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Coaching for Coherence: perceptions, experience and impact of a

teaching and learning coaching initiative in a further education context

Deborah Eagle

August 2015

MBA in Further Education Management

Kings College London

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Abstract

This dissertation examines the effects of coaching on organizational culture and teacher improvement in a College of Further Education.

The research gauges teaching staff and management’s perceptions of coaching in order to identify the less measurable elements of its impact, ascertain the College’s learning disposition and name the barriers to greater organizational cohesion and efficacy.

Where manager advocacy is high, teaching and learning coaching initiatives show positive impact on team culture and alignment, as well as on classroom performance. The paper argues that a coaching architecture can support wider organizational change efforts and complex approaches to teacher development and that – with its origins in situated learning and apprenticeship – coaching methodologies are particularly relevant to Vocational Education and Training contexts.

Features of coaching as it is practised in the organization are identified and mapped against the Professional Standards to inform further discussion on consistency and suitability of approaches within this more aspirational framework for teachers and trainers in the sector.

Caught between restrictive habits and expansive intent, between teacher ‘surveillance’ and development cultures, the strain and incongruency described by coaches in the case study organization are not untypical. The paper concludes that fuller, more thoughtful integration of quality control and improvement systems is imperative, and that a whole-organizational understanding and implementation of coaching principles and practices is key to the success of that.

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Contents

Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………………………………..2

Abbreviations ……………………………………………………………………………………………….5

Chapter 1 Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………7

Chapter 2: Coaching implementation context and rationale ………………………11 2.1Pre-merger context …………………………………………………………………………………12 2.2Post-merger context ……………………………………………………………………………….16

Chapter 3: Growth, transformation and complexity …………………………………..21 3.1 Approaches to teacher learning ……………………………………………………………..22 3.2 Approaches to organizational learning …………………………………………………..25

Chapter 4: Coaching practicalities and vocational fit ……………………………….…29 4.1 Coaching inner or outer? ……………………………………………………………………….30 4.2 A private view of the coaching relationship…………………………………………….32 4.3 Coaching heavy and coaching light ………………………………………………………..33 4.4 VET appropriateness ……………………………………………………………………………..35 Chapter 5: Research methodology …………………………………………………………….38 5.1 Overview ………………………………………………………………………………………………38 5.2 Participant selection and ethical considerations ……………………………………39 5.3 The questionnaire……………...………………………………………………………………… 41 5.4 The interview ……………………………………………………………………………………….43 Chapter 6: Main findings …………………………………………………………………………..47 6.1 College Learning Landscape …………………………………………………………………47 6.2 A tale of two managers ………………………………………………………………………. 51 6.3 Contrived or genuine collegiality? ………………………………………………………. 54 6.4 A tale of two coaches …………………………………………………………………………. 55

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Chapter 7: Discussion on emerging themes ………………………………………………59 7.1 Perceptions & experience of positive impact on the learning culture …..59 7.2 Barriers to a learning culture………………………………………………………………..61 7.3 Matters arising from the research …………………………………………………….…66

Chapter 8: Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………… 69

Appendices:

A: The Learning Landscape ………………………………………………………………………………………….75

B: New Professional Standards ……………………………………………………………………………………78

C: Interview with Teacher A ………………………………………………………………………………………..79

D: Interview with Coach C …………………………………………………………………………………………..84

E: Interview with Middle Manager C …………………………………………………………………………..88

F: Interview with Middle Manager D …………………………………………………………………………..92

G: Interview with Senior Manager A …………………………………………………………………………..96

H: General staff questionnaire ………………………………………………………………………………….102

I: TLC questionnaire ………………………………………………………………………………………………….103

J: Managers’ questionnaire ………………………………………………………………………………………104

K: Manager semi-structured interview questions ……………………………………………………..105

L: Time barriers ………………………………………………………………………………………………………..106

M: Stretch-support features of the one-to-one relationship……………………………………..107

Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………………………108

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Abbreviations

CAVE Commission for Adult and Vocational Education

CIF Common Inspection Framework

CIPD Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development

CM Curriculum Manager

CPD Continuing Professional Development

DD Deputy Director

DfES Department for Education and Skills

ETF Education and Training Foundation

FE Further Education

GROW Goals, Realities, Options, Will (Whitmore coaching model)

HR Human Resources

IfL Institute for Learning

IoE Institute of Education

ITT Initial Teacher Training

KPI Key Performance Indicator

LLUK Lifelong Learning in the United Kingdom

LSN Learning and Skills Network

LSIS Learning and Skills Information Services

NTLCP National Teaching and Learning Change Programme

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Ofsted The Office for Standards in Education

PDC Professional Development Centre

SLC Subject Learning Coach

SMT Senior Management Team

TLC Teaching and Learning Coach

T&L Teaching and Learning

UCU University and College Union

VET Vocational Education and Training

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Chapter 1: Introduction

‘In knowledge-intensive work, and settings involving complex teamwork, many organisations of all sizes explicitly use a developmental view of expertise that goes well beyond expecting technical proficiency and commitment to continuing improvement. These organisations pay particular attention to ensuring that their teams possess people able to support the learning of others.’ (Brown, 2012: 91)

‘You can only measure three percent of what matters.’ (W.E. Deming in Senge, 2006: xii)

Institutions cannot afford to think simplistically at this time of rapid and continuous change.

Management by measurement, compliance and fragmentation is, at its core, ‘dedicated to

mediocrity’ (Senge, 2006: xvi). Change efforts need to be holistic, must acknowledge the

complex nature of teaching, address power relationships and establish an environment that is

conducive to teacher learning (Hoban, 2002: 3).

The work of a network of area-based but centrally coordinated Teaching and Learning Coaches

(TLCs), advanced over six years in a large, London-based College of Further Education (FE),

should be seen in this broader, more durative context. Success measures ought to account for,

or at least acknowledge, TLC contributions to what is so powerfully experienced as ‘culture’.

The main concern of this research is therefore to augment limited organizational measures of

coaching impact, currently tracked through teacher performance in lesson observation. Whilst

indicative, the College grade profile tells us little about the wider effects of coaching on staff

attitudes, team cohesion or organizational coherence through what has been a prolonged

period of instability marked by merger, multiple restructure and overhaul at national level of

educational imperatives.

***

The micro-substantive approach I have taken is an opportunity to set down – for the benefit of

our own organizational memory and reflection – key stages in an evolving process that is about

to enter its third cycle of activity. It is action research to the extent that it is ‘knowledge gained

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through action and for action’ (Torbert, 2001 in Reason and Bradbury, 2001: 1) and findings will

inform service conceptualization and practical adjustments. There is broader, transferable

value, however, in considering the extent to which a coaching outlook can challenge the

‘mediocre’, support a genuinely new and non-judgemental approach to lesson observation that

contributes not only to teaching and learning improvement, but to a unifying, self-perpetuating

culture of trust and learning in FE.

***

Coaching has gained strategic importance across the sector, both for the development and

transfer of practitioner knowledge and skills and for its value in promoting positive attitudes to

professional learning through dialogue and interactions at work. The model sits comfortably in

transformative (Little, 1993; Fielding, 1997; Kennedy, 2005) and complex systems approaches

(Hoban, 2002; Senge, 2006) to teacher learning and organizational development. With its

origins in notions of apprenticeship (Jameson, 2012; Clutterbeck, 2014), it is also highly relevant

to adult learning in a Vocational Education and Training (VET) context.

That FE has been slow to translate what it knows about adult learning to the professional

development and well-being of its staff is a function of the surveillance culture that has

dominated its workings for the past two decades. Recent studies into the counterproductive

effects of lesson observation as a tool for evaluating teacher performance (O’Leary, 2012 a;b)

have signposted the route to educational excellence through confidence-building, teacher

ownership, research and renewal. This is a ‘cultural thing’ that goes beyond ideas of

performance, and even of improvement, with which the sector is preoccupied.

The ‘coaching question’ is not ‘How do we evidence achievement of performance targets?’ but

‘How can we develop the institutional structures and cultures to enable us to ask

(uncomfortable) questions, listen with our being, and make meaning together in ways which

are transformative of the human spirit?’ (Fielding, 1997: 23). A ‘coaching College’ - a coherent

College - works with common educational purpose, passion and commitment; its systems are

designed with the flourishing of people in mind.

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There is plenty of survey evidence (Davies and Owen, 2001; Villeneuve-Smith, Munoz and

McKenzie, 2008; Ofsted, 2012) to suggest that staff attitudes determine organizational

effectiveness. Under-performing Colleges are characterized by cultures of blame, complacency

and low-challenge; outstanding institutions demonstrate cultures of ‘trust, dispersed leadership

and accountability’ (Ofsted, 2012: 17). The success or otherwise of the TLC network in

promoting conditions for expansiveness is the primary focus of this research. How their work is

supported by managers at the level of teams and, more widely, by organizational strategy will

inform discussion and the conclusions that are drawn.

Mixed-methods inquiry and data triangulation aim to lend reliability to the study. Secondary

analysis of data collected for annual monitoring and reporting purposes tracks teaching and

learning outcomes against the organisation’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). However

flawed or limited, these are the College’s terms of reference. They allow for the assessment of

trends over a six-year period, with merger as a mid-point, and are outlined in the following

chapter to provide an interpretive framework for the detail that follows.

For the purposes of this dissertation, the attitudes of staff working at different levels in the

organization were explored via questionnaire and interview to determine overall perceptions

and experience of the College coaching initiative. Specifically, the research sought to gauge

teacher, manager and TLCs’ views on the extent to which:

1. Coaching had impacted positively on professional attitudes.

2. Coaching had contributed to team cohesion.

3. Coaching had promoted collaboration more widely across the College.

4. Organizational values were seen to be lined up with, rather than against, teaching and

learning.

Quantitative data has been collated according to this structure - summarized in the conclusion

and included at appendix A for cross-referencing with the findings and future benchmarking.

This ‘Learning Landscape’ brings together the multiple indicators of a culture of learning

explored in the study, and provides a quick visual indication of views and activity across the

three strata.

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Survey research represents the views of half of all staff involved in curriculum delivery -

institutionally valid, and generalizable to the extent that it might contribute to ‘an archive of

studies… which then become reinterpreted’ (Woods, 2006). Furthermore, as the College is not

untypical in its experience of churn, the tension between this and the need to improve overall

quality of the learner experience should resonate with providers across the sector faced with

the same conundrum: how to empower staff and reconnect them with their own and students’

learning in a context that appears to militate against this at times. The research seeks to

determine whether coaching is effective as a means to this end.

***

In the seven chapters that follow, Chapter 2 describes the local and national contexts for

implementation of the coaching project in pre- and post-merger years. Chapter 3 looks at the

contributions of complexity theory to teacher and organizational development and to the

intellectual climate in which educational coaching has begun consciously to define itself. Joyce

and Showers’ (2002, 103) descriptors of ‘growth state’ - used to indicate both individual and

team levels of proactivity in this research - are discussed here, along with ideas of ‘contrived’

versus ‘genuine’ collegiality to explain implementation failures when they occur.

What coaching actually looks like in the case-study organization, current debates and its

suitability to a VET environment, forms the content of Chapter 4. Coaching activity, mapped

against the Professional Standards for Teachers and Trainers (ETF, 2014, appendix B), is

included in this section and not against the findings to provide early context for staff views and

responses.

Research methodology is expanded upon in Chapter 5. Chapter 6 presents the main findings

prior to thematisation and further discussion in Chapter 7. Finally, Chapter 8 concludes and

recommends key issues that should be considered if coaching effects are to be maximized in a

maturing service.

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Chapter 2: Implementation Context and Rationale

‘Teachers have become electricity substations, feeding out knowledge that has been generated elsewhere, but still getting the blame for low voltage.’ (Breslin, 2002: 194 citing Kogan in Wilby, 1997)

‘Excessive control and interference have characterized developments in VET, to the extent that the Commission has heard they now risk limiting people’s energy, confidence and ambition.’ (Commission on Adult Vocational Teaching and Learning, 2013: 27)

‘Teaching is not good work.’ (Kincheloe, 2003:1)

At least two decades of a widely articulated crisis in the teaching profession (Hargreaves, 1994,

2003; Breslin, 2002; Reed and Hallgarten 2002; Villeneuve-Smith, Munoz and Mckenzie 2008 et al) has

taken its toll on teacher morale, confidence and creativity in the classroom. The educational

standards movement and a pervasive managerialism manifest deeper problems in the sector to

do with a ‘general lack of consciousness – a garbled sense of purpose, of direction’, and a ‘more

general inability of Western peoples to conceptualise a system of meaning – i.e. an ethical

sense on which they can build humane and evolving institutions’ (Kincheloe, 2003:1).

In a ‘business’ primarily concerned with the communication of knowledge, skills and attitudes

between people, matters of relationship, values, what constitutes ‘valuable knowledge’

(Govers, 2009: 150) and how it is constructed and transferred are intellectually grappled with,

dissonantly felt but, for the most part, practically given up on as too difficult, too slow or too

low on a list of survival priorities to fully commit to.

For the duration of this research, FE has been subject to the vagaries of government ideologies,

a plethora of new initiatives and, under current Conservative rule, deeply wounding cuts that

are likely to change the VET landscape as we know it. The sector is particularly changeable,

necessarily reactive - but maintaining flexibility and competitiveness has been achieved at the

expense of continuity and common purpose. Tending in a ground-hog way to basic needs has

distracted FE from the important work of actualization, both of the people it serves and of

those who serve it tiringly.

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***

Coaching capacity and outlook, then, is a precarious luxury in an environment where the

wisdom of Kincheloe’s ‘humane and evolving institutions’ feels rare and expensive, and where

intangible assets are generally discounted.

With its emphasis on empowerment through self-awareness and responsibility (Whitmore,

2001: 15), on trust and mutual respect, it is conceptually alien in a positivist educational

framework that views knowledge and development as ‘things and snapshots’ rather than ‘inter-

relationships and patterns’ (Hoban, 2002: 33). Its values run counter to an authoritarian socio-

educational vision that has naively uncoupled educational provision, and notions of learning

and development, from the complex and uncertain global context in which they operate

(Kincheloe, 2003: 5). Fragmented curricula, systems that are not fit for people or purpose, ‘bolt-

ons’ and mechanistic approaches to learning and change are the result. In stricken, typical FE

cultures, coaching runs the dual risks of being seen as naïve by outcomes-driven leadership, and

as corporate imposition by initiative-weary staff.

2.1 Pre-merger context

When a coordinated coaching model was first introduced, it was considered ‘touchy feely’ -

tolerated by the Senior Management Team (SMT) because much of the activity in the early

stages of implementation was ‘in addition to’, externally funded, with strict deadlines for

project completion and evaluation of impact.

Organisationally, the picture was grim and public enough to warrant trying something new. In

2009, The Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) had pronounced teaching and learning at

the College ‘dull and boring’. A lone Subject Learning Coach (SLC), left over from the National

Teaching and Learning Change Programme (NTLCP, 2008) overseen by the Learning and Skills

Improvement Service (LSIS), was working in piecemeal fashion to support under-performing

staff. Take-up of internal staff development opportunities was low; the good or better grade

profile for classroom observation was very low at 69%.

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An internal survey of staff views (QPD, January 2010) captured the malaise. Calls for a more

collaborative and non-judgmental working environment were repeated across departments,

echoing sector-wide concerns that led to the Institute for Learning’s (IfL)1 survey of members

and its conclusion that a refocusing on the ‘core business of teaching and learning’ was urgently

required in FE (157 Group, 2011: 14).

Building on the IfL’s research, the seminal paper ‘Leading learning and letting go’ (IoE, 157

Group, IfL: 2012) did not expressly advocate coaching but it made a strong argument for

‘expansive’ leadership practices, setting the scene for non-deficit approaches in a sector that

had become obsessed with measuring as opposed to nourishing, with short-term expediency

over growth. Recurring themes were the need for:

1. A cultural shift to further improve teaching and learning.

2. Strategic leadership of learning for staff and students.

3. Space to innovate and experiment.

4. Creative working in teams.

5. Research-informed professional practice.

These were the guiding principles for the establishment of a coaching network to work in more

complex and differentiated ways to support and sustain the ‘cultural shift’ required for

improvements in teaching and learning.

***

It is worth looking briefly at the rise and fall of the IfL over the period that formed the backdrop

to coaching in the pre-merged organization. Without the IfL’s focus on professional learning

and reflection, and without the financial and consultancy support that LSIS awarded successful

bids for innovation and experiment, the project to ‘raise morale and empower teaching staff to

share and innovate’ (Eagle, 2010) is unlikely to have gained leadership support to enable set-up

and follow-through.

1 Until 2012, the mandatory professional body for teachers and trainers in the Lifelong Learning Sector. The IfL ceased operating in 2014.

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Together, these bodies licensed Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for lecturing staff

and gave space and backing for project developments. LSIS legitimized coaching in the sector

through its own leadership and performance coaching services, and through research, training

and targeted financial support for coaching initiatives at practitioner level.

‘Touchy feely’ ideas could therefore be expressed in the context of sector research into the

value and wisdom of distributive leadership practices. Nonetheless, to ‘sell’ the coaching

concept to College leadership, return on investment had to be emphasized, and the CIPD’s

(2009) research into coaching impact in the private sector was heavily drawn upon to lend

weight to initial proposals. That coaching is seen, and rejected, as part of a ‘corporate culture’

by some staff and managers in the organization today is probably a legacy of the failure in the

early stages of implementation to focus on values and ethos - on transformational intent -

rather than on return and outcomes to gain attention, and permission.

