'It's not what we do, it's the way that we do it'- Values-led Coaching and SCHOOL CULTURE 

There has been nothing short of an explosion of interest in instructional coaching in schools over the past few years, to the point where it can appear (on Twitter, at least) that everybody is doing it. But like other promising initiatives before it, coaching is vulnerable to riding a wave of enthusiasm before being thrown into the Room 101 of educational fads. Growth mindset and mini-plenaries, anyone?

In a recent blog post Alex Quigley articulated the problem of initiative fatigue when he asked, ‘is the instructional coaching wave about to crash?’, concluding that ‘a school improvement wave is most likely to break when it crashes into the complexity of real school life’. Instructional coaching, now practically its own industry, is difficult to utilise well, but there is no shortage of books, blogs and infographics telling us what to do and how to do it. It’s no silver bullet, however, and we probably need to think more about the why, and much more about the who and the where. In short, we need to apply the ‘Bananarama principle’: it’s not what we do, it’s the way that we do it.

In my role leading teacher development across a Trust I have thought hard about how coaching might sit more comfortably with our Trust-wide approaches to professional learning. We have trialled various coaching models and training programs with varying degrees of success, dependent upon the time and expertise available in each school. But increasingly I have questioned whether the effort invested in adapting models and aligning systems across our schools has led to any tangible improvements. Coaching has still felt like a separate ‘thing to do’, too distinct from school priorities and sitting aside from (or conflicting with) the unique culture of each individual school. Models still ‘land’ differently across and within our schools.

I have also given a lot of thought to who our coaches should be, and to the development of our ‘coaching curriculum’ to support their ongoing professional development. But coaches don’t work in a vacuum. The oft-cited Kraft & Papay (2014) study highlights the crucial importance of school culture for effective professional learning. Of course, coaches need strong pedagogical knowledge, effective strategies to represent that knowledge to teachers, and an understanding of the needs of the person they are working with - but they coach within the context, climate and culture of a particular school. The challenges we encountered all seemed to come back to this point. When the climate for learning wasn’t established, for example, it was very difficult for coaches to break through that. Teachers couldn’t necessarily control the impact of strategies, and it often brought a lot more stress and emotional anxiety to the coaching table. Where the conditions for coaching weren’t right - especially when teachers felt it was being forced on them - it didn’t work either. The importance of a ‘culture’ for coaching has become increasingly clear.

It seems to me that by starting with the coaching model and training, I had over-emphasised the importance of the how we coach. Effective coaching is, at its heart, the art of conversation. The right question to ask wasn’t ‘which coaching model should we use?’, but ‘what kinds of conversations do we want to see happening in our schools?’. When you ask that question, it leads to another, perhaps the most important question of all: ‘what kind of school, or Trust, do we want to be?’.

Having clarity about who we want to be and the kind of culture we want to build is key to understanding why we coach. Coaching is as much about developing people as it is about developing pedagogy. I have started to think about how we might be much more explicit about the purpose of coaching in our schools, about developing an approach that goes beyond a process and becomes more of a vehicle to craft a positive culture based on our values. The problem with starting with a coaching model, as I had done, is that we often expect that to change the culture – the more we coach, the more used to it people become, and the more effective it is. This might be true. But as Hollweck & Lofthouse (2021) point out, the relationship between coaching and culture is reciprocal: ‘effective coaching programs are attuned to their setting and contribute to their context’. Coaching should contribute to building culture, yes, but it also needs to reflect it – any program or model we deploy needs to be right for the school and its staff. ‘One-size-fits-all’ approaches are problematic for that reason – they are not aligned with the school’s priorities, logistics or values.

But this can all feel a bit ‘nice to have’ and difficult to pin down to something more tangible, that doesn’t feel token or ‘woolly’. How can I be really clear about what coaching should look like in our Trust, about how it might work within our contexts and help us to develop a culture based on our core purpose and values?

