In the findings of the national questionnaire, 69% of respondents indicated that one of the objectives of teacher coaching initiatives operating in their school was to develop the practice of all teachers. Owing to the fact that respondents could select more than one reason for choosing to use teacher coaching in their school, it could also be seen from the results that only 11% of respondents perceived developing all teachers’ practice as being the only reason that they have implemented teacher coaching in their organisation. The other 89% of respondents had implemented teacher coaching in order to develop the practice of all teachers alongside other objectives, most commonly to support newly qualified teachers and to support teachers identified as needing assistance.
There was a statistically significant relationship established between the two variables of ‘teacher coaches are seen as the most effective strategy to meet our development objectives’ and ‘to develop all teachers practice’ (Chi-Square=20.230, p-value=0.000). This relationship suggested those schools that are choosing to implement teacher coaching in order to support their development objectives perceive the development of all teachers’ practice as one of their salient goals. With 69% of respondents indicating they had implemented teacher coaching in order to develop all teacher’s practice and 51% of respondents implementing teacher coaching because it is perceived to be the most effective strategy to meet their
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development objectives, then it is evident that teacher coaching is perceived by professional development leaders in New Zealand secondary schools to be playing a significant role in developing the practice of all teachers.
Further comments were provided by the professional development leaders who responded to the national questionnaire in response to one of the open ended questions that inquired into the benefits of teacher coaching programmes operating in their schools. Seven respondents provided answers that identified one of the benefits of teacher coach programmes running in their schools to be an improvement in teaching practice. It was not clear from these seven respondents whose teacher practice was improved in terms of the coaches’, the coachees’ or both of these groups. Representative statements of this group of respondents included “the benefits of implementing teacher coaching in our school has been an improvement in teaching practice” or “It is a positive way of helping teachers to develop their practice”. One respondent unpacked in greater detail how this improvement occurs, they wrote:
The only way to shift teachers’ performance is through constant close observation and feedback with a respectful and trusting coach relationship. The coach must be a current classroom teacher with cross curricular schoolwide mana and be acknowledged for their excellence in classroom teaching. (Questionnaire respondent)
One professional development leader also highlighted the benefits for the coaches when they wrote, “coaching is also great professional and leadership growth for the coaches”. Both these comments from professional development leaders and the statistical findings of the questionnaire, show that teacher coaching is perceived by a range of secondary school leaders to be an effective method of developing all teachers’ practice in their school.
Two teacher coach programme leaders interviewed in Phase 4 also had adopted teacher coaching as a form of teacher professional development to develop the practice of all teachers working at their schools. Descriptions provided by the coaches and programme leaders in these two organisations provided insight into how schools were structuring teacher coaching programmes in order to develop all of their
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teachers’ practice. In both organisations, the teacher coach programmes that aimed to develop all teachers’ practice were focusing on using peer coaches. Both schools were also using peer lesson observations and coaching conversations in a similar way. All staff had been given basic training in coaching conversations and then were paired together to support each other to carry out an inquiry into an element of their teaching practice. Coach 3 described the teacher coaching programme implemented in their school that was intended to develop all teacher’s practice, they explained:
What we do on our scheduled time on Wednesday morning in PLG, is we get into our Ako groups. There is a brief on what needs to be done in that 55 minute session and then they go through it. It involves teachers presenting what they have done so far, where are we up to with regards to our inquiry. (Coach 3. Phase 2 interview)
The peer teacher coaching programme structure described by Coach 3 presented how both Programme Leaders 1 and 3 had developed the coaching skills of all of their teaching staff so that peer coaching and an inquiry model could be used in order to develop the practice of all teachers. Coach 3 believed this model had led to “huge benefits in terms of teacher improvement”. Programme Leaders 1 and 3 both also perceived these peer coaching models to have been a success. Programme Leader 1 described a “culture of coaching and learning” had been created and Programme Leader 3 stated, “there has been a huge move from two years ago when staff would probably have struggled to talk to each other professionally, and at the same time the results have gone up”.
Together, the findings of both the national questionnaire and the programme leader and coach interviews suggest that teacher coaching has been established in a high percentage of secondary schools that participated in the research, as a form of professional development with the objective of developing all teacher’s practice.