***

The creation of a Professional Development Centre (PDC), which sat outside of Human

Resources (HR) and Quality structures, to oversee in-service CPD and initial teacher training

(ITT) was prompted by mandatory qualification requirements for teachers in the lifelong

learning sector. The IfL had also stipulated staff entitlement to 30 hours CPD, with the annual

submission of evidence a pre-requisite of membership renewal. This made it easier for the PDC

to insist on time set aside for training and development - the College granted two hours off

timetable every Wednesday afternoon - and incentivized staff attendance.

The compulsory nature of IfL membership angered lecturing unions, but did positively orientate

staff and their organisations towards professional development. The PDC, in these relatively

benign conditions, was able to coordinate well attended training workshops that - importantly -

involved many more staff in regular delivery. These more familiar forms of CPD were a method

of ‘growing’ future TLCs, providing measurable cover for transformative types that were being

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tried alongside the menu approach: peer observation triads and Supported Experiments2, for

example - to which the coaches were vital in maintaining momentum.

Their efforts informed Ofsted’s subsequent and more flattering judgement shortly after merger

at the close of 2011: the College had made ‘significant progress’. A marked increase (20%) in

classroom performance grades was attributed to a developing and ‘forward-thinking’ CPD

infrastructure.

Table 1 shows marked progression over a 3-year period of the observation ‘good or better’ grade profile to 89%, against increased coaching capacity and training take-up:

08/09 09/10 10/11 11/12 (transitional year)

Good or better grades: 69% 73% 84% 89% In-year progression from a grade 3 or 4 to a higher grade after coaching intervention:

Not recorded. 63% 91% 100%

Coaching capacity: 1 SLC 1 SLC 6 TLCs 14 TLCs Attendance at internal CPD: 16 per week 37 per week 33 per week 33 per week Number of trainers/ facilitators: 11 27 35 34

Whilst serving the arguments for a coaching network well in the first phase of implementation,

the blunt measure of teaching and learning effectiveness through summative lesson

observation has felt increasingly inadequate, both as a form of capture for the reality of the

classroom experience over time, and for its single-minded, ineloquent focus on individual

teachers, without sufficient heed to the supporting systems and cultures in which they work.

Grafting respectful, developmental coaching relationships onto monitoring systems, widely

viewed as stressful and punitive, has undermined attempts to harness staff proactivity and

2Action research projects combining ideas put forward in the 1990s by Helen Timperley, Bruce Joyce and Beverly

Showers. Strong advocates for the approach in the UK are Geoff Petty and educational consultant, Joanne Miles.

Results of the Supported Experiment project were shared at the first official meeting of the merged staff body in

July 2012, setting the scene for collaborative practice within and across teams and establishing the TLCs as a visible

presence associated with teaching and learning innovation.

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commitment to improvement in the new organization in ways that will be explored in more

detail in Chapter 7.

What is better understood now is that coaching is a cornerstone in the ‘psychological contract’

(Leach, 2010: 341) between employer and employee, and in the developing architecture of a

learning organization in which staff feel safe, valued and incentivized enough to willingly

engage in self-transforming communities of practice. Through merger, the network’s role in

mitigating threats to team and organizational cohesion has become more explicit. The

challenge of this research has been to make ‘measurable’ this crucial but invisible aspect of the

TLCs’ work.

2.2 Post-merger context A change of government in 2010, prior to merger, heralded the demise of LSIS. Training and

accreditation for SLCs (renamed Teaching and Learning Coaches to reflect the increasingly

cross-College and generic nature of their role) was no longer available through this channel. The

IfL’s own descent into a voiceless, voluntary organization representing a fraction of its potential

membership was assisted by lecturing unions, who actively discouraged affiliation. This did not

foresee the consequences for staff entitlement to CPD at local levels, I believe, nor anticipate

what this would mean in the context of the Lingfield report (BIS, 2012) and subsequent

deregulation of ITT.

Both ITT and CPD are now at the discretion of individual organisations: training provision was

reduced with immediate effect in the College (too expensive to run, lack of demand, no longer

a requirement - although decisions have since been revisited). The PDC was dismantled and

coordination of staff development activity returned to an ill-equipped HR, with quality

assurance and improvement elements sitting schizophrenically in a significantly expanded

Quality department. Other primary indicators of the value the organization had placed on CPD

and, by inference, its staff (timetabled training time and a free, annual College course for

personal and/ or professional development, for example) did not survive the merge.

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The psychological contract was under strain: repetitive restructure, higher degrees of

unionization on some sites and the constant threat of cuts have contributed to an atmosphere

of insecurity, mistrust and misconception in which the coaching network has continued to do its

work.

***

Research into the effects of merger in the FE sector notes that cultural clash was observed in

every instance, irrespective of merger type or size of the organisation. The length of time

needed for ‘merger completion’ is estimated at about three to ten years (DfES, 2003: 20). This

‘drag effect’ is complicated by the substantial problems presented by multi-site working and, in

the case study College, by the presence, already, of more than one culture in the merged

partner as a result of a previous ‘take-over’. Cultural difference invariably undermines the

effectiveness of a merger; managers and staff need to be brought together quickly to develop

values, cultural understanding and common ways of working (LSN, 2010: 23).

Harmonisation of the coaching network across sites was therefore an important signifier; an

opportunity for the creation of a centralized team with a common focus on teaching and

learning, low on the list of manager priorities at that stage.

For the transitional months, site-based teams (patchily represented) met to discuss their work

and identify commonalities. Formal interviews for a 2-year post with three remitted hours

managed by Quality were conducted for the start of academic year 12/13. A clear and unifying

job description was in place; all sites were equally represented and subject area coverage was

almost complete. 22 TLCs underwent personal mastery training in the ‘Seven Habits of Highly

Effective People’ (Covey, 2004) from which a mission statement was co-developed.

The ‘change agency’ remit was explicit and a challenge to the new team, some of whom were

dealing with feelings of resistance and destabilisation themselves: the College had changed -

there was tangible division and suspicion about who had ‘taken over’ whom; systems and

people were unfamiliar. Changes occurring at a national level were confused with ground-level

turbulence, wrongly attributed to new leadership. Some of the wiser messages coming out of

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Ofsted, the newly formed Education and Training Foundation (ETF) and, indeed, a well-intended

Quality Department, were misinterpreted or just not heard.

The Common Inspection Framework (CIF 2012, Ofsted b) had been redrafted in the same year,

with new and important emphases on the e-learning, equality and diversity, stretch and

challenge and employability agendas. These informed College priorities, conveyed and

monitored through Quality lesson observation systems. A subsequent redrafting in 2015

(Ofsted, 2015c) retains the focus on higher order skills development, with greater emphasis on

the whole or ‘resilient’ learner i.e. the knowledge, skills and attitudes acquired through the

totality of the learning experience. This overlays well with the new Professional Standards for

Teachers and Trainers (ETF, 2014, appendix B) - less about competencies than its LLUK (2006)

predecessor and far more aspirational in the exhortation to teachers to research and reflect, to

tend to the development of their own knowledge, skills, values and attributes in relation to

their practice. This is a useful framework for thinking about the coaches’ work and will be

revisited in Chapter 4.

It is fair to note, in both documents, a more considered definition of ‘learning’ and what that

needs to look like in the complex, knowledge economy we are preparing students for. In the

simply stated standards for practitioners, there is scope for the construction of deeper and

more autonomous professional identities. However, this agency is being returned to a

workforce that has been robbed of motivation, and to educational institutions that have had to

be reminded of their focus on ‘teaching and learning’, even as the pressure to produce

competitive outcomes on reduced funds and resources increases. A timely reminder of the

wider purpose and skill of a teacher’s work has been overshadowed, and is at odds with, more

pressing survival concerns.

***

The headline figures for coaching effectiveness in the three years since merger remain broadly

positive. Formal coaching assignments have increased; the number of sessions graded 3

(requiring improvement) and 4 (inadequate) have decreased. Grade progression after coaching

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intervention is significant,3 and staff are sustaining improvement over two and three lesson

observation cycles, which College key performance indicators (KPIs) do not measure. The ‘good

or better’ grade profile overall has plateaued and is declining, however.

The snapshot below tells us that coaches are successfully supporting individuals to raise

performance levels from low starting points; they - and the systems in which they are operating

- are less successful at inspiring ‘outstanding’ practice.

Table 2 tracks support and progress after coaching intervention over three years since merger: 12/13 13/14 14/15 # Sessions graded 3 or 4 in total: 65 60 52 # Formal coaching allocations: 9 45 44 Grade 4 progression rate on re-observation after coaching

intervention:

5/6 (83%) 8/12 (67%)

4/4 (100%)

ALL progression rate by one or two grades after formal coaching

intervention:

n/a (only teachers whose sessions had been graded ‘inadequate’ were assigned a coach).

18 (78%) 21 (72%)

‘Good or better’ grade profile overall 83% 87% 85% Ascertaining and ‘remedying’ quality has been the focus of the formative years post-merger.

The College has operated a universal, graded lesson observation scheme to ‘get the measure’ of

the new organization. Although supplemented by more expansive approaches, these have been

overshadowed by the formal scheme, with consequences for organizational messaging and

morale; and staff morale - as much as quality assurance and financial controls - determine

organisational success (DfES, 2003: 19).

A grade profile that may be realistic but that is not improving indicates ‘stuckness’ as we enter

15/16. The answer may lie, as Fielding (1997, 23) suggests, in the human spirit.

3 Not all formal introductions to a coach are taken up; progression rates do not factor this in. The majority of teachers who took up the opportunity to work with a TLC progressed by one or two grades. The figures of 78% and 72% more accurately represent those individuals who engaged with the service, and those who did not.

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***

To achieve the organisation’s stated aim of ‘teachers who are innovative, reflective

practitioners; who are open to feedback and work collaboratively with meaning and purpose’

and ‘students, whatever their background and past, who are autonomous, have self-belief, are

aspiring and successful’, quality assurance systems must allow for greater risk-taking (Curzon-

Hobson, 2003, in Govers, 2009:150). They should align in brave and genuine ways with the

values to which they aspire.

Graded monitoring procedures would appear to be working against a culture of continuous

improvement; they are certainly not reflecting one. For some staff, well-articulated vision and a

sizeable investment in the teaching and learning coaching service are incongruent with what

they experience as a restrictive reality in the new College.

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Chapter 3: Growth, Transformation and Complexity

‘Perhaps when we rediscover organisations as living systems, we will also rediscover what it actually means to us as human beings to work together for a purpose that really matters.’ (Senge, 2006: 271)

‘It is questionable whether (teachers) can keep pace with a changing world unless they have a significant degree of autonomy.’ (Hoban, 2002:27)

Teachers in the sector have for too long worked in an anti-intellectual climate characterized by

universal, top-down imposition of technical standards. They have become disconnected from

issues of ‘commitment, emotion, values and ethical action’ (Kincheloe, 2003: 7). Unions must

defend a ‘put-upon’ view of the teacher, not without foundation but bonded to negative

reactivity and learned helplessness: if we have to tick boxes, tell us which boxes to tick. New

ideas, looser prescription, collaborative working models and even peer observation, to begin

with, were met with reflex suspicion in the transitional period after merger.

Commissioned by the University and College Union of lecturers (UCU), O’Leary’s (2012b) report

on the restrictive effects of grading was overdue, but risks shallow interpretation: replacing the

grade with a form of words or other signifier, for example, will not help to change the mindset

or the practice of teachers who have plateaued, fatigued or who have simply yet to learn.

Audit-driven cultures based on Fordian assumptions that the only model available for

constructing institutions is a bureaucratic and hierarchical one (Kincheloe, 2003: 15) are deeply

ingrained in FE. Teaching has been decontextualized and deskilled (Weil, 2001, in Kincheloe

2003: 15), undermining teachers’ efforts to promote critical and creative thinking skills in

learners and, more pertinent to this discussion, to think in self-directed and empowered ways

themselves.

Returning judgement, agency and confidence to practitioners will mean more complex and

differentiated approaches, and may require a leap of faith. A coaching architecture can support

the move away from audit towards formative and transformative models of teacher

22

development-through-observation, but will only do it well if there is wide recognition and

employment of coaching principles throughout the organisation.

A culture of continuous improvement requires a coherent framework: systems that speak to

one another and with one voice, ‘a compelling vision to strive for’ (Grayling, 2009: 12), a

fundamental transformation of management style and mature responses from staff and their

representatives.

3.1 Approaches to teacher learning Conventional models that view change as a linear, 'one-step' event are too simplistic and do not

effectively equip teachers to navigate 'an increasingly post-industrial, postmodern world,

characterised by accelerating change, intense compression of time and space, cultural diversity,

technological complexity, national insecurity and scientific uncertainty' (Hargreaves, 1994 in

Hoban, 2002: 2).

Teacher learning in mechanistic models involves the accumulation of new knowledge or

strategies to add to an existing repertoire. There are strengths to this approach: workshops, for

example, are a convenient, economical way to present information to large numbers in limited

time and can provide opportunities for interaction with colleagues from other areas. If the

content is relevant, and if it resonates with teacher's existing beliefs (Fullan, 1982: 52) it may be

internalised. However, transmission models (Kennedy, 2005) are criticised as over-reliant on

teachers’ desire for change, on the skill of the ‘expert’ and perceived value of the knowledge

being imparted. They assume static contexts for the transfer of ideas, and rarely assist teachers

to reconceptualise teaching and learning. Mechanistic paradigms ignore the dynamic

interactions of ‘shifting and particular contexts’ (Hoban, 2002, 15) in a complex world.

***

Research in the 1980s looked at rare examples of successful staff development programmes and

concluded that the process of teacher learning is developmental. The main factor influencing

teacher change is observable evidence of positive impact for learners (Hoban, 2002: 12). Only

when teachers perceive their work as a relationship with students will they be intrinsically

23

motivated to review their methodologies.

Prior to the 1980s, failures were invariably attributed to the lack of motivation, effort or

attitudes of teachers. Joyce and Showers contributed the idea that ‘changes in the school

organization and in training design could solve implementation problems’ (1996 b: 12). Their

work, situated in the second wave of the school reform movement calling for the empowerment

of teachers ‘restrained by institutional bureaucracy’ (Maeroff, 1988 in Ceroni and Garman,

1994: 143), returned coaching - in particular, the idea of collaborative ‘peer coaching’ - to the

educational context.

In their research, they distinguished between initial acquisition of a skill and its transfer to a

teacher’s regular repertoire. They found that teachers who had a coaching relationship in which

aspects of planning and teaching were shared and reflected upon were more likely to practice

new techniques frequently and retain them for appropriate use over time (Joyce and Showers,

1983 a: 22).

The data was powerful, and applies equally to the learning of teachers and their students:

• 5% of learners will transfer a new skill into their practice as a result of theory.

• 10% will transfer a new skill into their practice as a result of theory and demonstration.

• 20% will transfer a new skill into their practice as a result of theory and demonstration,

and practice within the training.

• 25% will transfer a new skill into their practice as a result of theory and demonstration,

and practice within the training, and feedback.

• 90% will transfer a new skill into their practice as a result of theory and demonstration,

and practice within the training, feedback and coaching.

Coaching forms have subsequently proliferated in education: technical coaching, team coaching

and peer clinical supervision are similar to the original model in that they focus on acquiring and

transferring new practices and innovations in curriculum and instruction (Kent et al, in Joyce and

Showers, 1996: 3). Collegial coaching and cognitive coaching aim to improve or refine existing

practices or patterns of thinking; challenge coaching focuses on a specific problem that may be

24

larger than the context of the classroom e.g. grade levels, attendance, punctuality that may

need to be solved at the level of the department or organization (Becker, n.d: 6). Knight’s (2007)

instructional coaching model, focusing on teacher expertise and student results, will be looked

at more closely in the following chapter. None is concerned with teacher evaluation; all bar

team teaching rely on verbal feedback as the primary vehicle for improvement.

In Joyce and Showers’ own refined model of peer coaching, the emphasis on feedback has been

removed. In that it is evaluative or perceived as evaluative, it undermines collaborative activity,

they believe. They have moved from an advice model to one approximating ‘lesson study’4 in

which ‘teachers learn from one another whilst planning instruction, developing support

materials, watching one another work with students, and thinking together about the impact of

their behaviour on their students’ learning’ (1996 b, 4).

***

What ought to be simple and intuitive - working and ‘thinking together’ - is made more

complex, however, by the radical change required in staff relationships and in the workplace to

make collaboration possible.

Kincheloe strongly advocates for an institutional culture in which teachers are viewed as

learners – ‘not as functionaries who follow top-down orders without question’ (2003: 18).

Teachers are seen as researchers and knowledge workers who reflect on their professional

needs and current understandings through think tanks, learning communities, coaching and

professional networks. ‘Scholar teachers’ understand, will challenge and will transform their

practice - for the benefit of learners, and in an environment that values and empowers their

expertise.

4 A model of professional development in which a group of teachers collaboratively plan, deliver, observe and discuss lessons with a particular pedagogical focus, often related to ‘difficult’ aspects of the subject or focused on the learning of particular groups of students. The process was developed in Japan, cited in Sir Michael Barber’s report ‘How the world’s best school systems come out on top’ (2007) and was more recently strongly promoted by the Department for Education in ‘Improving subject pedagogy through Lesson Study: handbook for leading teachers in mathematics and English’ (2009). The result of Lesson Study is a shared view of how to improve and personalize teaching based on actual practice.

