Announcing Whole School/ Whole System Coaching Blog

Question:  We discuss school reform strategies all the time on various lists, blogs, etc., with an aim to share our work, agree and disagree, and learn from one another.  Why is there no substantive discussion of coaching, one of the major strategies we all use to support it?

 

Across the nation, schools, school districts, and support organizations employ many strategies to support urban school improvement.  Among the most often used in more successful efforts, and least often used in less successful efforts, is coaching, and in particular, coaching that focuses not just on instruction or leadership, but on the whole school or district as a system.  Organizations such as BayCES, CCE, the Small Schools Project, the Small Schools Workshop, NSRF, CES National, and many more continually discuss their methods internally, and increasingly these organizations are developing research and evaluation approaches to study the efficacy of their particular approach to coaching.  Yet little or no national dialogue exists across these organizations and the organizations that employ their services, and no meta-analysis, that I am aware of, of coaching effectiveness.  I am creating this blog to stimulate that discussion and analysis.

 

Assertion:  We need a national dialogue and we need a national professional coach network and community of practice.   We might even find ourselves developing an emerging consensus, while valuing the diversity of our differing approaches, about effective high quality coaching, and what coaches need to know and be able to do to be effective.  That could lead to a dialogue about an emerging set of professional standards of practice for coaching.  All of this could make coaching better and of more value to those doing it and seeking its benefits to their reform work.

 

This blog hopes to start an ongoing national examination of whole school/ whole system coaching.  Such a national dialogue could result in a larger learning community of practice and network among coaches, one that might enable coaches to share and learn from each other, one that might result in some national consensus about what high quality whole systems coaching is, and what such coaches do.  While valuing the diversity of experience and opinion about the topic among coaches and those employing them as part of a reform strategy, some increasing clarity about these questions could help to develop innovative understanding about what coaches need to know and be able to do to be effective at supporting whole school/ whole system change.  Networks of diverse practitioners working on similar problems innovate at a much higher rate than individual organizations; larger networks innovate at an exponentially higher rate.  This blog herein begins such a dialogue that will continue beyond this space into the creation of a web-based coaching network and community of practice, where we will engage together in “critical friendship,” dialogue, collaboration, innovation, and knowledge management.

 

Some Questions for Discussion on this Blog:

• What is whole system coaching?
• What do whole system coaches do?
• What do high quality coaches need to know and be able to do to be effective?
• What sorts of professional learning systems do coaches need to be effective?
• What results in schools and districts constitute “being effective?”
• What kinds of communities of practice, or professional learning communities, or coach collaborations currently exist and how do they support coaches to be effective?
• What sorts of communities of practice and networks can you imagine creating that would enhance existing ones and enable greater shared learning and innovation in coaching?
• What sorts of organizational arrangements best support effective coaching, both in schools and districts and in outside providers?
• What kinds of knowledge management systems best support effective coaching?

 

Stay Tuned:  Your contributions to discussing these questions, and generating others, will fuel future topics, and help build the network…

I hope to see you all here.

 John