Instructional Coaching
In May 2022, Bradford Opportunity Area and Exceed Teaching School Hub invited Bradford schools and partnerships to apply to benefit from the Instructional Coaching Offer (see below). On the 24th May 2022, 39 teachers representing 101 schools were invited to access the offer.
This webpage provides resources and references that schools considering or implementing instructional coaching for teacher development may benefit from.
What is instructional coaching? (Peps Mccrea via Twitter)
The research (Sam Sims via Twitter)
Exceed Teaching School Hub event with Dr Sam Sims (12/10/2022)
Exceed Teaching School event with Peps Mccrea (16/11/2022)
Instructional coaching implementation (Josh Goodrich via Twitter)
Implementation challenges (Josh Goodrich via Twitter)
Implementing and refining deliberate practice: handbook (Ambition Institute)
Walkthrus demonstration (13/12/22)
Teacher practice outside the classroom (Peps Mccrea via Twitter)
Early Years and Key Stage 1 coaching (Josh Goodrich via Twitter)
Instructional coaching: The researcher's perspective (Steplab via YouTube)
Instructional coaching: the lead coach perspective (Steplab via YouTube)
Instructional coaching: the senior leader perspective (Steplab via YouTube)
Instructional Coaching Offer (Applications closed 20th May 2022)
SORRY, THIS OFFER IS ONLY AVAILABLE TO BRADFORD SCHOOLS.
Bradford Opportunity Area (BOA) has allocated grant funding to develop sustainable capacity in schools, trusts, and partnerships of schools that positively impact on social mobility. In this instance, the focus is to help ensure the BOA investment in programmes over the last five years has a positive impact at classroom level.
Instructional coaching - coaching to improve teaching - is the form of teacher development with the most robust evidence base for impact. Therefore, via Exceed Teaching School Hub, BOA is investing in building capacity that will impact positively in schools whilst also investing in developing a team of expert teachers who could support other teachers and leaders within and beyond their own school/trust.
We are inviting up to 39:
- school partnerships (e.g. a trust or a local area partnership (LAP) of about 5 schools), or
- an individual school
to apply for one place on our Intensive Instructional Coaching Programme (IICP). This will develop an instructional coaching expert teacher for the school or partnership. In time, the expert teacher will support a group of teachers from across the school or partnership via a Professional Learning Community (PLC) (or network). The PLC would focus on an agreed common school improvement priority - such as assessment for learning, cognitive science, or Early Career Framework - as a vehicle to develop instructional coaching expertise and practice.
NB School partnership will be favoured as they will extend the reach of the investment to more schools.
Our instructional coaching offer has five elements:
- Implementation support from Bradford Research School to help the partnership to consider how it will be addressing an agreed common priority via building instructional coaching capacity
- The Intensive Instructional Coaching Programme to build expertise led by Ambition Institute
- Walkthrus to provide tools for the expert teacher is draw upon
- Keynote presentations during the year to extend learning by introducing new ideas, and
- A partnership or school led Professional Learning Community (PLC) for disseminating the expert teacher's learning to peers
EXAMPLE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES (PLC)
Example 1
A highly-skilled (expert) teacher with little experience in instructional coaching is registered to access the Intensive Instructional Coaching programme for a partnership (e.g. multi-academy trust or local area partnership) of 5 schools. The expert teacher accesses training and support via the programme during the autumn term 2022. In January 2023, the expert teacher establishes a PLC, or network meeting, for mentors of early career teachers from each of the partnership schools. They meet from 1.00pm to 2:30pm once per half-term for the next 12 months. Their initial focus is agreed - they wish to enhance the mentor training they are receiving through the Early Career Teachers’ Programme. They use the time together to review research, and the ECT Programme requirements, and to create a plan for strengthening their mentor role even further. The expert teacher facilities the meetings, drawing upon the learning from the Intensive Instructional Coaching Programme to share their newly developed expertise, develop mentor confidence in using weekly instructional coaching with their ECT, and explore techniques mentors may encourage ECTs to adopt using the WALKTHRU resources.
