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The Instructional Management Workshop: the first step in the JP Responsive Coaching Model
November 26, 2011
“…[R]esearchers found that when teachers combined participation in the traditional workshops with peer coaching or methodologies that promoted collaboration and reflection, more than 80% of teachers were using newly learned strategies in their classrooms.” (Joyce and Showers, 1996; Joyce, Murphy and Showers 1996; Richardson 1999)
The research which establishes which teaching techniques are the most effective teaching techniques does not differentiate between what is effective for children as opposed to adults; effective teaching techniques are effective regardless of the age of the people being taught. And since JP’s founding, our philosophy has not altered: if the learner has not learned, the teacher has not taught.
The tendency is to differentiate adult learners from student learners. We, somehow, expect more from adults; when they have difficulty in achieving mastery of the coaching intervention, we assume it is their fault. In the same way we must never blame our children for not learning, we cannot blame our adult learners either. In actuality, an adult learner is much more threatened in this kind of learning situation.
We must not allow our assumptions to cloud our decision making process as educators, and what we are first and foremost, are educators. The research and evidence have proven that explicit instruction is the best and most effective way to introduce and teach a new skill to any learner. We need to generalize that evidence, therefore, and provide the same sort of instruction for our teachers. JP has done just that: we have created a unique, explicit, effective way of providing coaching for our teachers. JP always uses the best, evidenced based practices to teach, train, and coach our adult learners, be they administrators, reading coaches or teachers. “Teachers learn according to the same principles as their students. Multiple exposures, opportunities to practice, and active involvement in learning are all important aspects of learning in teachers as well as children.” (National Academy of Science Report, 2001)
We all know that anxiety can prevent learning. Let us put ourselves in the shoes of the teacher who is being coached, perhaps for the first time: her children are watching her making errors that another adult is “interrupting” to correct. This CAN be extremely threatening and it is our responsibility, as coaches, to make the situation as positive as it can be. “…..Instructional coaches need to have energy and a positive outlook and they need to be the kind of person that others enjoy being around.” (Utah Special Educator march 2010)
As with all effective teaching, pre-correcting will accelerate the new learner’s acquisition of the desired behavior. We also know, from the research, that true, in-depth comprehension only occurs when there is the appropriate schema, or background knowledge, on the part of the learner, again, in this case, our teachers. Therefore, applying the research to our adult learners, there should be a “background” workshop, presented before coaching ever begins, that provides all the schema and research necessary to understand why the coaching session is the most effective way of changing a teacher’s behavior and, therefore, the most effective and efficient way to raise student achievement.
First, teachers must be presented with, and must understand, the evidence that the teacher is the single most important factor affecting student achievement. If, as has been proven, the teacher is the single most important factor, then we must use the most effective and efficient tools to improve teachers’ ability to successfully teach all of their students.
The meta-analysis, Classroom Management That Works, synthesizes the research on effective schools over the last 35 years. Let’s say that an average child starts at the 50% in reading. If she attends an average school with an average teacher, her achievement remains at the 50%. IF she then attends the least effective school with the least effective teacher, after two years, she will drop to the 3rd%. The third scenario- the student enters at the 50% into the most effective school with the least effective teacher- drops to 37%. The 4th scenario- enters at 50% and after two years is at the 96%. The last scenario depicts the dramatic effective that a teacher of quality has on student achievement. Even with the least effective school, the most effective teacher can make a 13% difference in student achievement. “Even if the school they work in is highly ineffective, individual teachers can produce powerful gains in student learning.”
