Discuss: Coaching

The terms coaching and consultation are sometimes used interchangeably, and they describe a similar concept. How would you differentiate between the two? One difference could be in the approach, coaching seems to be more informal and to take place as part of a one-on-one relationship, whereas consultation tends to be more structured and can take place with a small group of people. I would be interested in hearing from someone who has worked with or as a coach about what you see as the difference between these two approaches to professional development.

I think one difference in coaching and consultation is that in a consultative relationship the consultant is often perceived as an "expert". There is a hierarchy of consultant (expert) to learner that is often limiting and often based on a problem that the consultant is there to fix. A coach may often have more experience and knowledge than the person they are coaching but the relationship offers a more even playing field than consultation---a richer experience---more learning from one another rather than a hierarchy of "expert" to "learner".

Hi Jennie, Thank you, your description of the difference between consultation and coaching really piqued my interest. I looked at Dathan's article on coaching (the link is in Discussion Starters, above), and your comment about coaching offering a more level playing field meshes well with the suggestion in the article that the coaching approach is one that can be helpful for parents as well as practitioners. It seems that having someone working with you - more of a team approach - to address an issue would be appealing to a parent. I was also particularly drawn to the idea that coaching can take place during real-life events with the coach and the "coachee" then reflecting on the outcome together. The self reflection process offers a lot of potential for personnel growth.

Hi Jennie -
I agree that many people may perceive a consultant as the expert with the answers. While a person in the role of coach may indeed be an expert on a particular topic or set of skills, when and how he/she uses that expertise is critical. In coaching, the intent should be to build on what the other person already knows or is doing and have him or her reflect on how his/her current level of knowledge and skills is achieving the intended outcome, and then identify what ideas he/she has for change. Based on his or her expertise, the coach may then affirm the other person's thinking and/or provide additional information that may be useful. I think of the coach as the mobilizer and mediator of resources for the person being coached rather than merely the coach as the resource.

Coaching is most often used in a one-to-one relationship. Coaching is really a style of interaction used to build the capacity of another person. It can be used in both informal and more structured situations. For example, I might use a coaching approach when a colleague comes to me to ask about ideas for assisting a parent to promote a child's use of language when they are reading books together. This would be an informal conversation about what she and the mother have already tried and discussed as well as what ideas both she and I have that might be helpful to the mother. In a more structured situation, I might have regular meetings over a mutually agreed upon period of time with a teacher to help him include a child with autism as part of his preschool class for the first time. As part of my coaching relationship with him, I will observe the classroom, help him to reflect on how his current practices are supporting the child's particpiation and learning, provide feedback, jointly determine what modifications or additional supports might be necessary, and then develop a joint plan for what actions are going to be taken between our meetings related to his intended outcomes.

I hope others will post to share how they differentiate between coaching and consultation.

This discussion opens up a lot of possibilities across professional disciplines. There is an immediate need for coaching in public schools and in early childhood settings, because
the NCELD studies make it clear that many "highly qualified" teachers in early childhood settings do not demonstrate the competencies that will correlate with desired child outcomes. That finding raises a lot of implications for professional development of teachers, and it even raises questions and issues around certification of teachers and or early childhood teachers. But the country has embarked on universal programs for all children ages 4 years old, and both schools and private settings must include children with special needs. We might want to advocate for stronger regulation of teachers and their qualifications, -- and we might want to require accredited degree programs for those who will teach young children. Meanwhile our country has an enormous number of
public schools, and some of the UPK will be taking place in those schools.

That means schools and private programs need help. Some schools are already building in early care and education coaching, but most schools are still operating with a culture that can have negative effects on young children. While we build better systems of learning and teaching, higher education should be creating an accredited role for early education coaches and consultants to work with organizations that have not yet changed their cultures to make them appropriate for the challenges they face.

Gwen, coaching is an approach that has potential to address the concerns and issues that you identify in your post. A person serving as coach can assist currently practicing professionals in assessing their current knowledge and skills in light of competencies that have been found necessary for achieving desired child outcomes, and then develop a plan for acquiring the necessary competencies and begin working toward them.

Greetings everyone! I am looking forward to our discussion about coaching over the next couple of weeks. This particular discussion of coaching came about as a result of a conference presentation on professional development that Pam Winton, Leticia Lara, Moira Kenney, and I shared at the Zero To Three National Training Institute in Los Angeles in December. Coaching was one of the professional development approaches discussed. Unfortunately, time did not permit us to answer all of the questions or engage in a deeper discussion of this approach, so we decided to continue the discussion here. We hope that conference participants as well as others interested in coaching will join us for the next couple of weeks.

