Question: What role should a coach play in the post-coaching relationship, and how can peer study groups support and encourage lesson improvement?
As a career coach, I feel honored and proud to encourage many students and assist them in finding a clear direction both in study and work and in making more remarkable strides. Also, establish a deep friendship or a good partner who encourages each other to learn with some of them. At least, that is what my spiritual mentor and I did, and our relationship is like father and son or friend. So for me, a healthy and good coaching relationship could be lifelong.
Sadly, most training and coaching will come to an end one day in reality. The relationship between the coach and coachee also gets to the end by the coaching is finished. From a business perspective, this seems to be of cause. Still, from continuous development and learning for everyone, single coaching may not help the coachee solve all difficulties. People take time to learn from failures. And the assistance and encouragement of partners and coaches are needed. Also, how can the experiences of different coachees organize and collaborate to help each other? Let them be each other buddies, or even as each other coaches, so that everyone can support each other to go further and make more excellent progress. It is a question that a coach cannot stop thinking about it.
Especially when it comes to lesson improvement, I always believe that have a lot of room for progress. However, coaches may not be able to provide long-term and intensive assistance. However, if there is a peer study group, they can help and encourage each other, share resources and experiences to solve different difficulties or become coaches. It should significantly continue to increase the quality of the lesson, which is significant for great student benefit and teacher development. And a peer study group may be an excellent solution to achieve this purpose.
Of course, the coach can already use this method to assist the internal team in coaching. But I think it can continue this at the post-coaching, even extended to the external. I found a method called lesson study due to my research https://lessonresearch.net/ . That can be a good model for a peer study group in the post-coaching specific for continuing lesson improvement. According to Rock & Wilson, this model claim that knowledge is constructed through social interaction, a sharing rather than personal experience. (Rock, T & Wilson, C., 2005) And https://lessonresearch.net/ shows that this model has four steps, and these four steps can be continuously circulated so that participants can make continuous improvements in different parts at different times. Those four steps are “1. study, 2. plan, 3. Teach, and 4. Reflect. “
Study:
Teachers collaborate and form a team:
- Identify long-term goals
- Choose investigate subject
- Study standards, research, and curricula
Plan:
Using insights from the Study phase and the teammate to set up the lesson plan:
- Examines the unit and plan in-depth
- Articulates the lesson goals
- Tries the lesson task and anticipates student thinking
- Identifies data to be collected during the lesson
Teach:
The team puts that lesson into action:
- One team member teaches the lesson
- Other team members observe and record student thinking and learning
Reflect:
The team then reflects on their work by:
- Meeting after the lesson to discuss data on student thinking and learning
- Having an outside specialist provide further commentary
- Reflecting on what they learned during the cycle as a whole
Quote from https://lessonresearch.net/
If applied to coaching, coaches can consider assisting coachees in joining the study group during the lesson planning phase. In addition to coaches in this group, it is best to have some coachees that coaches have previously assisted. Let the new coachee share their ideas, and the previous coachees can give suggestions and support the new coachee plan the lesson and, if possible, also can be the observer. That does the reflect together. Together all coachees have a lot of change collaborate and help each other for a better lesson improvement.
Accumulate and share the experience with everyone to improve interactivity. I believe there are many benefits in doing so, including allowing new and old coachees to have more opportunities to communicate and even cooperate. In some cases, it can also reduce the task of repeated explanations for the coach. The group can support and encourage each other and face difficulties together.
Reference:
Rock, T & Wilson, C., (2005) ImprovingTeaching through Lesson Study https://lessonresearch.net/about-lesson-study/what-is-lesson-study-2/
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ795305.pdf
Holmqvist, M (2020), Lesson study as a vehicle for improving SEND teachers’ teaching skills https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJLLS-05-2020-0022/full/html
