Search results

Models are currently used extensively in the delivery of coaching. These models are used to give structure and form by coaches. The purpose of this paper is to present an alternative viewpoint of the impact of the use of models in the coaching relationship.

The approach taken has been to reflect on recent conversations across professional networks. The cooperative curiosity and questioning of some of our professional assumptions explores using models in coaching to enhances our practice, rather than limiting it. The paper acts as an exploratory prompt to question our practice and the role of the coach in the client/coach relationship.

The paper suggests that models are used, to a greater extent by the more inexperienced coaches to support their early practice. It is suggested that with greater experience, there is less reliance and use of format and recognised models. The paper proposes the more experienced coach provides “freedom without models” creating an alternative type of environment.

The implications of this paper are that if the authors are to grow and develop the practice and profession, there is a need to continue to research what current practice is delivering and offering the clients. The authors need to question if the early career coaches have the skills to meet the needs of the clients who engage them.

Researching our practice intends to will spark new ideas that may enhance the coaching practice and deliver the requirements of clients looking for development in a volatile and challenging corporate business world.

Executive coaching has become a popular leadership development tool over the past decade. To be effective, coaches need to reflect on the lessons from counselling research from the past four decades and on the emerging coaching research to develop coaching models that are evidenced based.

The purpose of this study was to examine the architecture of internship coaching models from five innovative principal preparation programs in the Southeastern region of the USA. The researchers used coaching architecture in this context to include the assignment of coaches to interns, dosages, and enactment of evaluation and confidentiality.

The researchers used a qualitative, collective case study research design that included semi-structured interviews of program directors and coaches from each of five programs, totaling 19 interviews that lasted from 30 min to an hour and 15 min each.

Commonalities among architectures of principal intern coaching designs included coaching assignment by geography, frequency and format of coaching sessions and length of the internship. All five programs recommend continuing coaching into initial years of administration. Points of distinction pertained to the utilization of external versus internal coaches, confidentiality and evaluation by coaches.

This study may inform coaching models for principal preparation programs within similar contexts. Because all five programs are grant-funded within one US state, generalizability and transferability cannot be assumed.

The authors provide design considerations for coaching programs, as well as policy considerations and directions for future research.

While coaching is increasingly used in leadership preparation programs, there is a paucity of research regarding the nature of coaching models, especially in terms of their architecture. The researchers examine, compare, and contrast coaching model architecture, raising important considerations for coaching designs.

This collective case study investigated the ways in which coaching supports teacher change. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to consider what types of feedback are best at what times in the coaching process and how coaching supports teachers’ application of learning to differing contexts.

The study was conducted over an 18-month period in three settings: a university reading clinic and two schools. Participants were a coach and two in-service teachers enrolled in a literacy specialist master’s degree program. This qualitative study included observational field notes, interviews, lesson plans, and teacher reflections as primary data sources.

Findings suggest a model for coaching that acknowledges the learner’s previous knowledge and experience and continuously gauges support to stay within the ever-escalating zone of proximal development. Specific coaching moves that vary by degree of scaffolding are identified, namely: modeling, recommending, asking questions, affirming, and praising.

This study clarifies the varying roles that coaches may play and how these roles change over time. Additionally, the model has implications for how coaching might change based on variability among those being coached.

The Gradual Increase of Responsibility Model has potential to guide coaches as they engage with mentees to improve instruction.

Purpose – To provide a model for mentoring teachers through the process of improving instruction and intervention.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter describes the Gradual Increase of Responsibility model for coaching, an adaptation of Pearson and Gallagher's (1983) Gradual Release of Responsibility model that can be used by coaches as they support teachers in a clinic or school setting.

Findings – Content describes stages of the coaching model that provide less scaffolding as teachers gain confidence and competence. These stages include modeling, recommending, questioning, affirming, and praising.

Research limitations/implications – The Gradual Increase of Responsibility (GIR) model provides a process that coaches can follow to support instructional improvement. GIR requires that coaches have instructional expertise; it provides them with a guide for their work with teachers to incorporate effective practices.

Practical implications – The GIR model can be applied by coaches in both clinical and school settings, with teachers who instruct students at both elementary and secondary levels.

Originality/value of paper – This chapter provides examples for each stage of the GIR process, clearing indicating how coaches can guide teachers to take on increased responsibility for strong, intentional instruction and intervention.

This paper seeks to provide readers with a better understanding of four theory models that inform coaching practice, and to reflect on how the theoretical approach that one adopts is likely to shape one's coaching practice.

This article is based on the authors' combined 30 years of experience as internal and external executive coaches. Organizational examples are provided to illustrate key concepts.

The authors conclude that, although coaches tend to be eclectic in the methods that they employ, they tend to center their craft on one of four prevailing coaching models: the clinical model, the behavioral model, the systems model, and the social constructionist model. These models inform the practice and shape the approaches that OD practitioners take in directing coaching assessments and interventions.

This article serves as a “think piece” to help OD practitioners understand the theoretical assumptions, constraints, and caveats that are associated with each model. The authors strongly believe that having this knowledge enables practitioners to introduce a higher level of discipline and effectiveness into the coaching process.

This article represents a unique attempt to bridge theory and practice by encouraging readers to reflect on how each individual's practice is developed from, and informed by, a particular theory position. It represents one of the few papers that have tackled this particular management development topic.