25

3.2 Approaches to organizational learning

Commentators agree that successful staff development is self-guided, discretionary and

intellectually challenging; that it is a process shared with other people and ‘embedded in the

life and structures of an entire organisation’ (Hargreaves in Hoban, 2002: 1).

Learning is social, and there are multiple contributory factors. Hoban goes further than Fullan’s

multi-faceted model of the 1980s to say it is not just the factors or parts that need to be in

place but ‘a coherent relationship between them is essential for the factors to interrelate as a

support system for educational change' (2002: 20).

In a complexity model, organisations and classrooms are viewed as dynamic, complex systems

that can be influenced and managed, but not controlled. Change is a non-linear process

affected by mind-set rather than formulae (Hoban, 2002: 2) and so, importantly, the values and

purposes held by teachers, change facilitators and managers need to be congruent.

***

Collegial practices that are instituted without building a professional culture that fosters

genuine and open exchange are likely to result in processes of collaboration ‘that appear to be

contrived and their effects subverted’, warn Grimmett and Crehan (2003: 58) on the pitfalls of

organizationally-induced initiatives when values and norms are not aligned.

Perceptions of ‘contrivance’ have consequences for teams, exemplified in the findings and

discussed more fully in Chapter 6. For now, it is simply noted that in the ‘loose’ departmental

structure of the College, in its multiple cultures, some teams evidence more profoundly the

norms of individualism, reticence and scepticism found in the ‘typical’ teaching cultures

Grimmett and Crehan describe.

If organizational messages are mixed, and/or if the values underlying an initiative do not align

with the culture into which it is trying to embed, it will feel ‘administratively-imposed’ and

experience fight-back. By contrast, strong teams demonstrating organizational affiliation

(Erikson, 1968 in Baum, 1991: 131), will rise to the challenge of growing their work identities.

26

***

A complexity view, complemented by the systems thinking approaches that evolved in the

1990s, is not for the fainthearted. ‘Systems thinking requires mature teams capable of inquiring

into complex, conflictual issues’ (Senge, 2006: 220) - and wise leadership, tolerant of ambiguity

and unpredictability. This does not imply chaos; complex systems carry information within

them that is self-organising and adaptive, demonstrating characteristics of 'sensitive

dependence' 'resonance' and ‘correlation’ (Marion, 1999 in Hoban: 24). In the ‘learning

organisation’ that such ideas underpin, alienation and compliance are intruders; cause and

effect, and their instrumental measures, are exposed as blunt, simplistic tools.

For Senge, the team rather than the individual, is the key learning unit. High performing

individuals cannot guarantee high performance at organisational level, ‘whereas an assembly of

high performing teams almost certainly can’ (Grayling, 2009: 10). ‘Team alignment’ (Senge,

2006: 217) can be claimed when a group of people function as a whole, synergistically, with

common direction and purpose. The aligned team thinks insightfully about complex issues,

innovates, coordinates action and fosters the learning of other teams. They mirror the features

of high performance organisations in which communication, participative decision-making,

collaborative learning and, above all, trust is prevalent (CIPD, 2009).

Of leaders and managers, this requires self-awareness; understanding the ‘interconnectedness

of emotional, physical and intellectual effort’ (Casey, 1993: 5). Casey describes this as ‘holistic

management’ - a social process that has learning and relationships at its heart. He asks

incisively of organizational management - but the same question must be gently put to teaching

staff - how can you nurture learning if you are not open to learning yourself?

***

Joyce and Showers’ (2002 c: 103) identification of teacher ‘growth states’ can be usefully

applied to our thinking about teams, and was used in the survey design to ascertain both

individual and team states of growth, or alignment. The four learning orientations are:

27

Team Alignm

ent

Growth State

Reticent consumers: reluctant to interact positively with the environment, will actively avoid training, will be angry about being there and deprecate the content.

Passive consumers: amiable but unenterprising, will conform, attend, participate but do little with the content. Active consumers: on the alert for growth opportunities; will take advantage of them but less likely to create opportunities where none exist. Gourmet omnivores: mature practitioners who successfully scan and exploit their environment: initiate, influence and are proactive; knowledgeable about the range of options; discriminating.

TLCs ought to be, and mostly are, ‘gourmet omnivores’, working in teams in various states of

growth, or alignment, across the College. Parachuting a coach into a team with low levels of

alignment can provoke resistance and lead to the inadvertent creation of new hierarchies that

work against genuine empowerment (Ceroni and Garman, 1994: 157). Similarly, a reticent

manager may feel deeply threatened by an omnivorous coach, or team, and create obstacles to

collaborative learning and engagement. Coaching effects are frequently determined by the

culture, not the coach (Killion, 2009:24). Manager self-confidence, their own learning

orientation and team relationships are powerful determinants of culture and of coaching

effectiveness - real and perceived - as we shall see.

***

If organisations, and the teams within them, are complex, living systems (Critchley and Casey,

1989 in Casey, 1993: 89), then they have a propensity to grow, learn and also to get ‘stuck’.

They are not naturally resistant to change but they do ‘react athletically to perceived threat’

(Casey, 1993: 89).

For coaching to truly support transformative purpose, removing fear (of change, failure, loss of

control) is a first step that quality assurance and improvement systems need to take

synchronously, banishing all talk of deficit in favour of actual dialogue. A coherent theoretical

framework for a professional learning system would combine the following elements (Hoban,

2002, 68):

28

• A shared conception of teaching as an art or profession.

• A real purpose for learning.

• Opportunities for reflection and communal discourse.

• Research and experiment in action; a variety of knowledge inputs.

• A long-term time-frame.

• Student feedback.

This more complex, relational agenda is a natural home for coaching and for reinterpreted

observation processes and purposes - away from ‘command and control’ (CIPD, 2009: 8) and

towards more equitable and participative approaches.

Systems’ thinking asserts the primacy of collective action and group intelligence. We are

‘individuals-in-related-action’ (Hoban, 2002: 35), and those actions create our reality. This

would imply that organizational problems - and solutions - lie in our own strategies and policies;

in the quality of our relationships and sophistication of our thinking, rather than in forces

outside our control (Senge, 2006: 220).

2308

29

Chapter 4: Coaching Practicalities and Vocational Fit

‘The best vocational education learning is broadly hands-on, practical, experiential, real-world as well as, and often at the same time as, something which involves feedback, questioning, application and reflection and, when required, theoretical models and explanations.’ (Lucas, Spencer and Claxton, 2012:9)

‘I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.’ (Socrates, 400 BC)

‘There is some difference of opinion as to the appropriate role of expert knowledge in coaching.’ (Stober and Grant, 2006 in Caviglioni, 2014: 4)

Socrates was the first coach, and Mentor the friend of Odysseus to whom was entrusted the

education of Telemachus: ‘Tell him everything you know’. In a nutshell, the extent to which

answers are given or arrived at is what distinguishes coaching from mentoring (Whitmore,

2001:11).

***

In addition to workshop delivery, design and implementation of area action plans and support

for centrally coordinated projects such as themed Learning Walks5, TLCs provide individual

coaching across departments, either by referral after a low lesson observation grade or through

voluntary approach. No clear pattern emerged from the data as to what works best - in-area or

out-of-area partnering - but current ‘formal allocations’ were criticized as a bad start to

coaching arrangements. At all stages of the coaching journey, negative staff perceptions are

often informed by ‘being told’.

I took the opportunity presented by this research to ascertain features of the private coaching

relationship as defined by coaches themselves and as understood by staff in the organization.

Before looking at the findings and their focus on coaching impact in more detail, it is useful to

identify the type and spread of activity across the network and, in this chapter, to ask and

answer questions about the extent to which their work with individuals is ‘therapeutic’ or 5 Learning Walks are team- and theme-based developmental observations that are increasingly peer-led. Done well, the TLC stimulates discussion on the theme prior to the Walks, the team engages in peer observation within and sometimes across teams, followed up by best practice sharing and collaborative action planning on areas identified for development.

30

instructional i.e. whether coaching focuses on inner (psychological) or outer (skills) factors of

development.

4.1 Coaching inner or outer?

There are arguments against Whitmore’s pervasive GROW model with its focus on psychology,

relationship and generic problem-solving in favour of more sports orientated approaches that

focus on teaching as a skill.

Knight’s (2007) instructional coaching model, designed especially for schools and Colleges,

revolves around coaches who are expert practitioners, who model, instruct and give feedback

on research-based methods. Results, measured in terms of student learning, are paramount;

‘the emphasis is on a deep understanding of teaching techniques, not a shallow emphasis on

relationships alone’ (Caviglioni, 2013: 4).

Note, however, the reaction of Teacher A (interview at appendix C) to a ‘show and tell’

approach: ‘… as a teacher, I kind of don’t want to be told to change my teaching or do things a

different way, I want to arrive at that myself, which is learning isn’t it? I think that’s the whole

point of coaching. The better coaches did that, the not so good coaches I felt had an agenda to

change you, to mould you how they wanted.’

Although Teacher A brought a sophisticated understanding of coaching in the organization, s/he

was sensitive to assumptions being made ‘about skills not being there’, to any hint of hierarchy

or remedy. A loss of confidence and lack of trust interfered with Teacher A’s experience of

skills’ based modelling. S/he needed support after a poor observation grade, not ‘stretch’;

attention to how s/he was feeling, not what could be better at that stage.

Such sensitivities permeate the work of coaching in the organization. It is symptomatic of the

conflict between quality assurance (knock people down) and improvement (build them up

again) systems in the College and, wider than that, the problematizing way in which the sector

tends to think about itself. Teacher A, like much of FE, was in no frame of mind to reassess or

take on board new practices. Reassurance was needed, attention to the inner state - but this is

31

slow and naïve, according to Caviglioni, ‘in the face of Ofsted’s demand for rapid improvement’

(2014: 1).

Teacher A highlights an important context for understanding coaching perceptions in the

College, and offers reasons to proceed cautiously down the path of instruction in unsafe

professional environments.

Whilst rejecting any notion of the remedial, the alternative for Teacher A did not lie in challenge

and development but in self-remedy, and some self-justification. Skills instruction was not an

expectation of the coaching relationship. It was viewed critically when tried, described as an

‘odd’ form of CPD and a cheap replacement for transmissive types, which is where Teacher A

felt instruction belonged. Referral was a barrier, although minimized in the response. The way

forward for this teacher – and for the organization in their view - was an egalitarian and

expansive recognition that: ‘Every teacher is a coach.’

***

‘Therapeutic’ expectations - stemming from the nature of referral, but also from need - do

hinder an exciting focus on skills’ sharing and development that would likely flow from more

confident professionalism in less judgmental working environments. However, in the ‘nascent’

stages (Clutterbeck, 2014) of a coaching culture that has yet to be integrated with other

systems, the TLCs’ work lies very often in repair, rebuild and re-orientation, with 61% dealing

‘often’ or ‘always’ with stress and 72% with negativity in one-to-ones.

To the extent that instructional methods may interfere with equitable relationships between

coach and coachee, they should only be used with permission. But an outward focus on skills

should be an enjoyable, legitimate and preferred aim of coaching once trust and a shared

understanding has been established.

***

For the purposes of this dissertation, coaching and counselling are seen as two ends of a

continuum, with mentoring an advice-giving mid-point. The distinction between coaching -

32

supportive, non-leading, empowering the coachee to make their own decisions - and more

goal-directed and advisory mentoring is less of a sticking point if coaching is seen as part of a

spectrum of approaches that coaches use (Collett, 2012: 12). Where counselling is concerned

with the subject’s feelings, coaching - whether inner or outer - is ultimately performance-

orientated and aims to help the coachee ‘develop existing skills, learn new techniques and gain

new perspectives on his or her practice’ (Collett, 2012:13).

In practice, TLCs have recourse to all styles depending on what is required of them; the terms

coaching and mentoring are sometimes interchangeably used, and counselling certainly an

element of some TLCs’ work.

4.2 A private view of the coaching relationship

The reduced emphasis on the coach as subject-specific expert is reflected in the titular change

and in the more generic job description and cross-College nature of the role. Mapping to the

knowledge, skills, values and attributes strands of the Professional Standards (ETF, 2014,

appendix B), then, one would expect to see skills and values’ working reflecting the TLCs’

increased out-of-area commitments, a focus on pedagogy and on teachers’ orientations and

beliefs in the merging culture.

Table 3 shows the extent to which TLCs consider content in coaching relationships to be knowledge, skills or values-focused, compared to manager perceptions:

Never Rarely Sometimes Often Always Total Often and Always TLCs CMs TLCs CMs TLCs CMs TLCs CMs TLCs CMs Coaches (18) Managers (18)

Knowledge 0 1 3 2 7 6 3 6 5 3 44% 44% Skills 0 0 1 3 3 4 7 6 7 5 78% 61%

Values & Attributes 0 0 1 3 7 6 6 7 4 2 56% 50% TLC and Curriculum Manager (CM) survey responses showed similar perceptions of spread and

order of significance: skills, followed by values and then a knowledge focus informing the

content of coaching relationships. For a minority of TLCs who ‘rarely’ address any of the

33

strands, questions of competence, confidence and managerial support arise, addressed in

Chapter 6.

More detailed questions around individual working for TLCs were arranged along a continuum

of performance enhancement, through mentoring activity towards the counselling end of what

can be understood as ‘coaching’ in educational environments - a stretch-support spectrum,

included at appendix M.

On average, across the network and the spectrum, stretch activity makes up 50% of coaching

content, and support activity 56%. Collaborative problem-solving, the fulcrum between types, is

the most common feature of the coaches’ work.

The majority of TLCs engage in ‘light’ activity such as planning advice, signposting and

information sharing. A consistent 61% (11/18) report stretch or heavier elements: performance

conversations, experiment, feedback and goal-setting featuring ‘often’ or ‘always’ in their work

with staff. Reciprocal peer observation is not being sufficiently exploited as a tool, either for

instruction or dialogue, with five TLCs ‘never’ or ‘rarely’ engaging in what should be a common

feature of coaching arrangements.

***

From the point of view of staff, in order of prominence, coaches in the organization are seen as

providers of information and resources (73%). They offer opportunities for teaching and

learning discussion unrelated to observation (62%) - this is an important indicator of a move

away from remedial perceptions of coaching. 57% of staff respondents were prompted by

annual observation to access the service for advice and support, however. The links are too

strong, and account for much of the stress and negativity that TLCs deal with.

4.3 Coaching heavy and coaching light Coaching requires competence, confidence and even courage. Killion (2009) draws the useful

distinction between ‘heavy’ and ‘light’ coaching referred to above. Collaboration, advice-giving,

resource and information sharing - so-called ‘light’ elements - dominate the experience of TLCs,

and staff perceptions of their work.

34

Coaching heavy ‘demands that coaches shift their drivers from being liked and appreciated to

making a difference’ (Killion, 2009:23). A coach who does not venture far out of their comfort

zone will have limited impact in their work.

Like Knight, Killion’s model focuses on ‘outer’ factors: planning for powerful instruction, high

expectations and frequent formative assessments of teacher performance in the delivery of a

rigorous curriculum. In a team that is benefiting from heavy coaching, all feel responsible for

student success; the community engages in ‘ongoing, ruthless analysis of data’ and ‘continuous

cycles of improvement that allow its members to measure results in a matter of weeks, not

months or years’ (Killion, 2009:28). High performing, collaborative teams learn, plan, reflect and

analyse together. They constantly revise their teaching practices based on student learning

results.

Inner factors are not ignored, but they are trained on work identities - a precursor to

organizational affiliation in Erikson’s (1968) developmental framework - to ‘facilitate teachers’

exploration of who they are as teachers as much or more than what they do as teachers’

(Killion, 2009: 27). A coach working at deep levels will uncover assumptions, have difficult

conversations and engage teachers in dialogue about beliefs and goals. Such challenge need not

lead to fear or anxiety; rather, it should stimulate ‘a heightened sense of professionalism,

excitement, increased efficacy and satisfaction with teaching’ (Killion, 2009:24).

***

There is a time and place for heavy and light, inner and outer approaches, depending on the

team or individual’s starting point and the wider context in which the coach is operating. As

TLCs work to gain the buy-in of staff and of some managers, the ‘light’ role of facilitator,

resource provider, champion and motivator are necessary steps they need to take. An

organizational framework that understands and integrates coaching into both its business and

its learning and development processes (CIPD, 2009) is a necessary pre-condition for the

transformational culture that would embrace a heavy style - and make of every teacher a

coach.

35

What is clear for Killion in her long experience of coaching in educational institutions is that

‘when coaches choose roles and allocate their time and services to those that have the greatest

potential for impacting teaching and student learning, the value of coaching and coaches will be

unquestioned, even when budgets are tight and other competing priorities emerge’ (2009:28).

4.4 VET appropriateness

With origins in Socratic apprenticeship that long precede its popularization in the worlds of

therapy, sport and business, the return of coaching to an educational context, and a VET

context in particular, is natural and corrective. Knowing what we know about adult learning i.e.

the importance of setting realistic and relevant learning goals, establishing clear links between

development and practice, offering opportunities to apply learning in real situations and

ensuring a degree of control, Speck (1996: 37) wonders at the failure of post-16 provision to

apply these principles to the design of CPD, or even in more assured and committed ways to

teaching on our courses.

