Modelo de comportamiento

Question for reflection and discussion

What does CPD mean to the staff in your institution? What opportunities for a range of CPD activities does your school provide for the staff?

In recent years, there has been a shift of emphasis towards CPD in school. This has seen staff taking far more responsibility for their own CPD, with schools providing a range of developmental activities for them to engage in. In the forward-thinking school, CPD is less about staff training days and training courses and more about a process of ongoing, collaborative professional learning – where professionals sup- port and learn from each other.

In her book, The CPD Coordinator’s Toolkit, Sue Kelly describes CPD as: ‘any activity which enhances the quality of teaching and learning within the school. It should THE COACHING TOOLKIT

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develop the school and the individual and impact directly on what goes on in the classroom’. (2007: 12) When talking about challenges facing CPD coordinators, she says: ‘it is through our work and our vision of what constitutes creative and dynamic CPD practices that we can transform the learning culture in our schools’ (2007: 1). We would argue strongly that coaching meets the goals expressed in both of these statements. It is certainly a strong driver for developing the quality of teaching and learning, as well as establishing a learning culture amongst the staff. A school that invests in coaching will be rewarded with contagious professionalism amongst its staff. Bruce Joyce and Beverley Showers (2002) concluded from a study working with teachers in North America that coaching had a dramatic impact on the transfer and application of new learning. In fact, this application of new learning was signifi- cantly higher when acquired through coaching than by other training methods. The study looked at a range of teacher developmental activities such as:

• _{lectures on new teaching strategies, during external courses or workshops} • _{demonstrations of new teaching strategies by ‘expert’ teachers within the workshop} • _{practising these new strategies with colleagues attending the workshop}

• _{feedback from the ‘expert’ teacher or course organiser}

• _{working with a coach on these new strategies in the workplace.}

Joyce and Showers then examined how each of these activities impacted on the acqui- sition of knowledge and skills, and whether they resulted in new strategies being applied to classroom practice. The research found that, while lecturing teachers improved their knowledge of new teaching strategies, it did very little to develop their skills or classroom practice. Seeing the new strategy demonstrated improved skills acquisition slightly, but still did not translate to a change in classroom practice. Skills acquisition did improve when the teacher practised the new strategies in the workshop, but this still did not result in any long-term change in practice. In fact the only way that a significant change was seen in skills/knowledge acquisition and classroom application was when the teachers worked with a coach on the new strategy – in the workplace. In our experience, this certainly holds true. Until recently, a vast amount of the CPD budget at most schools has probably been spent on sending colleagues on external training courses. They would then return armed with a folder and perhaps a nice pen. However, the impact of the training in terms of changing their teach- ing strategies was often difficult to see in the classroom. Similarly, any newly acquired skills were not shared amongst colleagues. This seems to be a very expen- sive and ineffective use of school resources. Unfortunately, staff do not always feel the same way. Unless they have sat in a basement function room of a hotel and had a substantial buffet at lunchtime, they do not feel that they have had proper CPD. This requires a shift of culture and thinking. The range of CPD activities available to staff, including coaching, needs to be sold to staff.

Before we started down the path of coaching, the other two main forms of CPD that staff embarked on, apart from going on external courses, were mentoring

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and following an MA (Education) programme. It could be argued that both of these are more valid CPD activities, in terms of long-term impact, than external courses. Mentoring, as already discussed, overlaps with coaching, but its uses are limited to colleagues who are either new to teaching or new to a role. Although following an MA course certainly encourages colleagues to think and reflect on their work in school, the extent to which classroom practice changes as a result can be variable. However, while these two activities serve a purpose, we still do not think that they have such a long-term impact on transforming teaching and learning as coaching does.

Summary

As learning institutions, schools have an obligation to provide a range of opportuni- ties for their staff to engage in professional learning. Coaching facilitates this. Evidence suggests that coaching is one of the most effective developmental tools in schools in terms of long-term impact. As coaching is based on the idea that all staff have the potential to develop each other, it serves to raise self-esteem and build the capacity for sustained improvement within a school.

Electronic resources

Go to www.sagepub.co.uk/allison for electronic resources for this chapter Coaching helps people to …

Coaching is based on … Skills–motivation matrix Why coaching? 1 Why coaching? 2

Further reading

Joyce, B. and Showers, B. (2002) Designing Training and Peer Coaching: Our Need for Learning. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Kelly, S. (2007) The CPD Coordinator’s Toolkit. London: Paul Chapman Publishing.

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