Purpose – This study explored agentive and sustainable teacher development as part of literacy coaching that employed a reflective framework and video with an apprenticeship stance. This chapter examines principles of apprenticeship and the Gradual Release of Responsibility (GRR) model to analyze the transition of responsibility for reflection from coach to teacher.

Design/methodology/approach – An earlier seven-month multiple case study of literacy coaching with four secondary level teachers revealed seven joint actions (i.e., revoice, build, ask questions to develop understanding, ask dissonant questions, suggest, disagree, reconceptualize) and four categories of joint action (i.e., directive/consonant, directive/dissonant, responsive/consonant, and responsive/dissonant) within a model of joint action for literacy coaching (Reichenberg, 2018). This analysis mapped those joint actions onto the GRR model (McVee, Shanahan, Hayden, Boyd, & Pearson, 2018; Pearson & Gallagher, 1983). This chapter explicates reasoning for variability in responsibility and the potential relationship between variability and the development of teachers’ thinking and action through in-depth analysis of a single coaching session. Examples from other teachers’ coaching sessions are included.

Findings – Synthesis of the two models shows that joint actions initiated by the coach that were directive/dissonant fell on the left side of the GRR model with primary coach responsibility. Actions initiated by the coach that were classified as directive/consonant came next on the journey toward the middle, followed by responsive/dissonant actions. Responsive/consonant actions encompassed the middle region of shared responsibility. The same actions initiated by the teacher mirrored this progression. Principles of apprenticeship in this gradual release of responsibility highlight the bi-directionality of expertise in situated action informed by historical and dynamic context (Mercer, 2008). Evidence of teachers’ growing agency and sustainability were present in joint actions they initiated within the context of literacy coaching.

Research limitations/implications – Analysis of the actions of a literacy coach and teacher as directive, responsive, consonant, and dissonant add complexity to the discussion about how to transfer responsibility for reflection from coaches to teachers. Awareness of how joint actions map onto the GRR model can inform coaches’ and teachers’ decisions as they thoughtfully move toward greater teacher agency within coaching interaction.

Practical implications – The reflective framework employed in this study is applicable to a variety of settings such as instructional coaching across the disciplines, coaching by in-service literacy specialists, and the preparation of pre-service literacy coaches. The model of joint action for analyzing coaching interaction could be used by in-service literacy coaches, pre-service literacy coaches, and teachers who are being coached.

Originality/value – This chapter analyzes the transition of responsibility for reflection from coach to teacher. Principles of both the GRR model and apprenticeship theory provide a theoretical explanation for how these teachers achieved greater agency and sustainable development of a reflective stance.

Modeling is a potentially productive activity in which coaches can engage teachers to support teaching and learning (Gibbons and Cobb, 2017). Yet, there is a lack of empirical research that describes how coaches can productively implement this activity with teachers. The overarching purpose of this study was to explore the challenges and support coaches faced while modeling instruction for teachers.

Twenty-nine semi-structured interviews were conducted with five coaches and six elementary teachers in two different school districts in the United States. The data were qualitatively coded using a combination of literature-driven and emergent codes.

Participants identified 16 distinct challenges they faced during coaching cycles involving modeling, and 11 supports that could ultimately enhance the success of the modeled lesson for all involved parties. These challenges and support spanned the broad categories of contextual factors, management and logistics, pedagogical dilemmas and teacher learning.

Although modeling is a popular coaching activity, researchers have only an emerging understanding of the challenges associated with modeling instruction, as well as the support that can enhance the modeled lesson's success. By having a thorough understanding of such challenges and support, coaches can effectively leverage modeling to support teaching and learning at their schools. Hence, the findings from this study will importantly inform coaching practice, as well as future research directions.

The impact of managerial coaching on frontline employee performance has received initial support in literature in recent years. However, no studies have explored if this impact should vary according to the career stage that the employee is in. If an interaction effect exists, then managers should expect different results when coaching people in different stages of their careers. Otherwise, all employees (independently of their career stage) can benefit from the positive impact of coaching and, thus, the manager can expect a continuous positive outcome on employee performance throughout their careers. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the moderation effect of an employee’s career stage on the relationship between managerial coaching and performance.

A sample of 318 financial advisors from two Canadian banks was used to collect data on the amount, and quality, of managerial coaching received by the employees, as well as their performance. multigroup confirmatory factor analysis ran in AMOS was used to test the moderation effect of experience.

Results confirmed the positive effect of managerial coaching on frontline employee behavioral and sales performance, but no moderation effect was found. The measuring and causal models showed invariance for employees in their early (one to seven years of selling experience), middle (8-15 years), and late (more than 15 years) career stages, suggesting that managerial coaching will make a consistent contribution to performance throughout all the stages of the employee’s career.

The study makes two main contributions to the scientific literature. First, it offers an original study examining the effect of managerial coaching on frontline employee performance in the banking sector. Second, it examines the role of selling experience as a moderator in coaching processes, thus contributing to the limited literature on career stages.

The study suggests that managers should equally devote their coaching efforts to all employees, independently of their selling experience. Contrary to the belief that rookies will benefit more from coaching, and that “you cannot teach an old dog new tricks,” results suggest that managerial coaching makes a continuous contribution to performance throughout all the stages of an employee’s career.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the moderation effect of selling experience on coaching consequences, and one of the few to present evidence of the positive effect of managerial coaching on frontline employee performance in the banking sector.