Coaching is a ‘socio-cultural and cognitive apprenticeship-like technique’ (Jossberger, 2010 in

Jameson, 2012: 51) that recognizes and builds on prior knowledge. In the manner of all

apprenticeship, learning is socially situated and closely based on experience. The learner

engages in their own learning; performance and success is achieved ‘through a series of in-

depth interactions’ (Jameson, 2012: 57) and challenge towards greater self-reflection and

changes in behaviour.

In VET situations, where advanced work practices are ‘tacit’ and cannot always be directly

taught, coaching methodologies are highly relevant and fit with the work of Dewey (1933,

1938/1963) and Schon (1983, 87, 91) and the emphasis on experience and reflection for

effective learning. Schon developed descriptions for the complex ways in which practitioners

could think about and improve their work practices, particularly of those ‘expert’ practices that

are difficult to identify and describe (in Jameson, 2012:58).

***

36

The National Framework for Mentoring and Coaching (CUREE, 2005) summarises four attributes

for effective coaching that position it firmly in complex, adaptive approaches to learning, and to

adult and work-based learning in particular:

1. Coaching is relational, involving individualized feedback and interim assessments of

performance in an atmosphere of trust. CUREE interviews showed that this was

particularly challenging where coachees were afraid of criticism or resistant to change,

when they were unused to reflecting on their practice or when they believed

themselves to be more expert than the coach. This study revealed similar barriers for

teachers.

2. Coaching is dynamic, responsive to individual progress over time and to changing work

demands.

3. Coaching is co-productive – coach and coachee actively engage in creating the learning

experience. ‘The explicit recognition that both … bring different existing skills,

experience and understanding to the coaching process appears to be central’ (Collett,

2012:13).

4. Coaching is outcome-focused, less concerned with underlying theory than it is with

building on existing practice expressly to enhance performance.

Whilst there is some confusion over what makes coaching distinctive, commentators agree on

fluidity on a ‘continuum of directiveness’ (Collett, 2012: 11). Coaching is likely to be more skills

based at lower levels and more strategic and focused on principles at higher levels, but

directive intervention is used at all levels of performance on a companionable journey towards

confidence and mastery. There is dovetailing between this, Hoban’s professional learning

system and Hattie’s four features of high quality practical learning (2009, in Lucas, Spencer and

Claxton, 2012: 60). Commentators are broadly agreed on the value of coaching for a specific

kind of learning that combines the development of ‘dispositions and strategies’ (Hattie, 2009).

***

For VET practitioners, the challenge is that of continuing to develop work-related learning,

careers and identities, of developing ‘mastery’ that is not simply accomplished through the

37

accumulation of experience but that needs to be coached in. There is very useful transfer from

the experience of being coached to teaching in vocationally orientated programmes that should

be underlined, and a pedagogical argument for much wider organizational implementation

involving all teachers in the development of coaching skills to inform their repertoires.

For organisations, growing this expertise is a continuing process that understands the

importance of having ‘a capacity to support the learning of others as well as the capacity to

change the way things are done’ (Brown, 2012: 96).

***

We are returned to the question of organizational culture and the degree to which TLCs have

been effective in contributing to an atmosphere in which staff take advantage of learning

opportunities, feel safe to ask questions, seek support, give and receive feedback, try things out

and learn from their mistakes. To what extent has the coaching network helped to cohere a

culture of learning at the College and is it indicative in the organization of a move towards a

more expansive approach to thinking about teacher development and expertise?

2703

38

Chapter 5: Research Methodology

5.1: Overview

This is a micro-substantive study that examines coaching activity within a single organization,

exploring the views of key stakeholders within it. It employs mixed methods to lend greater

validity and reliability to the findings. A cross-sectional view of the organization provided by

quantitative (questionnaire) and qualitative (semi-structured and unstructured interview)

methods of inquiry augments secondary analysis of diachronic data collected by the College for

administrative purposes over a six-year period straddling merger. Trends thus identified were

presented in Chapter 2, along with the implementation context.

Triangulation, both of methods as described and of data, aimed to get a ‘true fix’ (Silverman,

2010, 277) on the situation in the case study College. The research is aimed at our own

improvement but is situated more widely within a sector that is suffering from low morale,

impacting in real ways on standards across its provision.

In my role as a Quality manager in the organization, and coordinator of the coaching network, I

sought to ascertain a fuller picture of practical coaching activity and staff perceptions of its

effectiveness - on teaching and learning improvement, naturally, but beyond the measures that

we already have. Staff attitudes, their own and team orientations towards learning and

development, are important indicators of the organisation’s potential to grow and succeed. The

transformative work that coaches do in this respect is under-acknowledged and under-

estimated in my view, and the study is an attempt to quantify these ‘intangibles’ and to better

understand how to maximize their effects more consciously in the local context of merger and a

broader context of educational change.

Before looking in more detail at survey design, some of the study’s key features are presented

here:

39

Questionnaire respondents:

Role Count % of stratum % of whole population Teachers: 85 44% 34%

Coaches: 18 90% 7%

Managers: 21 57% 8%

The total number of responses represents the views of 50% of all staff involved in curriculum

delivery at the College. The questionnaires generated useful portraits of coach and manager

‘types’, referred to in the discussion as ‘Dissatisfied Manager A’ and ‘Satisfied Manager B’;

‘Disconnected Coach A’ and ‘Connected Coach B’.

Interviews were conducted with an additional five members of staff working at different levels

in the organization, representing all sites and several merger configurations:

Interview participants:

Role Count Code Site representation Appendices

Teacher 1 Teacher A Former campus 1; now on campus 3 C Coach 1 Coach C Former campus 1; remains on campus 1 D Middle Manager

2 Manager C Former campus 1; remains on campus 1 (but originated campus 2)

E

Middle Manager

Manager D Former campus 2; manages across campuses 1/2/3

F

Senior Manager

1 Senior Manager A Former campus 3; directs across 1/2/3 G

5.2 Participant selection and ethical considerations

Questionnaires were chosen for the ease of access they provided to large numbers in a short

time-frame. The views of all representatives in each stratum were invited, removing the

possibility of bias in the selection and increasing the probability of the full range of views being

represented for generalization in the analysis (Singleton, Straits & Straits, 1993: 143).

The general staff survey (appendix H) was conducted as part of normal College feedback

processes, distributed via e-mail by the Quality department to teaching teams across sites.

40

Staff had a week in which to respond; rate of response was comparable to previous years. The

questionnaire was anonymous to encourage fuller, more candid answers to some probing

questions; departmental affiliation was requested but not required (and insufficiently supplied

for this to feature in the analysis).

Further questionnaires were designed for an additional two groups for the purposes of this

study: a quite lengthy reflective questionnaire went out to TLCs (appendix I). Cross-referencing

with the managers’ questionnaire (appendix J), was made possible by some identical questions

appearing in both forms.

Manager and TLC questionnaires were also anonymous and voluntary. The wider research

intent was made explicit in an information sheet and covering e-mail that went out along with

the link to the survey6; they had a ten-day window in which to respond. For all respondents, the

additional value of providing feedback to inform service changes was a given and necessary

relevance in the typically time-poor and operationally-driven context of FE. Survey placement

coincided with a natural point of reflection at the end of a two-year cycle of coaching activity.

***

Selection for the interviews prioritised middle and senior managers working in high-leverage

positions in the College. A total of three interviews were conducted with managers based on all

three campuses: one has directorial, cross-College responsibilities.

Availability ultimately determined choice of interviewee, but site representation was borne in

mind. TLCs in their areas ranged in effectiveness from my viewpoint as coaching coordinator,

but this was not a factor in selection. I checked managers’ diaries and approached in person or

by telephone to gain consent prior to sending out formal e-mail requests along with the

information sheet containing detail about the study and its compliance with the UK Data

Protection Act 1998.

6 Link to Google Documents

41

Coach C self-identified and offered to participate in the research without my asking. Although

questionnaire response rates for this group were high at 90%, this is useful testimony from a

high-performing coach working with the full support of area-management but in a department

known for a strong site-based ‘exclusive’ identity and low participation in cross-College activity.

Teacher selection was trickier. College statistics suggest strong causality between engagement

with the coaching service and progress in observation afterwards i.e. those who do not take up

the opportunity are invariably those who fail to raise their grades. In my quality role, I am

aware of the different reactions staff have to offers of support and would have liked to have

interviewed many more teachers, particularly those whom I knew to have been very resistant

to the offer of coaching support.

The purposive sampling (Singleton, Straits and Straits, 1993: 143) this required proved

controversial on my first attempt, and an e-mail request to someone who fitted the bill was

predictably turned down. My request to Teacher A was more personable and was followed-up

with an information e-mail and formal consent procedures. Teacher A had worked as a TLC until

a disappointing lesson observation grade led to the decision not to re-apply for the role. This

member of staff offers an unusual dual perspective as a former coach and reluctant and upset,

to begin with, coachee.

***

Gender has been disguised to protect confidentiality, and all departmental and place references

redacted in the transcripts.

5.3 The questionnaire

Other than optional site information, demographics were not elicited in the TLC questionnaire.

These are known elements for the network: TLCs represent all bar 4 departments in the College

and they, and their responses, are evenly spread across sites. The current cohort began their

two-year contract in September 2013. Experience ranges from new to the role, with no bespoke

qualification, to very well qualified (Level 5 certification) with over five years’ experience to

draw on. All have accessed in-service training and one-one role support. Coaching experience is

42

not a variable that could be taken into account in individual responses, an omission that was

weighed up against the need to safeguard anonymity. However, questions designed to

determine levels of proactivity were included to test the following hypothesis:

1. That a TLC’s level of engagement with the wider network, as well as their perceptions of

‘supportedness’, would determine self-report on overall effectiveness in both the

cultural and performance improvement dimensions of their work.

***

For managers, too, site information was optional; all sites were represented in the responses,

with six respondents stating cross-site working. The management team is drawn in fairly equal

measure from staffing at both former Colleges. There are some new members on the team. All

bar two respondents had designated area TLCs, and both felt they would benefit from having

one. Personal orientation was probed through an early question about the extent to which

coaching principles and practice informed their own management styles - to provide context for

the answers, and to more fully explore a second hypotheses related to the research questions:

2. That managers who espoused coaching principles and practice themselves were more

likely to report high TLC effectiveness, and to preside over proactive teams. These teams

would be moving towards ‘collaborative interdependence’ (Grimmett and Crehan, 2003)

in which beliefs, values and norms are aligned.

Questionnaire design:

All three questionnaires sought to gauge attitudes through a mix of closed and open-ended

questions. Closed questions entailed straightforward selection from a predetermined set of

answers: if there was any hint of a hierarchy of choices, for example in the ‘states of growth’

drop-down list to ascertain proactivity, an automatic shuffle function was activated.

Likert scaling was used where frequency or agreement scales were appropriate. I aimed for

consistency in labelling, and presented no more than five choices along each scale for

manageability, with neutrality a mid-point on any agreement scale. Acquiescence bias is

43

acknowledged. By their nature, ‘all Likert items are subject to the tendency to agree with

declarative statements’ (Johns, 2010: 10) i.e. they are inherently persuasive/leading. To reduce

bias, stem statements were kept as clear and unambiguous as possible and response scales

began at the negative end to counter agreement tendencies.

The alternative suggested by Schuman and Presser (1986, in Johns, 2010:5) requires choice,

instead, of a limited number of variables. As contributory factors may be multiple, and opinions

rarely black or white, I decided against a static approach in favour of scaling, where easy

assignation of numerical codes to fuller response sets provided convenient indications of

overall perceptions of the issue (Hannan, 2007: 1).

It was important, therefore, to introduce open-ended questions on key research themes to

allow for freer, more qualitative comment. Respondents were asked to draw on their own

experience to give concrete examples where they could of coaching effects on staff attitudes,

team cohesiveness and organizational coherence, always linked to the core work of teaching

and learning. They had space, also, to comment on factors perceived to be working for or

against progress in these areas and to suggest service enhancements.

It felt opportune to map coaching activity against the Professional Standards and its three core

strands of knowledge, skills and values and attributes. This overlaying was explicit in both the

managers’ and coaches’ surveys. The results, presented in Chapter 3, provides context for the

findings. I had anticipated thematising commentary by strand but the categories proved too

broad and not helpful to the analysis. Nonetheless, it is a useful framework for thinking about

coaching, and has already informed job descriptions and interview schemes for the role.

5.4 The interview

Semi-structured and unstructured interviews were conducted to augment the data collected via

questionnaire and secondary data analysis, both to triangulate the research and for their

potential to generate richer commentary, enabling more detailed exploration of respondents’

perceptions and experience (Banfield, 2004 in Newton 2010: 1).

44

On their own, given their limited number and the convenience sampling methods (Singleton,

Strait and Strait, 1993: 160) that determined their selection, the supplementary interviews do

not provide sufficient basis for generalization. They do, however, lend contour to the main

research, were an opportunity to test ideas and to be presented with new ones. They are not

centre-stage in this dissertation on account of limited space, but commentary is included in the

overall findings where they challenge or illuminate emerging themes.

Manager interviews (appendix K) were semi-structured i.e broad questions had been planned in

advance that allowed both for a degree of comparability and for spontaneous response freed

from the limitations of ready-made response categories (Dornyei, 2007: 136). Emerging or

unanticipated themes were explored as they arose. There were problems with operational

discussion sometimes interfering with the research intent, which I initially tried to separate but

this disrupted the natural flow of conversation. Subsequent interviews were conducted on the

basis that the interviewee speak freely and that any identifying information be redacted or

removed in the final transcript.

Trust was established via clarity of academic purpose and credentials of the research. That the

study was of practical value and interest to the organisation encouraged rather than inhibited

contributions, I believe, and helped to calibrate the delicate balance between interviewee

control over the course of the interview and the privileged access I was gaining to their views

(Nunan 1992: 150).

In all arrangements, and particularly in the interviews with lecturing and coaching staff, power

differentials needed careful management. Where my role as a quality manager could

potentially have inhibited responses, interviews were held off-site and were unstructured to

establish a level of informality, build rapport, allow ample space for personal narratives and so

reduce as far as possible the ‘social desirability effect’ that can contaminate verbal reporting

measures (Singleton, Strait and Strait, 1993: 116).

***

45

As an internal researcher, I had views about variability of attitude and practice on different sites

and the reasons for this, so was careful in the questionnaire format not to address issues of

merger or union affiliation, for example, directly - to avoid leading respondents to my own

conclusions, and to reduce any potential for giving life to barriers that it is our responsibility

and intent to break down.

These omissions, and site and subject area optionality in the questionnaires, were expensive in

research terms, but compensated for in the freedom it gave respondents to answer questions

within their own parameters. Freer commentary opportunities in the questionnaires and fuller

expression in interview formats gave space enough to participants to mention these as barriers

to progress had they emerged as issues for them.

***

In considering the overarching question of whether and how the coaching network has

contributed to a cohering culture of learning in the organization, the multiple indicators of

‘culture’ broadly coalesced and were probed under the following headings:

• Coaching impact on professional attitudes.

• Coaching contributions to team cohesion.

• Promotion of collaboration more widely across the College.

• Extent to which organizational values were seen to be aligned with teaching and

learning.

Quantitative data was collated according to this structure - included at appendix A - for cross-

referencing with the findings and future benchmarking. This ‘Learning Landscape’ brings

together the range of factors explored in the study, RAG-rated to highlight peaks and troughs

and to provide a quick visual indication of views and activity across the three strata.

Extremes and discrepancies that were quickly identifiable in this way were examined in more

detail and collated for direct comparison. Within individual responses, hypotheses 1 and 2

(p.36) structured deeper investigation and framed the manager and TLC portraits that will

shortly be discussed.

46

The large amount of qualitative data generated by questionnaire commentary was given

precedence over the interviews in this write-up, coded by identifying key ideas emerging in the

responses to determine any clustering (Brett Davies, 2007: 193). Interview content was

analysed similarly and cross-referenced against emerging themes. Where responses added

depth and context, they are included in the overall findings. Where new themes or ideas

emerged, they are included in the discussion that follows in Chapter 7.

2514

47

Chapter 6: Main findings

Patterns emerged across the responses that are useful to note at this early stage in the analysis:

Manager respondents: 38% rarely utilize coaching strategies in their job-role, if at all; a greater

percentage, 62%, draw on coaching skills and understanding ‘often’ or ‘always’ in their

management of staff. Manager views on coaching impact reflect this divide.

TLC respondents: Depressed responses represent the consistent views of three coaches (17%).

All three needed more support from their managers.

Teacher respondents: There was greater variability in the staff questionnaire. Overall, an

83/17% agreement-disagreement split, with consistently negative responses representing the

views of 9%.

6.1 College ‘Learning Landscape’ Striking features to emerge from the questionnaire data are:

1. High teacher self-report on active or proactive growth orientations (91%) and take-up of

traditional training types, but report on self-directed behaviours is low. Outside of

centrally-coordinated Learning Walks, only 18% engage in peer observation activity. A

revealingly low 55% of teachers ‘actively seek feedback on their practice’; 62% engage in

dialogue about teaching and learning unprompted by lesson observation. Similarly, 93%

say they experiment with new techniques, but only 46% have accessed evidence-based

methods widely available on the HoW27 database.

2. Teachers were far more positive than their managers about organizational incentives

and impact: 86% agreeing that the organization cares about high quality teaching and

learning; 84% approving of the coaching initiative and a majority (89%) feeling that

learners benefited from the promotion of high standards.