Example 2
A highly skilled (expert) teacher with an awareness of instructional coaching is registered to access the Intensive Instructional Coaching Programme for their secondary school that is applying individually for the Instructional Coaching Offer. The expert teacher accesses training and support via the programme during the autumn term 2022. In January 2023, the expert teacher establishes a PLC, or network meeting, for subject leaders in five departments in their schools. They meet from 3:00pm to 4pm once per half-term for the next 12 months. Their initial focus is agreed - they wish to enhance departmental level support for embedding strategies for managing students' cognitive load. They use the time together to review research and the WALKTHRU resources. The expert teacher facilities the meetings, drawing upon the learning from the Intensive Instructional Coaching Programme to share their newly developed expertise, and build the subject leaders’ confidence in using instructional coaching to embed the cognitive load strategies with all teachers in their department.
Example 3
A highly skilled (expert) teacher with an awareness of instructional coaching is registered to access the Intensive Instructional Coaching Programme for their partnership (trust). The expert teacher accesses training and support via the programme during the autumn term 2022. In January 2023, the expert teacher establishes a PLC, or network meeting, for teaching and learning leaders across their trust's four schools. They work 1:1 with the teaching and learning leader from school A, and meet from 3:00pm to 4pm twice per half-term for one term. Their initial focus is agreed - they wish to enhance the mentor training they are receiving through the Early Career Teachers’ Programme. They use the time together to review research, and the ECT Programme requirements, and to create a plan for strengthening their mentor role even further. The expert teacher facilities the meetings, drawing upon the learning from the Intensive Instructional Coaching Programme to share their newly developed expertise, develop mentor confidence in using weekly instructional coaching with their ECT, and explore techniques mentors may encourage ECTs to adopt using the WALKTHRU resources. After one term, the expert teacher supports school B’s teaching and learning leader with the same level of support. This is repeated each term with a new school.
BRIEFING EVENT FOR INTERESTED SCHOOLS AND PARTNERSHIPS: 13:30-14:30, Wednesday 27th April 2022
EXPRESSION OF INTEREST (2 minutes to complete)
Partnerships and schools are encouraged to submit a brief expression of interest in accessing this offer now, even if the details of who will be the lead school and expert teacher have not been agreed upon. This helps us to be confident that the offer is making progress towards delivery. Partnerships should complete the following short expression of interest:
DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS: 12:00pm (lunchtime), Friday 20th May 2022 (10-20 minutes to complete)
Once a school or partnership has considered their priority and identified the expert teacher they can submit their formal application, including sharing selection data such as the number of children eligible for the Pupil Premium Grant. The application form is available here:
School partnerships (preferred and favoured):
Individual schools:
COMMITMENT
This is a significant investment by the Opportunity Area. Equally, it is a significant commitment for us and for schools and partnerships that benefit from it. Here’s an overview of the commitment:
- The partnership or school should identify an expert teacher to attend the Intensive Instructional Coaching Programme. Their expert teacher’s school will be the named lead school. This person may not have experience of instructional coaching, but they are a high-quality teacher capable of leading teacher development in the named partnership
- All schools in a partnership must be in Bradford
- To benefit from the funding, the lead school must commit to ensuring the expert teacher is available and committed to:
- Attend all the IICP and implementation training
- Undertake pre-reading between IICP sessions
- Engage in 1:1 coaching with their allocated Expert Teacher Educator from Ambition Institute (including video recording part of one of their own lesson(s))
- Ensuring the capacity to lead a PLC for the partnership or school
- Each partnership or school will need to create an implementation plan using the template provided for how it intends to disseminate and develop instructional coaching practice developed as a result of the expert teacher attending the IICP via the PLC for 12 months.
- The partnership or school may decide the Walkthrus resources are not required for their approach to embedding instructional coaching. A partnership, for example, may have sufficient tools provided via the ECF based training programme they are engaging with.
SELECTION
The allocation of support will prefer school partnerships over individual schools as this extends the reach of the offer. However, we also understand the benefit of building expertise across the city especially if individual schools make instructional coaching central to their teacher development offer and, in the future, offer their capacity to support other schools to implement instructional coaching. Exceed Teaching School Hub will create a public-facing directory of such schools. Schools and partnerships with high proportions of pupils eligible for the Pupil Premium Grant will also be favoured as the Opportunity Area is a social mobility programme. The reach of the programme to impact pupils is also a factor, as is the Ofsted profile of a school or partnership.
CONTACT
tshub@exceedacademiestrust.co.uk