Perhaps this is about more than just coaching - it is about the quality of all of the conversations we have across our organisation. As leaders, we craft our culture through the ways we speak and behave with colleagues; as Chris Munro says in Coaching as a Way of Leading, ‘[c]onversations are the medium through which leadership is lived out in schools’. This chimes with what Jonny Uttley says in Putting Staff First:

‘We have to remember that all the micro-interactions we have as school leaders with colleagues will, incrementally, define the culture of our schools…we believe living by these publicly declared standards is the most important facet of creating schools that great teachers want to work in and stay in.’

The standards refered to are set out in his Trust’s ethical leadership charter, which is shared in the book. Their framework defines, in explicit detail, the desired competencies and behaviours of leadership in their organisation. I was particularly struck by the assertion that if we fail to define the behaviours we want to see, people will define them in their own ways.  Specifically, the charter is really clear about what some of the ‘softer skills’ of effective leaders look like, for example, trust and kindness. With this clarity comes the ability to hold people to account and to reinforce the kind of culture we are trying to build. 

The Education Alliance (TEAL)’s ethical leadership charter, from Putting Staff First, pg. 154.

Coaching conversations, I have come to see, are one way for a school to live its values and consciously craft its culture. Coaching interactions are a way in which teachers experience culture very directly. If those interactions are negative, it is often very damaging. We can tell staff that we put them first, but if they experience coaching which they feel is judgemental, which is full of fear of accountability, which leads to compliance rather than genuine engagement and reflection, they won’t believe it. If our values aren’t explicitly lived in our interactions, those words mean very little.

Inspired by TEAL’s charter, I saw the value in creating a framework for coaching conversations which placed our Trust values at the heart of how we coach. This is the current version:

Greater Manchester Education Trust (GMET)’s Values-Led Coaching Framework

In the framework, each of our values - Excellence, Care and Respect - is defined in terms of what coaches do to demonstrate it and, more importantly (and underlined), why they demonstrate it. For example, we define the value of respect as ‘we recognise our differences and treat people fairly in our thoughts, words and actions’; in coaching, it is further defined as: ‘coaches empower colleague to achieve their individual goals by understanding their motivations and interests; they value colleagues’ knowledge and experiences and are responsive to their needs.’ Then, each value is broken down into the tangible behaviours we would expect to see and we can hold ourselves - and each other - to account for. When demonstrating respect, for example, coaches are honest and transparent, ensuring the teacher sees the conversation as a ‘safe space’.

With this level of clarity, we can focus our training and support for coaches; we discuss the importance of contracting, for example, to support transparency, and we script and practice these conversations. Our ‘coaching curriculum’ now includes not just the pedagogical strategies deployed to develop teaching practice, but the specific aspects of high-quality coaching which demonstrate our values, such as praise and feedback, listening and responsive coaching, goal-setting and inclusive practice.

This framework may still seem idealistic - these behaviours are not always easy to live up to and we have to temper our aspirations with a healthy dose of realism. As Quigley intimated, even the best of intentions things have a tendency to ‘crash into the complexity of school life’. But, we are hopeful that we have made a good start in defining the culture we want to build in our Trust, one that ‘lives not laminates’ the values that are important to us and will serve us in our purpose: to create great schools where young people and staff flourish.

Sam Gibbs

Trust Lead for Curriculum & Development, Greater Manchester Education Trust

References

Kraft, MA. & Papay, JP. (2014). Can Professional Environments in Schools Promote Teacher Development? Explaining Heterogeneity in Returns to Teaching Experience. Educ Eval Policy Anal. 2014 Dec;36(4):476-500.

Lofthouse, R. & Hollweck, T. (2021). Contextual coaching: levering and leading school improvement through collaborative professionalism. International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education. ISSN 2046-6854 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMCE-01-2021-0019

Munro, C. & Campbell, J. (2020). ‘Coaching as way of leading’. AEL 44, Issue 4. https://media.acel.org.au/Publications/2023/AEL/AEL%20-%20Vol%2044%20Issue%204%202022%20-%20Article%201.pdf

Quigley, A. ‘Is the Instructional Coaching Wave About to Crash?’. Posted on 29/4/2023. 

https://www.theconfidentteacher.com/2023/04/is-the-instructional-coaching-wave-about-to-crash/

Tomsett, J. & Uttley, J. (2020). Putting Staff First: A Blueprint for Revitalising Our Schools. John Catt.