Coaching is a proven way to help teachers succeed and, as a result, stay in the classroom. When teachers feel successful, they’re much more likely to want to keep teaching. When they don’t, they tend to leave.
Many schools engage instructional coaches to partner with teachers as a way to improve teaching. Many also promote peer instructional coaching with this same aim. When implemented successfully, peer coaching can improve teaching, learning, and professional conversations across a school or an entire system. If implemented recklessly, it can waste teachers’ time and damage school culture.
At the Instructional Coaching Group, my colleagues and I have been studying instructional coaching for more than 25 years. We have identified four pillars of coaching that can improve instructional coaches’ chances of success (Knight, 2021). Here, we describe how they can shore up peer-to-peer coaching.
Pillar 1: The Partnership Way of Being
The term “way of being,” popularized by Carl Rogers in his book A Way of Being (1980), describes the pattern for how we exist, perceive, and interact in the world. When coaches adopt a partnership way of being, teachers are much more likely to engage in productive, mutually humanizing conversations (Knight, 1999). We’ve identified seven principles that guide a coach’s partnership way of being:
- Equality: Both peers have equal power in their coaching conversations, so no one tries to control the other.
- Choice: Individual teachers make decisions about what they do in their classroom.
- Voice: The teacher being coached talks more than the peer doing the coaching. Teachers feel like they’re heard and seen when they engage in peer coaching.
- Dialogue: Conversations are back and forth, with both participants sharing ideas in ways that are open to change, that communicate mutual trust, and that reflect benevolence.
- Reflection: Peer coaching conversations help both participants think deeper and more effectively.
- Praxis: Effective coaching is all about the real-life application of ideas; it’s about translating ideas into action in the classroom.
- Reciprocity: Coaches learn from one another, and this is especially true of peer coaching.
Its Application to Peer Coaching
When our colleagues feel that we respect them, believe in them, and see their expertise, they’re inclined to want to learn with us. However, if our colleagues think we are talking down to them, they will likely feel resentful and stop wanting to learn (Schein, 2009). For teachers to coach one another effectively, they need to learn a way of being that creates the safety and openness essential for shared learning and growth.
When coaches adopt a partnership way of being, teachers are much more likely to engage in productive, mutually humanizing conversations.
Pillar 2: Strong Questioning and Listening Skills
If you want to be effective as a coach, you need to question—and listen—effectively.
Good questions are real questions, not leading questions or advice with a question mark tacked on to the end of it. Good questions communicate to others that we appreciate them, that we think they have good ideas and something valuable to say. They deepen conversations, inviting others to expand their thinking, broaden their perspectives, or create a vision of a possible future. A question like, “You’ve probably thought a lot about this. What do you think you might do?” can open up a conversation and show that we value our colleagues’ knowledge and ideas. Alternatively, asking, “What advice would you give someone else in your situation?” helps people step back and reflect. People love to give advice, even when they’re giving it to themselves.
Then there is listening. When we really listen to others, we demonstrate respect and build connection. Good listeners pay attention to both the internal and external aspects of listening. Internally, effective listeners keep their minds focused on what their conversation partner is saying without obscuring the talker’s message with their own interjections, assumptions, or criticisms. Coaches need to focus on what their learning partner is saying so they can think with them.
Effective listeners can also demonstrate their attention externally through body language and behavior. For example, good listeners turn their bodies toward their learning partners and nod their heads. They try not to interrupt; complete a person’s sentences; or look at their phone, watch, or laptop. When I’m really listening, my conversation partner should see that they have my full attention and that I value what they’re saying.
Its Application to Peer Coaching
Too often, we assume that people know how to ask questions and how to listen. It’s surprising how frequently most of us struggle with these two skills, given how often we do them. To be effective peer coaches, teachers need to spend time learning and practicing how to ask questions and how to truly listen.
Pillar 3: The Coaching Cycle
Coaching is a structured conversation, or series of conversations, organized to help people set and ultimately accomplish goals. With instructional coaching, the focus is on improving student outcomes by changing teaching in ways that teachers are excited to implement. The coaching cycle that my colleagues and I developed—we call it the Impact Cycle (Knight, 2018)—moves through three stages: identify, learn, and improve (see fig. 1).
Identify: We suggest that coaches start by asking their conversation partner about their current reality (Where are you now?); about their goals (Where do you want to get to?); and about the strategy the teacher will use to attempt to hit their goals (How will you get there?).
- Where are you now? The easiest and most efficient way for teachers to get a clear picture of reality is by watching a video of their lessons. For example, a teacher might see that their explanations are unclear, that they talk too much, or that students take too long to transition between activities. Alternatively, teachers may notice positive things, such as students engaging in meaningful small-group conversations or showing genuine interest in a topic shared during class. Teacher interviews, classroom observations, or reviewing student work are all ways to get this information, but a video often works best.