7 Train Visual’s on-line collation of evidence-based teaching techniques

48

Teacher perceptions are tabled below. The agreement/disagreement split mirrors that between

staff who were aware of a named and dedicated TLC (80%), and those who were ‘unsure’

(20%). With a few exceptions, this correlated, also, with the 21% who did not feel well informed

of expectations and how to meet them in their roles. The figures and the supporting

commentary indicate that TLCs have a communication, confidence-building and ‘bracing’

function in the eyes of staff.

Table 4 shows staff perceptions of the learning culture:

Strongly disagree

Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree

Total Agree and Strongly Agree

The organisation cares about high quality teaching and learning

1.2% 8.2% 4.7% 56.5% 29.4% 86%

I feel well informed of expectations and how to meet them in my role

2.4% 7.1% 11.8% 55.3% 23.5% 79%

Area management promotes good practice in teaching and learning

4.7% 1.2% 18.8% 52.9% 22.4% 75%

Teaching and learning improvement is high up on my team’s agenda

0% 3.5% 14.1% 52.9% 29.4% 82%

My team works well and supportively together

1.2% 3.5% 10.6% 40% 44% 85%

The coaching service is a good initiative 0% 1.2% 15.3% 55.3% 28.2% 84% Our learners benefit from high quality teaching and learning

1.2% 2.4% 7.1% 49.4% 40% 89%

There is a critical mass of positively-orientated staff who recognize and appreciate a College

focus on improvement. The lowest score, for area-management contributions, lends weight to

clear indicators in the TLC and managers’ surveys of variability in area approaches; there were

very low scores - 17% and 24% respectively - for teaching and learning content in meetings, but

notable in Manager C’s interview (appendix E) that the ‘agendas’ interfering with teaching and

learning discussion were named as English and maths, e-learning and even ‘teaching and

learning’. Messaging around national and organizational initiatives are failing to ‘resonate’ -

relevance and linkage to student needs require greater clarity to mitigate the ‘done-to’ reflex.

3. Low cross-College engagement comes through across the strata. Only 33% of teachers

had accessed the interactive teaching and learning discussion forum; manager self-

report acknowledged that much more could be done to promote this, the coaching

service and the vehicles TLCs rely on for profile in teams and across the College. Only

49

67% of managers ensure their coaches attend termly network meetings. TLCs’

experience of cross-College working is consequently under-developed: a very low 38%

have collaborated with coaches based on other sites; only 72% feel part of a ‘coaching

team’; 22% do not feel that they have had an impact on cross-College collaboration.

4. The majority of TLCs (94%) are very positive about their role, although they deal with

high levels of stress and negativity in one-one relationships that inhibit the ‘stretch’

components of their work.

5. There are significant TLC/ manager discrepancies in report on overall impact. Although

the majority of managers (94%) agreed that TLC support for individual teachers had

been successful, only 63% felt that this had translated into teaching and learning

improvement for the team overall, or had impacted on professional attitudes. Their

responses to the four key questions are tabled below:

Table 5 compares TLC and manager perceptions of coaching impact on the learning culture:

Strongly

Disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly

Agree

Total Agree and

Strongly Agree

The coaching initiative has

had a positive impact on

teaching and learning

improvement in my team.

11.1% 38.9% 50% 89% Coaches

10.5% 15.8% 10.5% 21.1% 42.1% 63% Managers

The coaching initiative has

had a positive impact on

professional attitudes in my

team

11.1% 38.9% 50% 89% Coaches

5.3% 15.8% 15.8% 36.8% 26.3% 63% Managers

The coaching initiative has

had a positive impact on team

cohesion

5.6% 55.6% 38.9% 94% Coaches

10.5% 5.3% 26.3% 31.6% 26.3% 58% Managers

The coaching initiative has

had a positive impact on

cross-College collaboration.

22.2% 27.8% 50% 78% Coaches

15.8% 0% 31.6% 26.3% 26.3% 53% Managers

50

Coaches are more positive about, and arguably more in touch with, progress indicators in the

staffroom. It is very likely that hard-won gains for them in ‘soft’ territory might appear small

and less impactful overall from a manager’s standpoint. They might also be more invested in

positive report on their impact, however. To understand the discrepancy in report, it is useful to

bear in mind factors which may influence a coach or manager’s views on impact, tested in the

design of the questionnaires:

For TLCs, perceived support for the role (hypothesis 1): The majority of TLCs ‘agree’ or ‘strongly

agree’ with the impact statements, with strong disagreement expressed by three coaches who

also selected the ‘need more support from my manager’ option later on in the questionnaire.

For managers, own style and orientation (hypothesis 2): Manager self-report on the extent to

which coaching principles and practice informed their own management style revealed the

following:

• 1 (5%) rarely employing coaching principles in management style.

• 7 (33%) sometimes employing coaching principles in management style.

• 8 (38%) often employing coaching principles in management style.

• 5 (24%) always employing coaching principles in management style.

The neutral and negative responses outlined in Table 5 above represent the views of eight

managers, all of whom consider coaching to ‘rarely’ or only ‘sometimes’ inform their people

management styles.

‘Strongly disagree’ and ‘disagree’ responses represent the consistent views of three managers,

who are notable also for the fact that they:

• Meet ‘rarely’ or ‘sometimes’ with the TLC.

• Report low teaching and learning content in team meetings (up to 20%), or ‘rarely meet’

with their teams.

Across the stratum, strong association consistently emerged between manager orientation,

perceptions of team orientation and coaching effectiveness. Deeper investigation into

51

responses at opposite ends of the satisfaction scale lends further weight to hypothesis 2, starkly

illustrated by the cases of Managers A and B.

6.2 A tale of two managers

Dissatisfied Manager A

Manager A, with low orientation or regard for coaching, sees the very vehicles of collaborative

and transformative practice as barriers to teaching and learning improvement: ‘Teachers

increasingly find the 'coaching' and 'experiments' that they are compelled to take part in to be

an extra burden on them rather than a developmental process. There is a lot of negativity about

the various impressive sounding - but generally flimsy - projects (supported experiments,

learning walks etc.) being offered. So some would say the main barrier is the time wasted on

these activities’. Staff in Manager A’s team feel ‘compelled’ to participate in what are

organizationally incentivized but actually bottom-up projects, with no sanction for non-

participation.

The barriers to achieving a positive and cohesive culture are expressed as outside of the

manager’s control in the next quote. S/he lines up against the organization, with

Management style

•Coaching principles and practice 'rarely' inform people management. •Meets with team and TLCs 'rarely'. No examples of support or promotion supplied.•Aware of and accesses a limited range of coaching activity.•Low engagement with the service and wider improvement initiatives.

Perception of team growth state

•Team perceived to be resistant to training and development activity.

Perception of coaching impact

•Low impact of coaching on teaching and learning improvement.•No impact of coaching on team cohesion and collaboration.

52

‘underachieving’ students and alongside a pessimistic team whose view that research-led and

collaborative activity is burdensome and a waste of time is apparently unchallenged:

‘Too many major restructures in too short a time has led to serious insecurity in staff. In a

college like ours, dealing with learners from low socio-economic bases, large numbers of whom

have underachieved at school, staff need reassurance that their jobs are not constantly under

threat. If that was done, there would be an instant improvement in college culture. At

management level, a very corporate culture is being promoted that does not always play to the

strengths of people in post already. There is a lot of pessimism around and a lack of buy-in to

the vision, but few will say so out loud for fear of being marked out and pushed out.’

Manager A articulates a crisis in morale, a problem of alignment and shares the disaffection and

insecurity of staff. Indicators of a non- and even anti-coaching stance are a lack of reflection on

or ownership of the circumstances described throughout the response. Problems and solutions

lie outside the manager’s perceived sphere of influence; features of the sub-culture over which

s/he presides are generalized - s/he is the spokesperson for a majority view that did not in fact

materialize through the research.

Manager A’s voice is an assertive one, however, and does speak for an ambivalent 38% of

managers and 9% of staff respondents who are uninspired by coaching and development

initiatives and feel restricted in their work by organizational practices. A similarly strong view is

expressed succinctly by another manager:

CM: ‘Blame culture. Distrust between areas within the college. Inconsistent messages.

Undemocratic decision making.’

***

‘Dissatisfied Manager A’ brings Grimmett and Crehan’s (2003) model for understanding learning

in a ‘typical’ culture to life, highlighting an important question around organizational

implementation of ‘impressive sounding, but generally flimsy projects’.

I will return to this point to contextualize the findings shortly but, first, compare the

circumstances and report of Manager B in the same organization:

53

Satisfied Manager B

The barriers to improved teaching and learning named by Manager B are practical and very

specific: a reduction in course hours impacting on the amount of paperwork and preparation

time needed. Obstacles to fuller and more collaborative team engagement in teaching and

learning activity need to be inferred from the solutions Manager B proffers: ‘I would like to

encourage more learning walks in which lecturers are keen to participate e.g. embedding

maths, ICT & English and e-learning. The allocation of the golden hour8 will allow staff to

engage in more training.’ There is recognition of the organizational vehicles available to the

manager to exploit.

Where Manager A would like to abolish the TLCs, Manager B would like more of them: ‘I love

working with the TLCs. It makes such a difference’. S/he manages across two sites and is

insightful, also, about cultural differentials. At one site, where the TLC is based, ‘Tutors do

embrace training and implement new ideas in their classes - this has been happening for a

while. At (the other site) there was a real resistance to new ideas - particularly e-Learning at the

8 In response to staff feedback, ring-fenced training time – the Golden Hour (or two) – will be instated in 15/16.

Management style

•Coaching principles and practice 'always' informs people management. •Meets 'often' with TLCs; up to 60% of team meeting time focuses on teaching and learning.•Aware of a wide range of coaching activity.•High engagement with the service and wider support for CPD

Perception of team growth state

•Team perceived to be proactive in accessing training and development activity.

Perception of coaching impact

•High impact of coaching on teaching and learning improvement.•High impact of coaching on team cohesion and collaboration.

54

beginning of the year but I am really happy that this has now changed.’ Crucially, Manager B is a

‘big advocate’ of coaching, reinforces and celebrates the work of the TLCs and expresses

gratitude throughout the response for cohering work ‘on the other site’, and for maintaining a

focus on teaching and learning: ‘In all honesty, my TLC has been more proactive than myself in

arranging meetings with me for the area action plan and contributing T&L items to the agenda.’

6.3 Contrived or genuine collegiality?

Collegial projects, when superimposed on ‘typical’ belief structures, will feel flimsy – or

contrived i.e. the practices may have been replaced, but not the beliefs and values that support

ingrained individualistic, resistant or avoidant norms.

Experimentation, in this light, puts teachers in a ‘value conflict between their job security and

their professional comfort’. On the one hand, ‘the grafting of collaboration by administrative

requirement makes them fear for their job security if they do not comply; on the other hand,

their own professional comfort zones are violated when they do comply’ (Grimmett and

Crehan, 2003: 64). Teachers experiencing this dissonance will find ways to appear to

collaborate or experiment, whilst guarding their comfort zones and ‘protecting’ the stability of

the classroom against what they regard as organizational interference.

The outcomes for ‘Dissatisfied Manager A’s’ team - described as ‘very unwilling to engage,

mostly critical and dismissive; they only do it if insisted upon’ - will be teacher resistance,

deception and the illusion, or pain, of compliance

For ‘Satisfied Manager B’, whose team is generally ‘keen if encouraged and if made easy for

them’, and who describes a culture approaching collaborative interdependence on the site

where the TLC is based, the outcomes are more likely to be genuine and impactful: ‘teacher

development, the reflective transformation of classroom practice, and the enhancement of

pupil learning’ (Grimmett and Crehan, 2003: 80).

***

55

The deep-rooted beliefs which support reticent norms are hard to shift and easily replicated

without persistent challenge. The coaching initiative - promoting greater openness,

experimentation and providing opportunities to talk about classroom practice - can help break

down isolationist barriers to promote genuine collegiality but not in a vacuum, and not without

manager advocacy.

What Manager A and his/her team view as ‘compulsory’, for example, is experienced as ‘buzz’

in expansive and receptive team cultures. Success indicators and examples of impact for one

coach describe this eloquently: ‘constant interaction and immediate sharing of new resources

and ideas between staff in the department (without TLC intervention) - staff sharing their critical

evaluation of something they tried in the lessons - colleagues (also from other departments)

asking to peer observe my classes and discuss methods of delivery.’

Learning has gone beyond interactions with the coach in this description of a well-aligned team.

The TLC recognizes increasing redundancy as evidence of impact and learning osmosis within

and beyond the department

6.4 A tale of two coaches

Hypothesis 1 surmised that a TLC’s own professional orientation would align with perceptions

of supportedness and reward, and probably determine report on perceived levels of impact on

team cohesion and development.

The TLC questionnaire tested the extent to which coaches felt ‘networked’ and part of a cross-

College learning community, cross-referencing this with perceptions of reward.

The majority (17/18) found the role ‘often’ or ‘always’ rewarding. Only one respondent (Coach

A) found the role rewarding ‘sometimes’ and this did indeed correlate with untypically low

levels of interaction with the network.

56

Table 6 summarises the responses of ‘disconnected’ Coach A against ‘connected’ Coach B to questions assessing levels of network engagement by the TLC and their accompanying perceptions of support, reward and impact:

I find the TLC role rew

arding

I collaborate w

ith coaches based on other sites

I feel part of a coaching team

I draw on the

coaching netw

ork for support and advice

I share ideas and resources w

ith the coaching netw

ork

I feel supported in m

y work by

area m

anagement

Impact on

T&L

improvem

ent

Impact on

professional attitudes

Impact on

team

cohesion

‘Disconnected’ Coach A

Sometimes Never Sometimes Rarely Sometimes Need more support

Neutral Agree Agree

‘Connected’ Coach B

Always Often Always Often Often Well supported

Strongly agree

Agree Agree

Coach A and Coach B report similar working circumstances: both support ‘active consumerist’

teams who take advantage of training and development opportunities when made easy for

them, but who are unlikely to generate growth opportunities for themselves. They both deal

‘often’ with staff negativity in their coaching relationships.

Coach A, however, describes no or low interaction with the wider coaching network and

reflects that s/he has ‘not felt at ease with other TLCs’. Significantly, Coach A has also found

manager relationships difficult in terms of expectations and clarity of purpose around the role,

and requires more support. S/he is ambivalent about the impact of coaching on teaching and

learning improvement; is more positive about impact on team attitudes and cohesion, citing

recent, centrally coordinated Learning Walks as a successful example of collaboration in the

area.

Coach A describes problematic one-to-one relationships on account of his/her own lack of

confidence (‘confidence’ is referred to repeatedly) and points to a ‘nervousness’ and

‘defensiveness’ in coachees. Reciprocal peer observation is not a feature of his/her work and

there is worryingly low content identified against the Professional Standards: knowledge

(rarely), skills (sometimes) and values and attributes (sometimes).

Surface coaching features are articulated in the response: an emphasis on being accepted and

appreciated by the team ahead of an improvement focus. ‘To build relationships and establish

57

their credibility, coaches may compromise their influence by engaging in tasks that have limited

potential for impact on teaching and learning’ (Killion, 2009:23). So being an ‘ear’ and a

resource provider are low-risk strategies for building trust and countering resistance with an

initially suspicious team.

When asked to name his/her most valuable resources in the role, Coach A answers: ‘Listening

skills, having relevant resources and guidance to signpost to. 'Tackling' negative attitudes - ie

helping people make the shift to more pro-active attitudes. Creating an appetite for

collaboration.’ The difficulty of ‘tackling’ staff negativity is hinted at through the TLC’s

disassociating punctuation; this aspect of his/her work is immediately reinterpreted as ‘helping

people’.

The self-report of ‘Disconnected Coach A’ upholds the commonsense view that coaching effects

are likely to flow from the growth orientation and skill of the individual coach, but the lack of

confidence expressed by this TLC, the sense of reduced impact, are further confirmation of the

centrality of managerial support for the process. The gains in a transitioning team have not

been maximized, let down by the quality of relationship between the coach and his/her

manager, and by the TLC’s own failure to draw on the strength and resource of the wider

network.

***

Compare this to the response of Coach B who feels well supported by management and reports

high engagement with the coaching network: ‘There is a sense of ‘togetherness’ within the

TLCs.’ Challenges have also been around defensive mindsets, but Coach B is positive about the

impact of his/her work on teaching and learning improvement as well as on the culture of the

team, citing tangible shifts towards ‘more positive working relationships’ over time, concrete

improvements in grade outcomes on re-observation and greater willingness on the part of team

members to ask for help.

For this coach, content in the one-one relationship is spread evenly and positively across the

three strands: knowledge (always); skills (always) and values and attributes (often). Reciprocal

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peer observation is a central feature of their work, with ‘stretch’ elements ‘often’ or ‘always’

underpinning the coaching relationship.

For ‘Connected Coach B’, also dealing with initial staff resistance, being liked and approachable

is important, but the job of improving teaching and learning for the benefit of both staff and

students is a more clearly articulated feature of his/her work: ‘I have offered many training

sessions on how to push both students and staff from good to outstanding. I have offered

support on a wide range of teaching and learning strategies and feel I have helped countless

members of staff in the process.’ High proactivity lines up with high support and tangibility of

reward for this TLC.

*** That the coaching role has enhanced TLCs’ own knowledge, practice and beliefs was universally

expressed through the survey. Coaches felt more aware, better informed, more connected,

more confident and more reflective about their work as coaches and as teaching practitioners.

