Research

In this paper, we explore the role of an often overlooked challenge for teacher professional development: cognitive load.

Instructional coaching is one of the best ways for schools to improve teaching. We’ve pulled together this Beginner’s Guide to help share what we’ve learned about successful instructional coaching and how to make it work.

Josh and Kat delve into the structure of Josh's book and some common questions about implementing a coaching programme across a school or trust.

What is responsive coaching and why is it so important?

There are various conceptions of instructional coaching. The different terms used to describe instructional coaching models are often unhelpful, at times divisive, and can be a cause of confusion.

What does it take to build truly effective teacher professional development?

There are multiple ways to define expert teaching – the question is what to do with the analysis.

For the last 7 years, over at Steplab we've been working on a project to codify effective teaching. This essay explores what we've done and what we've learned.

In this paper, we outline the theoretical and research basis for the Steplab approach to IC. We summarise the challenges of developing a theory of teacher learning and outline an approach to IC that supports teachers to develop technical skill, judgement and move towards adaptive expertise.

Every school we know of that has ‘successfully’ implemented Instructional Coaching changes something about their coaching programme every single year. Implementing instructional coaching isn’t a finite challenge that you can eventually complete.

How can we use Instructional Coaching to transform teacher quality when we don't agree about what it is and who it's for? This series is about redefining what we talk about when we talk about Instructional Coaching.