Coaching is an approach to adult learning used to assist a person in reflecting on what he/she knows and/or is currently doing related to a desired outcome, determine the effectiveness of the knowledge and/or actions, and then develop a plan for refinement. Coaching can be used to learn new knowledge and skills, improve upon current knowledge and skills, and solve problems. The literature identifies two types of coaching - peer coaching and expert coaching. In peer to peer coaching, the peer in the role of coach prompts the other person's reflection and promotes his/her ability to use newly learned skills and/or mobilize the experiences, interactions, opportunities, or resources necessary to achieve the desired outcomes. An expert in the role of a coach would also prompt the other person's reflection on the current situation, but in addition may share needed information, model a particular skill the other person is learning, or provide specific feedback on the person's use of a new skill. Regardless of whether the coach is a peer or expert, the coaching relationship should never be hierarchical, but rather a partnership in which both parties bring knowledge, skills, and experiences useful for achieving the desired otucomes. Overall, the role of a coach is to mediate a person's deeper understanding of what is or could be working to achieve the intended goal. The coach does this in way that builds the capacity of the other person to be able to use the new knowledge skills both in the current context, but in other future situations as well.

For more information about the characteristics of coaching identified from research studies using this approach, please see the document "Evidence-Based Definition of Coaching Practices" in the column on the left of this page.

We are interested in hearing what questions you have about coaching as well as learning from your experiences in using this approach.

I like to look at "coaching" from a sports mindset. A coach is a person that has some skills. The coach shares those skills with a person who wants to develop more of those skills. The person learning the skills understands that he/she needs to practice those skills betweeen coaching sessions. The coach comes back, reviews progress, reflects on what has worked and what needs to happen next. The coach makes some suggestions and the process starts all over again!

Cyndi, you make some very good points. Sports coaches are more like expert coaches as they have some specialized knowledge and skills they can share with the other person and the other person in the coaching relationship wants to improve his/her knowledge in that area. The coach does not grab the ball away from the player and run for the end zone or the basket himself/herself, but rather supports the player in how to do what he/she wants and needs to do effectively through (1) showing him/her, (2) giving the player opportunities to practice, (3) watching him/her practice and play the game, (4) reflecting on what works or not, and then (5) adding additional knowledge and building additional skills as necessary.

I love this analogy to a sports coach. It seems to me that the reason a coach can be effective is because they can stand back and see the whole picture when determining a player's effectiveness. The providers we coach often cannot see the whole picture- they just know how they do things and they know that sometimes there is trouble that is difficult to find solutions to. We as coaches are then able to assess, introduce ways of improvement, reassess and celebrate successes. The provider role is to understand that there are problems,discuss them openly with the coaches, practice the suggested ways of improvement- sometimes more than once! One of the members of our CoP mentioned that we, as coaches, need to be sure that we are never working harder than our "coachee". That is a good thing to keep in mind!

When we are coaching coaches, we often ask them who seems to be doing all of the work - the coach or the person being coached. One of the fundamentals of effective coaching is for the coach to promote reflection on the part of the other person in the coaching dyad to identify what is happening now and how that compares to the intended outcome (i.e., competencies, practice standards, evidence-based practices), and then explore what ideas he/she has to close the gap. In this way, the coach builds the capacity of the other person to ultimately go through this process and sustain excellent performance without the coach. The coach can certainly add information and provide feedback as needed, but does not just tell the other person what he/she should do or give him/her every possible resource that he/she may ever need. That type of behavior can create dependence on the coach, so the other person in essence learns to go to the coach for all of the answers and resources. So you're right, Sharon. The coach then ends up doing all the work.

Hi Sharon, It sounds like you are a member of a CoP with other coaches. IT would be great to hear more about that CoP. How did it start? Who are the members? How does facilitation work? We have a parallel discussion going on at the wiki on CoPs. We would love to hear your perspectives on your CoP (and other members of the CoP who might want to join in). We have posted a checklist of CoP indicators; it would be great to get your perspectives on those in terms of your CoP. The link to that discussion is http://community.fpg.unc.edu/[…]/discuss-community-of-practice
Thanks

Hi winton- if you look further down the response here you will find Linda Labas- she is the one who started our CoP group so you can get the scoop form her!! It is a good experience overall for most of us, though sometimes, for some, the group is a bit too large to get meaningful work done, except in our small group work. We have a collection of professionals with differing work loads and differing dynamics with providers and that makes for rich, at times, and endless, at other times, discussion!

Thanks Sharon. I am very much appreciating Linda's description of the coaching process and the questions she posed about time and intensity and how to sustain the changes in practice that result from an effective coaching relationship.
Linda, I hope you'll also share your perspectives on CoPs in that discussion area.
Thanks both of you
Pam

When you are serving as a coach, how do you promote reflection on the part of the other person in the coaching dyad? What types of questions have you found helpful?

