Evocative Coaching: Transforming Schools one Conversation at a Time

Citation

Oplatka, I. (2012), "Evocative Coaching: Transforming Schools one Conversation at a Time", International Journal of Educational Management, Vol. 26 No. 7, pp. 729-731. https://doi.org/10.1108/09513541211263791

Coaching has become a very popular technique for staff development and school improvement in recent years and many academic and how‐to‐make it books and articles have been published to help educators adopt this technique in their work. “Evocative coaching” is a welcomed contribution to this scholarship as it combines both kinds of writings in order to “describe a method through which instructional leaders (e.g. coaches, mentors, peer coaches, department chairs, supervisors, and others) can assist teachers to more fully meet that bottom line […] by increasing their trust, self‐efficacy, motivation, appreciation, resourcefulness, and engagement” (p. 5). To this end, the authors have combined their two areas of expertise in adult learning and educational leadership synergistically to suggest an innovative approach to bring about constructive change among teachers. This approach comprises the process the authors dub “story‐empathy‐inquiry‐design” (SEID), and working in evocative ways with individuals and their environments.

The book is composed of nine chapters and four appendixes that support further learning, teaching, and mastery of the evocative coaching model. Chapter 1, aimed at clarifying the meaning of evocative coaching, commences by the story of Renee, a third grade teacher who took her math teaching to a new level through an evocative coaching. According to the authors, coaching is a conversational process that brings out the greatness in people that enables teachers to reinvent themselves and their schools in the service of transformational learning. Yet, coaching that is based on “show and tell” or “review and comment” is insufficient. Therefore, evocative approach that aims to inspire motivation and movement without provoking resistance or power struggle is strongly advocated by the authors. Listening, asking, story‐telling, and reflecting in an empathic manner are its major processes. In the rest of the chapter, the principles, importance and utility of evocative coaching is emphasized and its definition is suggested.

In the second chapter, the authors further distinguish evocative coaching from other forms of coaching claiming we need a new metaphor for coaching presence that reflects a life‐giving understating of our awareness (e.g. who we are, what is going on, and how to engage). The coach is considered to be a whisperer who does not understand him/herself as helping the teachers, but rather interact with them in a way that communicates respect, understanding, acceptance, freedom, appreciation, willingness, cooperation and engagement. Benevolence, trust, caring, rapport, honesty, courageous sharing, openness, reliability, competence, and playfulness, all of which central tenets of evocative coaching, are discussed at length. Very fascinating and illuminating is the story of Monty Roberts, a horse whisperer, that is brought up to exemplify the utility of many of these tenets in evocative coaching and their developmental (as opposed to innate) nature.

The next four chapters present the four interrelated steps of evocative coaching modeled by the authors to analyze and discuss this mode of coaching: Story listening, expressing empathy, appreciative inquiry, and design thinking. Each of the chapters elaborates on the significance of every step to teacher growth and well‐being, analyzes its theoretical components, and provides practical guidelines for evocative coaches. From these chapters we learn that story‐listening is composed of five elements (character, intent, action, struggles, details), the ways by which coaches can evoke teachers to tell coachable stories (e.g. creating safe environments, asking growth‐related questions, mindful listening, suspending judgments), and how to express empathy, the second step of the evocative coaching.

Following a very thorough definition of empathy (which does not equal pity or sympathy), and strong conceptual justifications to express empathy during the coaching process (e.g. empathy facilitates change), the authors highlight that empathic coach is one who listens to teachers’ stories with respect, appreciation and understanding and indicate access points for empathy (e.g. classroom observation, story listening). In fact, the language of empathy is nonviolent communication that distinguishes observation from evaluation, feelings from thoughts, needs from strategies, and requests from demands. These distinctions are discussed at length in the fourth chapter.

In the next chapter, appreciative inquiry, as a better way to evoke from teachers the unique approaches they can call their own, is debated and constructed as the third step in the coaching process. Underlying this step is curiosity that empowers teachers to find their own answers and new possibilities for making forward. To this end, the evocative coacher is requested to ask open‐ended questions, probe into teachers’ abilities, observe classrooms without interjecting judgmental evaluations, and frame aspirations. Appreciative inquiry is believed to motivate change in schools and increase teacher growth.

Chapter 6, which is the most practical‐oriented one in the book, describes the forth step – design thinking – which is a way for people and organizations to stimulate innovation, increase self‐efficacy, and advance creativity in order to better meet human needs. This step aims at assisting teachers to better meet both their own needs and the needs of their students by moving from aspirations and possibilities to designing, commitment to, and experiment with action‐learning strategy. Consequently, the coach is called to invest time and effort to develop creative and fashionable designs together with the teacher. Many pages in this chapter are devoted to equip him/her with practical tools for design thinking during the coaching process (e.g. brainstorming design ideas, exploring inertia, framing innovation as experiments). The key role of several positive factors for the successful implementation of this step (e.g. positive relations, energy, emotions, images) is illuminated and debated to expose the reader to the complexity of this step and the many factors affecting its success or failure.

The last three chapters focus on evocative coaching in practice. Chapter 7 commences by emphasizing the key role of supportive environments in the coaching process which makes it necessary for both coaches and teachers to understand the meaning of instructional, relational, cultural, technological, and financial environments and their potential impact on teacher performance and educational chance. After all, ambivalence, reluctance, and resistance to change do not derive from internal dynamics solely, but also from environmental influences, as the authors indicated. Following a thorough analysis of the term “flow” the authors draw upon the analogy of a river to explore the dynamics of change in schools in respect to rapids and doldrums. Thus, many pages are devoted to “teach” educational systems to support motivation and movement from without and affect professional challenges in teaching.

Chapter 8 outlines the choreography of coaching conversations and raises several important questions: how do the four steps in the coaching process come together to facilitate change? How do we navigate our way through the ebbs and flows of the coaching process? What does the evocative form look like? And when do we circle back and when do we move forward? Evocative coaching, the authors claim, depends upon coaches’ ability to connect and dance with teachers in the moment as partners on the never‐ending journey of learning how to teach better. The chapter guides the coach how to successfully dance, i.e. how to practice the steps and develop a sense of progression, flow, and destination. The four steps are further divided into eight sub‐sections to help coaches practically progress in the coaching process. A special attention is given to unexpected events, barriers, and traps during this process.

The last chapter sums up the major issues arising in the book and calls the coaches to critically reflect upon themselves, their attitudes, knowledge, beliefs, ways of coaching, and so forth. In doing so, the coaches will better assist teachers to reflect upon their own life and professional practices. The book ends with some tools and practical guidelines for evocative coaches, a very valuable tool kit for those intending to adopt the challenging techniques of evocative coaching in their work.

The book is extremely interesting and illuminating and the reader may find a host of rejoinders to our needs, on one hand, to better understand the barriers to educational reform in schools and teaching, and to inculcate emotions in the teacher's role, on the second hand. Many questions proposed by the authors at the end of each chapter lead him/her to internalize some of the issues arising in the book. Yet, no text is perfect. Throughout the reading of the book, I had a feeling of repetitive topics and fragmented texts in some places. This made me believe that the book could have been shortened a little bit in order to strengthen its coherence and consistency.