TLC: ‘As a TLC I have met and formed relationships with colleagues from every department and

each campus of the college. A much stronger sense of being part of the whole college.’

The research is concerned with wider effects, however, beyond the network itself as a

community of learning. Has the coaching initiative contributed to a more positive organizational

culture, and is teaching and learning improving as a result?

Teacher satisfaction with the service is at 84%; manager satisfaction lower at 60%. The grade

profile, as measured by College lesson observation systems, has plateaued and is sitting at 85%

‘good or better’. The similarity between teacher satisfaction and performance has not gone

unnoticed by the researcher, or by TLCs in their one-one work with staff. 3400

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Chapter 7: Discussion on Emerging Themes

With regard to TLCs’ assessment of the positive impact they had had on staff, their own

measures divided into two main categories: grade progression when it occurred in lesson

observations, and marked changes in attitude.

Reasons given for ‘unproductive’ relationships fell largely into the same categories - grading

effects on teacher confidence, and negative mind-sets. ‘Time’ was an additional factor,

repeated often across all the strata and addressed in section 7.2.

7.1 Perceptions and experience of positive impact on the learning culture

Examples of coaching effectiveness provided by all participants overlapped and fell into four

main categories:

1. Training and development:

a. Transmissive, for example successful promotion of evidence-based teaching

techniques through team meetings and departmental workshops. Cross-College

training on priority themes such as equality and diversity, higher-order thinking

skills, English and maths and e-learning were all specifically mentioned.

b. Transformative, for example themed Learning Walks, Supported Experiments (action

research), peer observation and coaching. Take-up of these training types is lower,

as we have seen, but generally highly praised.

2. Teaching and learning outputs:

Improved delivery evidenced by better grades, improved session planning, greater

standardization in course documentation and assessment. Implementation and

achievement of targets detailed in area action plans arising from previous years’ data. It

is notable that staff themselves do not make links between these activities and benefits

for learners.

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3. Sharing - of information, resources and good practice: Teacher: ‘The TLC has taken time out of her day to sit down with me and show me various

eLearning applications, which was very helpful. She's also advised me concerning suitable

eBooks. For the whole department, she's made a list of eBook sites, collated useful ideas, good

practice and examples of resources regarding eLearning and disseminated this.’

CM: ‘Peer-led, informal learning, fostering a more democratic approach. Advice is seen as 'real'

rather than top down.’

TLC: ‘A more "open door" policy where staff are more likely to share ideas, resources and

opinions.’

4. Professional support and encouragement: formal for new or ‘underperforming’

teachers and informal within teams. Staff responses emphasized the many ways in

which TLCs ‘support’, ‘motivate’, ‘advise’, ‘encourage’ and ‘anchor’ staff.

Teacher: ‘I feel that the TLC's are all approachable and are at all sites and very happy to help.

It’s nice to feel that support. I know that I can approach the TLCs anytime.’

5. Reconceptualisation/ re-orientation:

The first quote included for this category hints at the TLC’s own dissonance: an allegiance to

Quality’s coaching network and to what is described as a ‘passive’ team who have found the

changes since merger difficult: ‘Because I am a TLC I have felt compelled to challenge negative

conversations about colleagues/college at times and highlighted initiatives and training and I

believe that this has set a more positive mood at times. I've also often pointed to resources and

ideas on the HUB which has made people aware of the work and contribution of others and that

fosters more respect and engagement among the team.’

Senior Manager A (interview at appendix G) emphasizes the transforming effects of coaching on

the coach themselves, and the ripple effects for teams: ‘You can definitely see the impact where

someone like him/her, who people perceive to someone like them, is delivering that message.’

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For the majority of TLCs, success often lies in the private realm of changing beliefs and

attitudes. This next quote is very specific about the importance of mind-set to enhanced

performance:

TLC: ‘One coachee had given up on aiming higher in lesson observations due to past incidents

and limiting their beliefs based on negativity from others. Helping her to overcome this and aim

higher got her a grade 1. Another coachee used her belief to push forward and openly take and

use advice, observing others, seeking help from others and using it to adapt her approach,

delivery and impact on a group. She jumped from a grade 4 to a grade 2. It's not about jumping

grades really, it's about acknowledging that one can move forward by believing in themselves

and putting aside the negativity in order to move on, whether that be one step or a leap

forward. It's the change in attitude, belief and acceptance that makes the real difference and

has the most impact in every aspect and for everyone concerned.’

This gets to the heart of the matter - the less measurable underpinnings of improved teacher

performance. Observation grades have been used to track, and have arguably incentivized,

changes in the examples above but there is wide evidence to suggest that they are responsible

for setting up fearful and limiting beliefs in the first place.

7.2 Barriers to a learning culture

In order of frequency: time, mind-set, grading of lesson observations, merger and learner

attitudes were mentioned as obstacles to coherence and teaching and learning improvement:

1. The problem of time:

Overwhelmingly, staff at all levels of the organization cite ‘time’ as the main barrier to raising

standards in the organization. A breakdown of concerns across the three strata is included at

appendix L.

Within this category, I have included considerations that manifest as ‘time’ issues, but that are

really about strategic planning, communication and managed change.

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Whilst time concerns and their effects are clearly real and widely experienced, it should also be

noted that ‘time’ can service complex and convenient avoidance strategies - the biggest

challenge for this TLC in the role: ‘Staff who constantly say they have not got time or only asking

for support when being observed, and then not applying this to future lessons!’

A dedicated training slot in 15/16 reveals for Coach C (interview at appendix D) deeper issues

for the team with any form of cross-College working that ‘time’ will promote: ‘I don’t know how

it’s going to work, whether it’s like ‘that Staff Development Day’ where they have to interact

with other groups of people. If it’s to build the team, and you have members of the team

helping, I think people are going to want to embrace that, but certain people’s mind-sets think

it’s too wishy-washy, ‘I have to go to [the other campus] and get training for 2 hours with

people I don’t know who don’t know my course.’

2. The problem of grades

Half of all TLCs felt that grade fixation worked against progress and led to ‘them and us’

standpoints, mistrust and a sense of being unfairly judged:

TLC: ‘When a person or people: cannot see the benefits of receiving support from a coach;

doesn't really want to be coached; are referred to a coach due to a low lesson observation

grade; have their mind focused on the negativity of receiving low grades rather than possibilities

and rewards of moving forward’.

The related issue of ‘remedial’ perceptions of coaching was raised at interview by Teacher A

(appendix C): ‘I think there is a perception that if you’re seeing a coach, you’re in trouble, where

it should be different. If you’re going to see a coach you want to improve…’

Coaches, working in the cross-current between stretch and support and often in the wake of a

poor grade, were attuned to its negative effects. The manager voice on this was strident, too,

revealing the stress for them in supervisory roles of defensive staff attitudes to feedback. The

undermining effects of high-stakes observation on teacher practice and organizational

messaging was also noted:

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CM: ‘Having an observation scheme that is linked to a redundancy procedure leads to a

performing seal culture. Needs to be reformed with non-graded observations.’

3. The problem of mind-set There are ‘strong’ and ‘typical’ cultures operating simultaneously across the College, and

individuals within them for whom this is the professional mantra: ‘Don`t get noticed don`t make

waves keep yer `ead down get them through their exams keep class attendance above 90%

never let them go no matter what.’ Survey results do not suggest that the cynicism is

widespread, or even tolerated, but the voice is disruptive.

Most TLCs have come up against the barrier of ‘closed minds’ - an unwillingness to reflect or to

be helped - and staff who are ‘afraid of change’: ‘If the coachee doesn't want the coaching, this

is the biggest problem - it could be they feel 'they are out to get me' or 'I've been doing this for

100 years, it's never been a problem before'. They find it hard to accept that things have

changed and what used to be ok no longer is.’

Coaches make links between an individual’s own ‘defensiveness’ or fear of failure, their not

seeing ‘the value of what the College is aiming to achieve’ and a more general ‘lack of

enthusiasm and belief in the teaching profession.’ For this reason, it is important that TLCs are

able to communicate ‘the bigger picture’ and tackle misconceptions when they arise. For half

the coaching cohort, this is a regular feature of their one-one work with staff; ‘motivating and

inspiring’ staff features in the work of 77%; a similar percentage (73%) are required to deal with

negativity in the relationship flowing often, but not always, from unsatisfactory outcomes in

lesson observation.

Across the responses, resistance to experiment with new technologies and ideas are broader

issues working against cohesion and progress. Managers refer to ‘stuckism’, to ‘old-fashioned

attitudes’ and make explicit reference to the age demographic of staff:

CM: ‘There is greater hope of achieving excellence with those new to teaching; they are more

open and willing to learn; they listen more and strive for improvement/excellence. The older

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ones seem to be getting set in their ways and think they are already there; they say, "We are the

best". The main challenge is being able to reinforce such a positive attitude and self-belief whilst

at the same time shining the light in the direction of excellence in an impelling and motivating

way.’

It was teachers themselves, though, who were most unforgiving of negative attitudes to change

and new developments, naming ‘a lack of care’ and contribution by some colleagues.

***

As ‘mind-set’ or ‘growth state’ is such an important and subjective variable in the

determination of culture, the question put to staff to gauge individual openness to training and

development activity as an indicator of professional attitudes was also put to TLCs and

managers to ascertain perceptions of team mind-set and orientation for triangulation purposes:

Table 7 shows TLC and manager assessment of team growth states, compared to staff self-report on attitudes to training and development:

Survey descriptor Growth State (Joyce and Showers)

TLCs Managers Staff self-report

Very unwilling to engage, mostly critical

and dismissive; only do it if insisted upon.

Reticent Consumers 6% 9% 2%

Engage willingly, but don’t really do

anything with it.

Passive Consumers 11% 10% 7%

Keen if encouraged and if made easy. Active Consumers 50% 83%

62% 81%

64% 91% Proactive, always looking for

opportunities; asks for what’s needed.

Gourmet Omnivores 33% 19% 27%

There is sequencing agreement across the strata; further evidence of a positive picture overall

and organizational potential for realizing it. Despite the qualitative weight given to the

negativity of individuals, the majority of TLCs and managers consider their teams to have active

or proactive orientations. 91% of teachers say they would attend training and development if it

were made structurally easy for them, if they could do it ‘without guilt or clashing

commitments’. An omnivorous 27% find ways to do it anyway.

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A fifth possible category emerged around learner attitudes: namely, a lack of discipline and

commitment to the course, poor language skills, poor attendance and punctuality, concerns

around multiple levels in a class and poor quality exams which students did not value. I include

them here, however, as teacher criticism of learners themselves as barriers to teaching and

learning improvement belonged notably to the negative and disengaged 9%, with very few

exceptions.

4. The problem of merger

Merger surfaced as a practical issue in the teachers’ questionnaire in so far as some

respondents felt that manager presence was not fairly spread across sites; cross-site working

was difficult for staff in this position and one department felt ‘a lack of cohesion’ and isolated

from the rest of the team where the bulk of provision was delivered on another site. The area in

question has no ‘cohering’ coach. For TLCs, merger was not named as an issue, other than that

it was practically difficult to manage staff need and expectation across multiple sites.

For managers, who have had to reapply for their positions and who are working at the coal-face

of organizational development, ‘merger’ featured much more strikingly as an obstacle to

cohesion and positivity:

CM: ‘We still operate as two colleges rather than one merged college - lack of standardised

management approach and thus teams are managed very differently and hence no clarity on

policies and procedures which leads to lack of cohesiveness.’

CM: ‘We need to forget about our past cultures and styles and start thinking as one college.’

CM: ‘A reluctance to change. Still a feeling of two colleges that have "joined" not merged into one.’

Interview responses were more specific about culture clash: a vocalized reluctance in Coach C’s

team to engage with people ‘on the other site’ and, for Senior Manager A (appendix G), a loss

of unity and trust:

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‘We were quite a united staff body, we still had our issues, but our structure was a lot more

flattened which helped a bit. We also felt like we could talk to anyone about anything, whereas

Campus 1 culture was very protocol-driven, very hierarchical, you couldn’t do anything without

having to run it past someone who had to run it past someone else. We also felt there was a

very clear marked divide between any manager and non-manager, as well as union member

and non-union member’.

For Manager C (appendix E), whose provision was relatively unaffected by the 11/12 merger,

the interview was notable for its focus on the specificities of staffing, quality and teaching and

learning - team cohesion and attention to detail one of the benefits of continuity. The TLC’s role

in this manger’s team was most valued for the link it provided to wider thinking and the wider

College.

For Manager D (appendix F) - managing across three sites - staff attitudes and basic logistics

were at the forefront. The TLC in this team provides moral and pedagogical support (to the

manager as well as to staff); his/her cohering function is acknowleged, but s/he appears to be

overly involved in support for managerial responsibilities. The danger of inadvertent creation

of hierarchies through delegation of supervision duties to the TLC (Ceroni and Garman,

1994:155) comes through in Manager D’s description of a physically and culturally fragmented

team.

7.3 Matters arising from the research

1. The psychological and social contract

For reasons that are politic and practical, I have excluded an important culture variable in the

study, but suggest it here as a focus for another. In my work in a highly unionised environment

since merger, and given the unarguable difference in membership numbers and stridency

across campuses, it has become harder to ignore apparent links between strong union

identities and mistrustful attitudes to change, hinted at in the quote from Senior Manager A

above.

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There is unsurprising correlation between union affiliation and resistance to lesson observation

that has led to a productive rethink in the sector. However, there is also a worrying

predictability in the negativity of response to the more expansive alternatives to audit-driven

approaches, ‘time’ often being the reason cited.

Little (1993, 146) raises the issue of union disposition to initiatives at local level, finding ‘no

examples of a more affirmative or proactive involvement in substantive programs of teacher

development’, only some ‘promising exceptions’. To the extent that misconception and

minority views are amplified, and that they may impact on individual and team progress as well

as organizational affiliation, union messaging in the College deserves further exploration in the

study of its culture.

2. To grade or not to grade and if not, what else?

Sector unions have long flagged up the punitive effects of universal grading on staff morale, a

view confirmed by this research. Strong evidence has emerged that grades can work against

teacher improvement (O’Leary, 2012b) and that, even as an auditing tool, they provide limited

information on a teacher’s overall performance or, indeed, on the realities of the learner

experience.

The Learning Walk model, repeatedly referenced in the responses as a good example of high

coaching impact on learning attitudes, provides home-grown evidence of the superiority of

developmental approaches. E-Learning Walks at the close of 14/15 - that took a peer-led,

experimental approach devoid of any judgement - achieved in a week what target setting and

training workshops had failed to achieve in two years: excited participation.

TLC: ‘I was instrumental in encouraging the team and in training them on the theme - it had a

great effect on the team and staff got very excited about it’.

Teacher: ‘Personally, I was very pleased with the outcome as it was not about me. It’s about

learning.’

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In an atmosphere of high challenge and high support, staff worked collaboratively to conduct,

record, observe and reflect upon 185 technology-enhanced learning experiments. ‘Buzz’ was

tangible; outcomes were concrete, celebrated and disseminated.

The question for the organization is why this should remain a supplementary approach rather

than a viable alternative to supervisory observation?

3. Learners in the Learning Landscape

Learners were under-represented in the study and a next step would be to refine and develop

the profile to include their views and outcomes. It was notable that, although the majority of

staff recognize learners as the main beneficiary of teaching and learning incentives, few specific

examples were provided of the impact of coaching on learner progress and development. In

moving the coaching service forward, the links between teacher learning and student learning

in a vocational environment that is tailor-made for coaching techniques need to be much more

explicit.

For TLCs in a maturing service, coaching ‘heavy’ will mean saying no to trivial requests for

support and instead providing ‘high leverage services’ (Killion, 2009: 24) that have the greatest

potential for impact on student learning. Studies (Cordingly, 2007 in Crisp, Raybould and

Holdish, 2012, 41) have found that effective coaching invariably continues through to students.

Learners show evidence of improved performance and skills, collaboration, enhanced

motivation and organization of work. In the words of Teacher A: ‘Because it’s about the

learning, it’s not about the teacher. It should be about the students and have they learnt?’

4. Cause, and the order of cause, and does it matter?

Finally, a frustration in this research has been a limited ability to connect and explore extreme

and interesting views further. Purposive sampling for the supplementary interviews, and

progressive focusing methods (Newton, 2010: 2) should ideally have been employed to drill

more deeply into questionnaire commentary. Given my role in the organization and current

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sensitivities, the convenience approach taken instead was appropriate but did render the

interviews another form of oral survey, albeit offering a more rounded view.

The necessarily anonymous nature of the questionnaires made it impossible to trace line-

management back to coaches and their teams. Beyond strong association between variables

and high probability (Denscombe, 2002:206) - cause, and the order of cause in hypotheses 1

and 2, is hard to establish. However, the quite significant size of the questionnaire sample and

internal consistencies that emerged through triangulation of data and research methods lend

some confidence to the conclusions that follow. 3253

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Chapter 8: Conclusion

CM: ‘Too much focus on strategy and not enough on values. Values drive behaviours.’

CM: ‘Our college vision and values are great but we need to do more in ensuring they underpin our teaching and learning or anything else we do. There should be an equitable measurement of performance based on both the soft and hard issues. A thematic drive to achieving a "positive and cohesive College culture’’ must be made to count, acknowledged more and maybe rewarded.’