Dathan: Great question! It makes me think about the tremendous diversity in learning styles and preferences of those being coached. How might you promote reflection for individuals who have difficulty putting their reflections into words? Provide handouts with prompts or cues? Use video clips to illustrate possibilities? Or use actual footage to prompt recognition of current practices and consideration of options? Camille

Excellent point. When working in a coaching role, we must indeed be sensitive to the learning styles and preferences of the other member of the coaching dyad. I have seen effective coaches use all of the strategies you have suggested. In addition, a coach may use modeling and direct sharing of information (verbal or written), so the other person has more content-related information presented visually and/or auditorily. Coaches may also invite the other person to try something, which may be helpful to more kinesthetic learners. In our program, we use a lot of videotaping. In this way, both the coach and person being supported by the coach can jointly reflect on what they see happening. This also provides the coach with the opportunity to ask very specific, but still open-ended questions in relation to an action that both have just seen take place.

A wonderful coach/mentor once anecdotally shared with me what she’d “noticed” when I told a child cryptically “Do you want me to make a phone call?” With open curiosity she simply asked, "What did you mean." She asked as if she honesty wanted to know and it caused me to reflect more honestly, “What did I mean?” I still use that please-teach-me-what-I-want-you-to-think-about question.

Some examples of the types of questions I often use to prompt relfection on the part of a person that I am coaching can be found at http://www.fippcase.org/casetools/casetool_vol4_no1.pdf. Take a look and post your thoughts. How do these questions compare to the types of questions that you use? Have you found other types of questions helpful?

Hello all - Dathan, thanks for the discussion.
I hope this is not a re-post.
Had some login trouble.
 I believe my Coaches have been dubbed Mentors before arriving in my classroom but coaching is certainly what they did. The benefits of having one well (or better) versed in some of the unknown challenges facing the Early Childhood environment especially concerning Inclusion – were, to me, sanity saving. My question is what do you see is the difference between Coach and Mentor?

According to the literature on mentoring, a mentor is a more experienced person who helps a less experienced or new person in an organization or profession develop an understanding of the organizational/professional processes, procedures, and culture. A mentoring relationship tends to be more of a long-term relationship. Mentors may certainly use coaching practices to build the capacity of the mentee to learn about the organization/profession and its practices. During the course of a mentoring relationship, the mentor and mentee may cover a wide range of topics and issues. Generally, a person uses a coach for a shorter period of time and their work together is focused on a particular set of skills or practices necessary to achieve some specific outcomes.

How do other discussion participants view the differences between a coach and a mentor?

Hello all,
I work with the Office of School Readiness, Teacher Licensure Unit as a mentor to lead teachers in More at Four classrooms in private childcare and Head Start programs. Our goal is provide More at Four Teachers in non-public schools the opportunity to obtain and maintain a B-K standard Professional II license. We use the NC Department of Public Instruction’s model for mentoring used with all licensed teachers in public schools in North Carolina. I would have to agree with other participants that the mentoring relationship is more long term (3 years in our model), with great emphasis put on the personal relationship between the mentor and mentee. In the beginning of the relationship mentors and mentees look at the mentee’s teaching practices as a whole, using the Prekindergarten Kindergarten Teacher Performance Appraisal Instrument (PKKTPAI), and then make a plan for focus areas where the teacher would like to make a change. The use of the PKKTPAI helps us to stay focused on research based best practices in the classroom. Once those goals are made the mentor may use the coaching model to help facilitate a change in practice through (1) joint planning (2) observation (3) action/practice (4) reflection and (5) feedback.

Hello Dathan and others, I have been reading with interest the discussion and comments. I have had the good fortune of working with Dathan and his colleague M'Lisa Shelden for 4 years now. We worked in partnership with another part of the University system on one 3-year Early Reading First grant and now are into a second 3 year ERF grant. Dathan and M'Lisa served as our coaching practices consultants to provide on- going professional development and coaching to our early literacy coaches. Many of us including myself spent many years providing consultation. Borrowing from Minnesota's work (MNsmart), consultation, coaching, mentoring and technical assistance as approaches to professional development have a number of core components and competencies fitting under the larger "umbrella" of relationship-based work. While definitely not the only consideration or answer to the differences in approaches, an aha for me and one that I continue to work on to infuse in all my interaction work is being purposeful and intentional in engaging the learner in reflection PRIOR to offering feedback or sharing new or different information. As consultants for many reasons we are invited into situations to "solve a problem", "provide a solution" or "fix something". Even when we approach the work in a collaborative fashion, it is difficult not to jump into the role of addressing the issue by providing the learner with our feedback and ideas. Because of my involvement with coaching in these projects, I personally see distinct differences in the varied approaches but also see that coaching strategies can be brought into other approaches. A struggle I have in working on a consultation project and one that provides coaching is how to use the evidence related to capacity building in our work with practitioners given the realities of time, money and funding/ contract requirements. We had/ have excellent resources in the ERF projects which provide intensive coaching support to teachers, we had time to do the work and support to implement coaching with fidelity (using coaching logs and adherence scales). We had time to be in programs weekly and we videotaped teachers and coaching sessions. We witnessed the results - child outcomes, teacher practices. Our evaluation data supports what we all of us are learning about effective PD. What we don't know is how and to what degree practice changes will be sustained when the coach is gone? or what is are the time and intensity considerations for achieving particular results?