- Where do you want to get to? Our acronym PEERS summarizes the important elements of goal setting. Good goals are powerful—that is, they will make a socially significant difference in students’ lives. They are designed to be as easy as possible, recognizing that teaching is rarely easy. They are emotionally compelling to the teacher and, hopefully, to students. They are reachable, in terms of being measurable, as well as being coupled with a strategy to move toward a desired outcome. They are student-focused, usually related to student achievement or engagement. If a teacher notices that students take five minutes to transition between activities, they might set a goal for students to complete the transition in one minute or less.
- How will you get there? Identifying how to hit the goal is much easier to do when there’s widespread understanding of a pedagogical framework or a set of high-impact teaching strategies that everyone understands in the school, such as those proposed by Bryan Goodwin (2022), John Hattie (2023), or Carol Ann Tomlinson (2017).
Over time, we’ve identified a set of questions that provides a starting point for the identify stage of the coaching cycle (see fig. 2).
Learn: Once they identify a strategy, the coach and teacher discuss how the teacher will implement it. Instructional coaches and teachers often go through checklists, making adaptations where necessary to clarify implementation. Then they identify some way for the teacher to see the strategy in action, such as observing a teacher using the strategy live or in a video.
Improve: During the improve stage, teachers modify the strategy and their approach to teaching until they achieve their goal. The teacher can either change the goal, change how they measure progress toward the goal, change the strategy, change how they teach the strategy, or wait until the change happens. For example, a teacher who wants to decrease the amount of time students spend transitioning between activities might decide that they need to involve students in setting a specific transition goal.
Its Application to Peer Coaching
We suggest that peer coaches learn and apply the Impact Cycle during a one-day workshop where they can learn about the stages of improvement and how to work with peers to (1) discuss their current reality, (2) set a goal, (3) identify a strategy, (4) review or co-construct a checklist or plan for implementing the strategy, and (5) make a plan for how they will monitor progress.
Peer instructional coaching can make a big difference in schools, but only when it’s done thoughtfully and intentionally.
Pillar 4: Expertise
To move through the Impact Cycle, coaches need a working knowledge of data related to student achievement and engagement. They need to assess student acquisition and transfer of knowledge and skills and gather data on behavioral, cognitive, and emotional engagement.
We also suggest that schools give teachers access to instructional playbooks. Created by instructional coaches and school and teacher leaders, these contain a list of high-impact strategies, one-pagers that describe the key elements of a given strategy, and checklists that summarize what teachers need to know to implement a strategy (see Knight et al., 2020).
Its Application to Peer Coaching
When teachers know what engagement data to look for, they see aspects of the class that otherwise might not be visible to them. When they understand how best to assess acquisition or transfer of knowledge and skills, their assessments are much more effective. Helping teachers understand how to gather data and implement high-impact teaching strategies is essential for peer coaching.
Stepping Up to the Challenge
The five steps that follow will help school leaders create a successful peer coaching program:
Step 1. Provide professional development for peer coaches that explores the skills of questioning and listening, as well as the beliefs that encourage mutually humanizing coaching conversations. This learning can occur in workshops, asynchronous learning, book study, professional learning communities, or other professional development activities.
Step 2. Provide professional learning on how to gather data for peer coaching and to improve the quality of formative assessment. Create instructional playbooks based on high-impact teaching strategies so there is widespread understanding of what strategies work best.
Step 3. Before meeting, ensure that the teacher being coached has a clear picture of what actually takes place in their classroom. The teacher can record and watch a video of one of their lessons and then share that video with their peer during a coaching workshop.
Step 4. Offer a peer coaching workshop. A facilitator can take teachers through the steps of the coaching cycle, then give them the opportunity to coach and be coached with a peer. In a typical workshop, coaches watch each other’s videos of their lessons, identify a goal and a teaching practice for each, and then make plans to implement those practices and monitor progress.
Step 5. Plan to follow up. This can take place in formal or informal conversations or through email, texting, or free asynchronous video communication apps like Marco Polo. If coaching is going to lead to real change, teachers need ongoing support. Follow-up sessions help teachers reflect, adjust, and support one another as they work toward their goals.
Bringing It All Together
Peer instructional coaching can make a big difference in schools, but only when it’s done thoughtfully and intentionally. To be effective, peer coaches need the right “way of being,” strong questioning and listening skills, a clear process for working toward goals, and enough knowledge to support meaningful change. When these elements come together, peer coaching can lead to real improvements in teaching and learning.
The Definitive Guide to Instructional Coaching
Jim Knight outlines a robust instructional coaching program that can ease teacher burnout and power academic success.