This dissertation has focused on the ‘soft’, culturally cohering aspects of coaching work, with

the aim of making it a more explicit and better understood feature of the role. The culture of

the organization should provide ‘a benign environment for collective activity’ (Joyce and

Showers, 1996 b: 5) and, despite a hard look at the barriers and shortfalls, the study makes the

case for coaching, I believe, and for truer organizational alignment with its principles.

The research hopes to contribute to the broadening of measures used to gauge institutional

effectiveness, and to stimulate a faith in them. It has been conducted in the local context of

merger and ‘waiting for Ofsted’, and in the context of a sector-wide rethink on the value and

wisdom of grading teachers at all. The findings reflect this conflict: an organizational instinct for

control and compliance; knowing better, but not yet ready or able to invite the ‘chaos’ - the

growth! the transformation! the autonomy! - that more complex systems require.

***

The unjustifiable amount of time, resource and planning that goes into annual, universal audit

has delivered for the College, for three successive years now, a performance result almost

identical to staff satisfaction levels determined by a few questions in a short survey. The two

are related, as studies before this have shown, but until we learn to see - and tend to -

‘underlying structures rather than events’ (Senge, 2006:65), and build deeper and more

durative ‘ways of seeing’ into quality approaches, what we persist in measuring will probably

remain the same.

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As much as the organizational KPIs presented in Chapter 2, staff satisfaction, their levels of

proactivity and the extent to which they feel the organization cares about the same things they

do are reliable, and richer, indicators of staff quality and the learner experience. It is therefore

the careful and conscious construction of a culture of trust and enablement that deserves the

time, the resource, the planning that has been so damagingly misdirected towards limited and

limiting judgement of teachers in FE.

***

The case study organization has a developing coaching architecture that is appreciated by the

majority of respondents. It has a ‘vision’, is learning the language of expansiveness and offers

genuinely developmental forms of teacher CPD that are increasingly being embraced. All that

cohering and growth potential is undermined, however, by messages of hierarchy, watchfulness

and deficit conveyed through College processes.

Systems communicate and deliver organizational values. Good intent will not translate into

overall good experience for staff or students if:

a) System design does not match its stated rationale. For example, an ungraded,

‘developmental’ observation process that fails to address the real problem of

observation i.e. the power relationships between participants. So-called ‘ungraded’

schemes that continue to apply pressure on individuals in one-off events, or that simply

deliver judgment in a different way, are ‘masked’ systems that fuel mistrust and

confusion.

b) Dual or multiple systems work against one another - to render one or other a

contrivance, or ‘more corporate imposition’ that busy teachers do not need, value or

have time for.

c) The values, however noble, conveyed through the system are not in alignment with

the culture into which it is trying to embed, as in the revealing example provided by

Manager A. Courage, perseverance, manager advocacy and holistic commitment to

building expansive work environments are required. Systems congruency, again, is vital

to underline authenticity and ensure impact.

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There is no doubt that restrictive monitoring inhibits the developmental power of coaching and

teachers’ willingness and ability to own their practice. It also undermines the veracity of

organizational vision and values. Staff at all levels name surveillance effects on mind-set and

morale as an obstacle to the establishment of the culture of openness and risk-taking that

coaching encourages. Union preoccupation with the matter is certain evidence that it is time to

consider WHY we do things, just as much as how.

***

Recommendations, bearing in mind the College’s own ‘growth state’, would be the retention of

a graded system - with transparency around standards, expectations and the purpose of

observation - for teachers on probation and for use in team-based audit where grades are

aggregated and anonymized. I, also, would not ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’

(Sedgemore, 2015: 1) precisely because these assurances would allow the organization to

genuinely ‘let go’ and do things differently.

Outside of recruitment and bi- or tri-annual area audit, I would banish grades and rely on a

well-developed, well-resourced coaching network to uncouple teacher observation entirely

from the realm of judgement, returning it to its rightful place in CPD.

TLCs are well placed to conduct formative, negotiated peer-led observation and to assist

learning and reflection in situ. The use of observation in this way: to circulate messages,

stimulate dialogue and inspire in teachers a belief in their ability to make a difference, seems to

me a better use of everyone’s time. This formative model, still resource-intensive, could

alternate with transformative ‘CAIR’ years in which teachers self-direct collaborative and/or

independent research activity (Eagle, proposal to SMT, 2015). In both alternatives, a structured

focus on student learning and progress, and much greater weight given to their feedback.

***

Whilst disruptive in predictable ways, merger has presented real and valuable opportunities for

acknowledgement and discussion of matters of culture, relationships, values and attitudes that

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can otherwise lie unexamined. It has certainly made more pressing the cultural dimension to

the TLCs’ work, and underlined their contributions.

The support that coaches have provided to middle managers, who bore the brunt and major

impact of immediate restructuring and diversion from normal operations, was acknowledged

by many managers through the research. Without exception, those with a coaching orientation

themselves reported greater and more positive impact of the TLCs on team cohesion,

confidence and willingness to engage and experiment with new ideas and methodologies.

Support and advocacy for the coaches’ work lined up with organizational ‘buy-in’ from this tier.

These managers took a developmental view to expertise; most availed themselves of the wide

range of opportunities on offer and described poised or ‘strong’ team cultures, working

proactively to achieve shared goals.

Likewise, coaches working with a sense of strategic importance, whose role was supported,

understood and actively promoted by their managers, were more confident leaders and were

unanimous in this research in reporting wider, positive impact of their efforts on skills’

development and on staff mind-set and attitudes.

The main blockages for teachers in the study - grade-fixation and ensuing notions of remediality

- are impacting on their willingness to seek feedback and on their self-directedness around

research and learning. The ‘we know best’ attitude described by managers and TLCs, and

coming through in some staff responses, needs careful handling. The sector needs to take

seriously the reactions of older, more experienced staff (the workforce majority) to ‘change’

that is not all reasonable and to galloping technological advancement, in particular. Loss of

one’s bearings and/or control may manifest as stress, denial, arrogance or defensiveness - none

of which are conducive to learning, and all good reasons for ‘benign’ environments and ‘touchy

feely’ methods.

Understanding complexity and, in the face of that, humility - the role this plays in the

development of teacher expertise (Hattie, 2003), should not be underestimated. It applies to all

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those working in educational environments, responsible for the learning and purposeful

fulfillment of others.

***

In summary, the organizational Learning Landscape shows a minority of TLCs experiencing

difficulty and dissonance in their role and a majority of positively predisposed, but not

necessarily proactive, teachers. A third of the management tier lags behind the growth curve.

Personal learning orientations line up with organizational affiliation and perceptions of

coaching value and impact across the strata. Manager disassociation, however, has powerful

implications for team culture and alignment that a lone coach will not counter.

Progress lies with teams, not individuals, and in managers working with their TLCs to enable

and influence a collaborative learning culture in the wider context of a ‘coaching College’.

Organisationally, people-centred systems and approaches - both to the way we learn and train,

and to ‘the way we do business’ (CIPD, 2009: 12) need to be consciously integrated. For

practitioners, linking coaching purpose and impact more closely to student progress and

achievement may help to broaden its reach and relevancy, beyond a current focus on teacher

‘repair’.

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Managers

Teachers

Coaches

Learning Landscape by stratum

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***

The debate between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ coaching approaches is live and not resolved through

this research. In the words of Teacher A: ‘The better coaches know which methods to choose’.

TLCs walk a tightrope between administrative expectation (fast) and developmental realities

(slower); between an instructional focus on skills, and time needed to work at the level of

values, attributes and professional healing. In the absence of safety or stability, coaching – this

paper argues - needs first to cohere before it can properly enhance.

***

Coaching effects are relational and gradual and a likely consequence of strong team cultures:

expansive in their outlook, supported by each other, by their managers and by an

organizational architecture that empowers through enablement and not simply by

authorization (Sears and Marshall, 1990, in Ceroni and Garman, 1994: 142).

This dissertation concedes the gap between where the College is and where it would like to be,

but holds that coaching is indeed ‘emblematic of … a general shift towards a more expansive

approach to developing expertise’ (Brown, 2012: 98). As such, it deserves our full - and

undivided - attention.

1659

TOTAL WORD COUNT: 19,999

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Appendix A

Learning Landscape

Where Green >80; Amber 60-80; Red <60

Individual features Teachers’ have formally or informally accessed the coaching service. 69% Teachers engage in teaching and learning dialogue unrelated to observation. 62% Teachers agree that they are well informed of expectations and how to meet them in their roles. 79% Teachers report active or proactive states of growth. 91% Teachers attend training workshops. 89% Teachers actively seek feedback on their practice. 55% Teachers engage with peer observation (outside of the Learning Walks). 18% Teachers experiment with new techniques. 93% Teachers experiment with evidence-based techniques on the HoW2 database. 46% Managers promote evidence-based techniques on the HoW2 database. 76% Managers promote the coaching service. 76% Coaching principles and practices often or always inform a manager’s style. 62% Managers agree that individual support for staff has been successful. 94% Managers agree that the coaching initiative has had a positive impact on professional attitudes. 63% TLCs agree that the coaching initiative has had a positive impact on professional attitudes. 89% TLCs who do not often deal with stress in coaching relationships. 39% TLCs who do not often deal with negativity in coaching relationships. 28% Stretch content informs the coaching relationship. 50% TLCs find the role often or always rewarding. 94%

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Team features Teachers agree that the team works well and supportively together. 85% Teacher engagement with the coaching service flows naturally from working relationships. 54% Teachers agree that area management promotes good practice in teaching and learning. 75% Teachers agree that teaching and learning improvement is high up on the team agenda. 82% Teachers have participated in peer-led Learning Walks. 77% Managers promote peer-led approach to Learning Walks. 76% Manager report on team state of growth: active and proactive 81% Manager report on teaching and learning content in team meeting (60% and above) 24% Managers meet sometimes or often with their TLCs. 83% Managers have discussed teaching and learning area action plans with their TLCs. 61% Manager report on TLC contributions to team meetings. 72% Manager report on TLC promotion of experiment. 83% Manager report on TLC contributions to resources development. 72% Managers agree that the coaching initiative has had a positive impact on teaching and learning improvement in the team. 63% Managers agree that the coaching initiative has had a positive impact on team cohesion. 58% TLC report on teaching and learning content in team meeting (60% and above). 17% TLC report on active and proactive states of growth. 83% TLCs feel well supported by their managers in their role. 83% TLCs agree that the coaching initiative has had a positive impact on team cohesion. 94% TLCs agree that the coaching initiative has had a positive impact on teaching and learning improvement in the team. 89%

Organisational features Teachers agree that the organization cares about high quality teaching and learning. 86% Teachers agree that the coaching initiative is good. 84%

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Teachers agree that learners benefit from high standards in teaching, learning and assessment. 89% Teachers are aware of a designated TLCs. 80% Teachers access the interactive sharing forum. 33% Managers promote the College interactive sharing forum. 48% Managers are aware of TLC support for staff in other teams. 78% Managers ensure TLCs can attend network meetings. 67% Managers agree that the coaching initiative has had a positive impact on cross-College collaboration. 53% Managers access the teaching and learning training menu. 62% TLCs often or always feel part of a ‘coaching team’. 72% TLCs often or always collaborate with coaches based on other sites. 39% TLCs agree that the coaching initiative has had a positive impact on cross-College collaboration. 78% Support offered to staff whose sessions were graded 3 or 4. 85% Grade progression after coaching intervention = staff take-up. 72% College ‘good or better’ grade profile. 85%

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Appendix B

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Unstructured Interview with Teacher A: Appendix C

Talk me through your teaching & learning journey, you can start wherever you like, you’ve lots of experience from different angles, as a coach and as a coachee …

I think as a coachee, I’d like to say some coaches are better than others and it’s difficult to put your finger on what it is the good coaches have, but it’s quite obvious where the weaker coaches are weak. I think for me that was about trust, I trusted two of the coaches more than the other two that I dealt with it.

What were the symbols of that trust? Was it a personality/ relationship thing?

It could have been personality, but I kind of felt the better coaches let you come up with the issues and let you come up with the solutions. I think as a teacher, I kind of don’t want to be told to change my teaching or do things a different way, I want to arrive at that myself, which is learning isn’t it? I think that’s the whole point of coaching. The better coaches did that, the not so good coaches I felt had an agenda to change you, to mould you how they wanted.

Did you have experience of peer observation from either end, observing or being observed? What was that like? Did it feed into these perceptions you’re describing now?

Both. Definitely, the brilliant TLC that observed me, I just asked him/her to come in unannounced to any of my classes because the trust was there. S/he saw everything I wanted him/her to see without me saying. The feedback from that was really positive and empowering, it gave me my confidence back because I think s/he realised that was something that was missing.

You say you also had the opportunity to observe somebody teaching? Was that helpful?

I observed two different people, one on the good side of the coaching spectrum, one wasn’t particularly. The better coach didn't put on a show and showed me something real, so I was able to take something away. The not so good coach, I’m not even sure she bothered to put on a show, and there wasn’t much thought I felt, so I didn’t get much from it. I kind of felt I wasn’t quite wanted.

That’s not a good feeling, and probably fed into the low-trust situation? I’m of the view that whatever you see you can learn from, the good and the not so good, I suppose you don’t expect to go to a coach to see something sloppy …

No, it was good, but I think there should be more peer observation of everyone, not just the coaches, but I know that’s quite radical for the College to go down that route. I would be happy for anyone to come in anytime, because then you get real feedback and real help. And it’s not just the coaches that have the know-how to intervene nicely.

How did you find the link between lesson observation and being referred to a coach?

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I personally didn’t have a problem with it, I’m very up for improving my teaching, but that’s the kind of person I am, not to say I don’t worry about failure, but I do it with a very open mind, so I didn’t have a problem being referred to a coach. But I can see that organisationally the minute you have a cup of coffee with a coach there is an issue there of ‘oh, that person’s getting coaching’.

And how do you think that’s perceived by staff?

I’m of the impression that the College wants the coaching to be supportive and proactive and a positive experience and there are, kind of, issues around, you know, accessing a coach that send out perception messages that are the opposite.

You’re making a distinction between how you perceive it and how other people perceive it?

I think there is a perception that if you’re seeing a coach you’re in trouble, where it should be different. If you’re going to see a coach you want to improve, but I can see that’s difficult.

It’s different in different areas, some are further along. So it is possible. Do you see any difference in perception between supported learning and functional skills?

I think in supported it’s much more positive, possibly that’s because we’ve embraced the Learning Walks better than in functional, so it’s a much more positive experience. Although the coach in supported is less high profile. Because we support students, I suppose supporting a member of staff is no different, so it’s done in a light manner, which is how staff work with students.

I think you’ve got quite a strong CM in that area who takes on some of that role?

S/he does, I’m not that sure whether that’s a positive though. It is in the sense that things works, so the coaching process works, but sometimes again that can be a little bit too much, because I thought coaches were supposed to be separate to management.

So it’s about getting the balance of support right, because coaches need to feel supported by their managers, but not overtaken. And if you’re staff you probably wouldn’t want to see too much alignment?

Well I wouldn’t have thought that’s what the organisation wanted, and as a coachee I wouldn’t want that, I want the trust of a coach without management interference.

So you’ve had experience of different styles, and trust comes through as really important for you. It’s about having your voice, being able to find the solutions for yourself, a sort of GROW model of coaching is what you’re describing?

That’s what works for me. Other teachers might not think that, but I wouldn’t want to be told to do things in a particular way, because then you have everybody teaching the same kind of lesson, which I don’t think is what this College needs.

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I’m probing because there’s such a debate in the sector about good coaching. We’re feeling our way through. There’s the GROW model on the one hand which is a lot about your inner-orientation, and then there’s another model which is much more instructional, more about the development of skills….

The good coaches work out which method suits different coaches

Yes. Did you experience that instructional side of coaching?

I think I did. The coaches that were not as helpful made some assumptions about skills not being there and that wasn’t the case. There needed to be more time to delve into what the issue was with the lessons that went wrong, or the teaching, and maybe coaches don’t get enough time to do that in order to do their job properly.

From that angle, having been a coach, how did the time feel to you?

That felt awful, because I was asked to straddle three sites in three hours and because I was new to it, I didn’t think to query it, it was only after the end I realised it was unmanageable. 3 hours would have been nice for one site. To cover all 3 sites for a big department just wasn’t doable.

Having been through a coaching experience, do you think that would feed back into your style as a coach?

Yeah, I think on that side I wasn’t instructing people but maybe I wasn’t good at who needed instructing and who needed the ‘touchy-feely’ stuff. It was a wonderful opportunity to be a coach, because as a teacher, unless you want to go into management, there isn’t much upwards movement, and it’s a very interesting place to be and still be teaching. Developmentally it’s very good as well, you learn lots about other people and yourself as well.

Would you recommend the service to others?

I would, it’s a very interesting way of delivering staff development. Having worked in other organisations, the way we do it here is really odd. But with budget constraints I can see why they have to do it like that. I remember working at BxxxxxP, training was very structured. You said you wanted something and invariably it was already on offer and you got it. Everybody seemed to know staff and it was very structured and business-orientated, but then I suppose we’re talking about soft skills so maybe that’s why it’s different to industry.

Tell me more about the industry model?

In big corporates, they want you to learn something, they tell you when it’s on and you go. You have the time to go and the trainer is knowledgable, there are notes and everything’s ready, but that’s because it’s resourced, and we don’t have that really.

And you see coaching in that light?

