judgemental performance management practices. The best option is to completely remove graded observations. If this isn’t a possibility right now, ensure that staff are not coached by the same person who conducts their performance management review.

2. Aim for equality

It’s very easy for staff to spot when leaders say one thing but do another. If members of the senior leadership team (SLT) want to be seen as credible, supportive coaches, it’s important for them to be open to receiving coaching themselves. A school where all receive weekly coaching is more attractive than a school where there’s a strict division between those who coach and those who receive coaching.

Likewise, it’s helpful to recruit your coaching team from a wider pool than just the SLT. The opportunity to train to become an instructional coach should be open to everyone in a school. Making sure that every teacher has the knowledge and skills to be a teacher educator will transform the capacity of your school to keep getting better.

3. Create coaching champions

Often, a carefully planned initiative can fail because the right people in the staff body didn’t give it their vocal support.

Sometimes, all it takes is one well-regarded teacher to give a testimonial like, “My coach has really helped me to deal with 9C”, for others to change their minds about what coaching can offer them.

Ensure that key figures in a school, particularly those in influential groups, such as subject leaders, get a great experience of coaching so that they can become your “champions”.

4. Slow it down

It can be tempting for leaders to rush the implementation of instructional coaching. And this is understandable: after all, we want all of our teachers and students to benefit as soon as possible. But, with a complex implementation project, it’s better to take it slowly.

Let your coaching programme grow organically so that coaches have a chance to develop their skills with each other before they begin in earnest. Roll out coaching to a test group like trainee teachers first, or even offer it out as an opt-in programme while you work on building the right culture.

5. Invest in training

Being an “expert” teacher most definitely doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be a great coach. If we want to ensure that teachers get a great deal from their coach, we have to invest time in training coaches in the knowledge and skills they need.

Invest in regular training for your coaching team; interrogate the action steps that your coaches set; and build in opportunities for coaches to receive some “coaching on coaching”, where you can work with them on improving their skills by watching them in action.

6. Model deliberate practice

Deliberate practice is how most performance professions get better: in the fields of sports, music and medicine, the performative aspects of the job are honed through repeated, regular practice. In teaching, however, it is more common to learn on the job, trying to perfect aspects of the craft while managing the extraordinary complexity of the classroom.

If you want staff to practise teaching, show them how through modelling this yourself. When you do this, do so unapologetically. Replace, “Sorry guys, now for the bit I know we all hate” with, “We are going to practice this technique now, so that we make sure we get it right in the classroom”.

7. Make practice real

If you want to build a culture where deliberate practice is seen as an integral part of getting better, avoid “fake practice” at all costs. For instance, practising an aspect of questioning by asking our partner what they had for dinner last night won’t work, but will engender a culture where practice is seen as pointless and faintly ridiculous.

But here’s an important rule: the more realistic the practice scenario, the more real it will feel to those involved - and the more likely it will be to help participants form powerful habits.

We don’t often have a room full of students in a CPD session, but practice can be made real through framing it in the context of an upcoming lesson. Practise questioning by planning tomorrow’s lesson, deciding on the moment where questioning will take place, scripting the questions you will ask and then rehearsing this.

Suddenly, practice feels useful, vital and beneficial - and you are just one step closer to building a culture that will allow instructional coaching to thrive.

Josh Goodrich is an English teacher and founder of the Powerful Action Steps and Steplab learning platforms

This article originally appeared in the 23 July 2021 issue under the headline “Take the culture shock out of teacher coaching”