Linda, thank you for the posting and questions for consideration. We have reviewed the work of a number of different researcher who have studied coaching. Some of the earliest and most comprehensive research on coaching was done by Bruce Joyce and Beverly Showers, who examined coaching of/by teachers as a means for transfer of training. They found that coached teachers practiced new strategies more frequently than uncoached teachers (Showers, 1982), used the newly learned strategies more appropriately than uncoached teachers (Showers, 1982; 1984), and demonstrated greater retention of knowledge and skills over time when examined six to nine months following the training (Baker & Showers, 1984).

As we all know, many factors impact sustainability of the initial benefits of coaching. These factors include the continued motivation of the person that received coaching supports, the extent to which program administration supports the skills and practices as well as the staff members who received coaching, and accountability systems that have been put into place to support the individuals that received coaching to continue to use the coached practices. When coaching has been provided by individuals outside of the organization or program, systems must be put in place to build the capacity of the organization to sustain the learning and gains achieved through the coaching experience. This may involve preparing a supervisor or other individual within the organization to provide ongoing coaching supports. If the coach is another staff member or a supervisor/administrator/technical assistance provider from within the organization, then coaching supports may be provided more intensively and in a more formal fashion at first, then reduced to more informal coaching conversations to discuss how the outcomes achieved through coaching have been sustained.

More research is needed to help address questions about sustainability and the time/intensity considerations.

Dathan, what do you think about the Competencies for Effective Coaching that Minnesota has developed? http://www.mnsmart.org/[…]/Web%20final%20coaching%20307.pdf
Are they specific enough for coaches who might be supporting personnel who work with children with disabilities? Camille

Sorry - just noticed that the link to the MN coaching competencies is obsolete. Here's the current link: http://mnsmart.metrostate.edu/[…]/Web%20final%20coaching%20307.pdf

Two things I always look for when reviewing information about coaching or a research study on coaching practices are (1) an operational definition and (2) characteristics of the practice. The Minnesota document includes both. The coaching characteristics (observation, action/practice, reflection, feedback, and joint planning) are included in competencies E-I in the portion of the document that lists the competencies for effective coaching practices. One way that we help people examine their use of coaching is a tool that we developed, the Coaching Practice Rating Scale, which includes indicators based on the five research-based characteristics of coaching practices. The tool can be found at http://www.fippcase.org/casetools/casetools_vol2_no2.pdf. We would welcome feedback about this tool.

I think the Minnesota competencies can certainly be applied to personnel who support parents of children with disabilities. Taking the next step of helping personnel understand what the competencies look like in practice can also be helpful and could provide greater specificity related to a target population. I would add a competency related to starting with what the other person in the coaching dyad already knows or is doing related to the intended outcome. I would also expand the scope of the competencies to include acquisition of knowledge as well as skills. I think this would be a very helpful document for individuals to develop a beginning understanding of their role as a coach.

Just to be clear, the URL for the tool Dathan mentioned is http://www.fippcase.org/casetools/casetools_vol2_no2.pdf

Interesting timing...I stumbled on this sentence in an e-learning conference presentation today:

"Guidelines for All Types of e-Learning: Use virtual coaches (agents) to deliver instructional content such as examples and hints."

Has anyone come across any resources on or done "virtual coaching"? I've always thought of coaching of something very personal...done in person.

We have frequently provided coaching using conference calls. Several years ago we also provided coaching via a synchronous web-based meeting similar to a live chat. In both formats, the persons receiving coaching supports provide either written documentation or videotapes for review for purposes of observation. Reflection, feedback, and joint planning occur during the conference call or web-based meeting, and then action on the part of the person receiving coaching support occurs between the coaching meetings/calls.

I am very interested in hearing how other participants in this discussion have used virtual or distance coaching.

Tomorrow will be the last day of our discussion. Before the discussion closes, does anyone have any other comments or questions about coaching to post?

Some additional documents that we have written about coaching can be found at http://www.fippcase.org/casecollections.php

Please post any comments or questions you might have about those as well.

Thank you for your participation in the coaching discussion. I have certainly enjoyed reading and responding to the postings. Today is the last day I will be moderating the discussion, but I believe this forum will remain active for awhile if you would like to continue posting comments. I wish you great success in your current and future coaching opportunities.