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I see coaching as staff development in a different guise, that’s the cynic in me. The person in me that wants to develop as a teacher sees it as a really useful resource, but the thing I’d like to say is that it only kicks in when there’s an issue, whereas it should be something that’s available the whole time.

It is, but people only tend to access around lesson observations …

It’s unfortunate because somebody that wants to develop, you know you might ring a coach and say ‘can I come and observe your lesson?’ and they’ll go ‘why, who’s referred you?’, so you feel a bit odd. Whereas in the corporate environment, if you say you want to learn about the latest rubber tubing you just learn about it, nobody questions why you’re asking.

So it’s not just staff seeing it as remedial, it’s coaches approaching in that way, assuming that there must be some sort of referral? Have you got ideas about how we could make it more accessible to more people without the connotations of it being support?

I think the Learning Walks are the right way to go, and somehow every teacher is a coach. But I don’t know how you get there, because that’s quite radical for this organisation. Every teacher is a coach because it’s such a lonely place, you teach the same students every week. Sometimes you have a dodgy lesson, most of the time it’s good, but it is lonely. It’d be nice to have someone to say ‘that’s great’ or ‘I did something similar’ and bounce. That person doesn’t need to be a coach, it can be anybody, someone who’s got free time on a Friday afternoon.

Do you think your openness to that sort of thing is unusual?

Yes, I think it’s unusual. It’s quite a scary place to be, but I like to put myself there, because otherwise you deliver the same thing year in year out, and you just become an automaton, and that’s not teaching for me, I need to get something out of it.

You’ve hinted at what a good coach is, what a good coach can do; so it’s not about modelling the best teaching, it’s about how you run those relationships, and empower other people to draw their own conclusions?

I think the organisation would find that very hard to evidence, all the touchy-feely stuff that teachers need is difficult to evidence, which is why you look for hard outcomes.

Again, any ideas of what we can do to make it more accessible, change people’s views about accessing a coach?

I suppose team meetings need to be more focussed on teaching and development. They tend to be a bit bogged down with management agendas rather than teaching agendas, so that would be an obvious one, but then you have the problem that team meetings are hard to find because there are a lot of part-timers. Also encouraging sub-team meetings, I know in our department mental health has become very small, but a small group of us are finding time to meet with managers, so that could be encouraged as well.

Do you think that the college cares about high quality teaching & learning?

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I think it cares, but I think it’s struggling with its definition of what quality actually is, and probably the notion that it can come in different guises, and it’s not necessarily an OFSTED list of tick boxes. I think that’s where college quality management perhaps gets bogged down. I’d put the OFSTED list in the bin. In its stead, I’d have a system where a manager can walk into a class. Why don’t we have that culture? Why do we need once a year inspections where some teachers happen to be very good at putting on a show and others aren’t?

So you’d change the structure, you wouldn’t get rid of observation, but you’d change how they were run? And the content of observation, what should observers be looking for?

It’s difficult because an observer needs something to go on, they need to have certain things they’re looking for, but equally you know when you’ve seen them all. Again it’s that age-old problem of seeing something that’s quality but how do you quantify it?

Biggest learning point to come out of the experience of being coached?

For me personally, that I’m actually quite a good teacher, that my students like me, to some extent that I don’t care what the college thinks as long as I’m doing a good job.

That’s question of values lining up isn’t it? And what you’ve just expressed is that you feel your values are different the College’s values?

Yeah, because it’s about the learning it’s not about the teacher. It should be about the students and have they learnt, and sometimes I don’t think observers take enough of that into account.

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Unstructured Interview with Coach C: Appendix D

Ok, so I’d like to start off talking about the team that you work with mainly, A-Levels in particular, your thoughts on where they are at, their mind-set, the extent to which you think they’re open to T&D activity?

I think, in an ideal world, if we had all the time in the world, they would definitely embrace most, if not all, aspects of the training scheme. With the massive time constraints and having to cover other people, the order of priority on the list is not as high for some people as it is for others. I think there are differences within the teams, some people are much happier to embrace training and CPD, but in general people just need time for it, and that’s what the biggest issue is. It’s not really the fact that ‘I’ve been teaching x amount of years so I know more than you.’ I don’t get that, I just get ‘when do I do this?’ It’s just time constraint. When people are out of that training environment and you talk to them more one-to-one, you find out that it was brilliant and they wish they could get more into it and a lot came out from the recent Learning Walks but ‘when am I going to plan for it?’ It’s not a one-off, it should be a continuous thing, but their version of a continuous thing is ‘get out a textbook and here you go.’ It’s that limited, not very holistic approach to ticking all the boxes and getting everything done that should make an effective practitioner. They don’t have the time for it.

And do you think it’s real, the time issue?

I think with the amount we have to do, it is. I think where I’ve heard stories before I started working here, back when maximum teaching hours were 23 hours a week, there were admin staff there to do the things we are now doing. I think back then there was more of a focus on CPD and more people were embracing it, this is just a feeling I get from what people have told me. There was another thing, I forget the name of it, where people were given time to focus on themselves and do active team tasks like archery and bowling. The main issue is that it was so much easier to do things because they had the opportunity to address things. This doesn’t apply to everyone, people can still make time for it, but then something else would have to give. It’s just working out the priorities. Some people are here for 35 hours a week, teach for 25 hours. They have to get all their admin, prep etc. done in that 10 hours and that’s it. Other people are more giving of their time and are there till 6 or 7pm, so I think there are massive individual differences. So I think even though as a team you might want to generalise a certain thing, there are differences within the team, where you have some people really willing to embrace training, and others who have made up their mind from the outset that it’s going to take too much time.

Will the 2 hours CPD time next year help, do you think?

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I think now it seems much better. It’s more of a collective thing, there was too much disparity and fragmentation with people not having the same time off together, so now I think that will definitely help. I don’t know how it’s all going to come together, if it is going to be within teams, or if teams have to go off and do general staff development. Are they going to embrace that opportunity, or are they just going to do things for themselves like their own planning and prep? Our teams have always taken advantage of our departmental meetings. I think people have an issue with cross-college collaboration as well. So now, TLCs can go and disseminate training to different groups of people. But within our team I don’t know how it’s going to work, whether it’s like ‘that Staff Development Day’ where they have to interact with other groups of people. If it’s to build the team, and you have members of the team helping, I think people are going to want to embrace that, but certain people’s mind-sets think it’s too wishy-washy, ‘I have to go to Southgate and get training for 2 hours with people I don’t know who don’t know my course’, and yes there are generic elements that people can get across, but sometimes people want that subject specific knowledge and time to develop their own resources. It depends how it comes across, and there is good potential, and it helps we’re all off at the same time, but it depends on how it’s implemented. If they do have to travel across, work with different people, sometimes a fresh face does help, but you don’t know how different people will react.

Within your team, how are coaches used? Are they widely accessed?

All of us work brilliantly together. As a department they know who to access, we all have our visibility in the staff room, everyone knows where my classroom is and quite often people come into my classroom to get away from that. Sometimes it’s good because they want to have a 1-to-1 confidential discussion, which is great. We all really work well together and harmoniously, and if there are any issues we’ll meet regularly and discuss them. Staff access us easily. During the Health Check in March, I was quite overwhelmed with the amount of people, but it’s kind of sad that they all waited to that point. You do have people that come to you regardless of whether there’s an inspection or not which is nice. There’s a fine line, if everyone wanted to access you all the time you’d have a problem there. Some people that don’t want to be helped are those getting 1’s and 2’s, but you don’t want it to be seen as a remedial thing, only to get help when you’re told to. I think as a department we all work well together, and people know who to go to for support. Managers help as well, because in our department meeting we get our slot.

Do you feel managers promote the TLC’s work?

Managers help as well, because in our department meeting we get our slot. They’re really good, quite often they know we’re independent, we organise our own training, but if we ever need help or support they’re behind us 100%. Sometimes they’ll come to me and ask me to do

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training on a particular day for the team which is fine. They asked us not long ago to develop this crib sheet, and all the staff found it so useful, and it was just addressing the main things like English, Maths, EMD, technology, and we really came together because we were working with the CMs and the TLCs, it was quite good because quite often people feel like they don’t have time for it, so we compiled this crib sheet, and they realise they can do it.

What needs to happen to deepen the impact of coaching on further, do you think?

I think where we’re given the 3 hours a week, I’ve worked with several coachees this year and a lot of my time has been given to those people as well putting on training. I think with teaching and learning in general across all of the A-Level xxxx, I feel like I could do more personally if I had more time. If I’ve got 3 hours, and I’ve got 5 people it’s difficult to help them every week. I don’t just want a quick session, I want to see development and progress, and that takes time. With those people I’ve been working with this year, and the training I’m developing and delivering, it’s really difficult to address everyone in the department. So I think for quality to improve, there needs to be more time allocation. It’s a shame that it comes down to that, but with the scope you’ve got to cover, the quality suffers. What I found really useful last year, I trialled the training in clusters rather than getting the whole department in one room. I think that did impact on their teaching and learning, because I could see they were more responsive to it. Where you’ve got small groups, where it was more subject-specific, people were more involved and active.

You’ve worked with individuals in your area and out of your area. Have you noticed patterns around one being more or less successful?

I don’t know if it’s because you feel more connected to your team, but I know their structure, I know what the management are like and what they’re looking for, so you know this person really has to move up a grade or management is going to come to me. I invest my time equally to everyone working there, but maybe within your own team there’s more cohesion so they know who you are, and there’s less room to run away. On other teams, it’s hard to get hold of them, we’ve got different timetable, maybe I don’t work as closely with their managers as I should. I don’t know whether the support from up above is different in different areas. In terms of time allocation, there’s one person I’ve helped more than anyone else, but sometimes you think ‘I know I’ve got somewhere with them’, but there’s different things holding people back as well, one of which might even be a learning difficulty for certain people, so that’s something I need to address with other coaches. But in terms of productivity and outcome, I’ve noticed that if they allow me to invest my time, there’s always positive outcomes regardless of the department.

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Your team’s interesting in that it’s spread over different sites. How well integrated do you feel you are across the sites?

No, not really, the A-Level team at Southgate I don’t know half their names which is a shame. I think they could be more integrated but how? They’ve got coaches there to help them which is fine, but maybe the allocated time slot for training might help because next year we can travel across different sites and become more integrated in that way, but currently there aren’t many vehicles for integration. In terms of co-teaching, there are GCSE packages that happen at Southgate, and there are BTECs within their A-Levels. But for someone like me who’s specifically timetabled at Wood Street, it’s very difficult for me to get across to Southgate. All of our A-Level meetings happen at Wood Street, even though a lot of the team are at Southgate. There are logistical solutions to the problem.

And what about the network? Have you felt more of a coherence across the coaching team itself?

Again it’s sad to say that I felt closer with the ones at WoodStreet because I’m there, but I’d love to get across and network more with other TLC’s, because each TLC has their own strength and it would be really nice to interact with different people, so I look forward to doing that next year if there is an opportunity.

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Semi-structured Interview with Middle Manager C: Appendix E

Ok. So to start with a general question about your understanding of coaching in the wider sense and we’ll move on to talking about the TLCs more specifically after that…

Ok. My understanding of coaching is two things really, one comes from former Colleges that I’ve worked in where I have had training in coaching so that’s how to support lecturers, particularly, to kind of have a very, well, for them to become self-aware and so that they can manage their development without always having to have a manager around. And then in the last couple of years I’ve been involved in, at the merged College where we have a designated teaching and learning coach who supports staff to plan lessons better really.

You’ve mentioned planning, are there any other clear functions to the TLC role that you can see?

One thing that I think has been very useful is the TLC does come back from the meetings with you and feeds back to us those kind of wider, or newer, agendas for teaching. Because myself and the team, lecturers in particular, because they’re here in a separate building they are physically separated from the rest of the College so they do become quite isolated. Previously when we were together as a Hair and Beauty department on the same campus, both the Hair and Beauty teams had development from each other they fed off each other they were quite competitive against each other and that worked well. Since we’ve physically been separated, it’s not worked so well. So I, I have felt having the TLC kind of going to your sessions and coming back here, that’s just created a bit more of a link for all of us really. So it’s about communication.

Great. Specifically around teaching and learning improvement, have you seen any impact on that?

Well, I have been giving this some thought. I was thinking about it this morning before our meeting today. Yes. The answer is yes, there’s been some, and I’ll talk about that first but then I’d like to talk about the other issues. The TLC certainly supported one sessional member of staff to improve from a 2 to a 1 which was great and we specifically met about that in September so I was very pleased about that. What I feel is the slight barrier is where in a team if the TLC has got similar kind of ability as the rest of the team, I just wonder if perhaps there’s not quite such an impact. And the reason I say that is that I am aware that there are other TLCs who are – I don’t quite know how to word it – I don’t like to say who are considerably better than their colleagues …

We do. We’ve got heavy or deep coaches in the team and some lighter coaches, if you like. I don’t know whether that fits with what you’re wanting to express?

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Yes, in a department who’s got a coach who has a much deeper understanding than their colleagues perhaps the impact is greater. And I feel perhaps there’s been less of a great impact…. Having said that, going back to the first question, in terms of communicating those wider issues to the team, it’s been very good; certainly supporting sessional lecturers has been good; I’m just not sure there’s been a huge impact in terms of the main grade lecturers really. I do wonder if that’s perhaps partly me – I think I do have to take some responsibility for that.

The questionnaire did ask questions, which is why I haven’t asked them now, but it’s relevant to what you’re saying, did ask questions around the extent to which managers have met with their coaches, done work around the action plans together. Have you done much of that?

I have absolutely done that. I’ve met and have looked at the action plan with Dxxxxx – one thing I did talk about in the survey is that I feel as a CM now our jobs have become so broad that one thing I probably haven’t done is gone back to those points I’ve raised with Dxxxx as much as I should’ve done, so I haven’t closed the loop.

Follow –up. Yes. We’ve spoken about teaching and learning, do you feel the TLCs had wider impact on the culture of the team? You’ve mentioned Beauty being a little isolated, and I suppose feeling more linked in is part of that cohesion process?

Yeah, that’s certainly helped. The Beauty Therapy team is generally a cohesive team so the TLC hasn’t particularly had to draw them together – they do work really well together as a team. So I don’t think there’s really been a need for any, there’s not been a need for the TLC to do that stuff. One thing I would say though is the TLC has drawn the sessional staff in better. Although, they do all come to my meetings, and they come to all the training so they are part of the full team, but I think the sessionals sometimes naturally feel slightly excluded, and they’re here less. So I think the TLC has done some work in perhaps supporting them more to feel slightly more part of the team.

That’s important. Ok, on to barriers. You describe a team that is already proactive, cohesive, but a lot of coaches in the one to one work that they do, and in the teams that they find themselves in, are coming up against issues like staff proactivity, staff self-directness, self-reflexiveness. Do you recognize any of these as issues?

Yeah, I do. One thing I did mention in the survey was that lecturers and managers are now having to deal with so many agendas. If I had my way, we’d just be focusing on teaching and learning. I’d prefer to spend all my time doing teaching and learning quality. Every meeting, and bearing in mind that I have a planned meeting every single week in the academic year, but those meeting are now taken up with e-learning - English and maths has been huge this year, focusing on at risk students, teaching and learning, bearing in mind this is a commercial business as well, we have to spend quite a lot of our meeting time talking about clients and

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services and how we’re going to get more clients in … I know that lecturers would love to use HoW2 more, reflect more, improve more, but they are saying to me there just isn’t the time. And I genuinely don’t think that’s an excuse because the Beauty team really are a willing and committed team. I think they are genuinely squeezed, for example, they have to keep going back through registers that are supposedly missing marks which have been done already, Deborah …

That’s come through in each of the groups I’ve surveyed – time. Hopefully, with the Golden Hour next year, or two hours, that might be a help?

Possibly, although, we’ve always had this in Beauty for years, we’ve had a Golden Hour for years, but it’s just that there are so many other people wanting that hour and I understand that each person sees their agenda as very important, AR, PF, yourself, but me and my team are all squeezed between lots of you guys and the best of everything. But when there’s only one or two hours a week it’s very difficult to focus on something and do it well. We end up doing bits of everything. But I absolutely agree, I don’t think there is enough time to be properly reflective, properly proactive, because as much, I’m saying ok, now we’re going to talk about teaching and learning, now we’re going to talk about e-learning – it’s just bombarding them with so much stuff.

Yeah. Although I would say of the things you mention - e-Learning, English and maths, it’s teaching and learning isn’t it? I think we compartmentalize those things unnecessarily sometimes ..?

Yes, however – yes, but we now have this strategy for e-learning that I now have to work through and I have to talk to the staff about it; English and maths, really, is about whether they’re going to classes or not, we then have to work out which students are trying to drop out, we’ve had to have invigilation training recently, another session we’ve got to have is PREVENT, JCS’scc team is coming in to do PREVENT so the actual meeting slot, the Golden Hour is great, but it’s just been taken up with so many things.

So many agendas. Ok.

And actually, I also put in your survey all of my external verifiers of which we have loads because the curriculum’s gone so wide, they expect to have standardization in all of those meetings as well.

Lots of calls on very limited time. Ok. Right. So this is a question that flows from research done by the IfL in their final throes, so it’s going back some, but one of the interesting points it made was that what staff really value is the extent to which management is seen to value and understand teaching and learning. So if we’re lining up with teaching and learning at

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middle and senior management levels, that’s the shortest route through to trust-building across the organization. Do you think that’s how we’re seen?

Well, it’s everything we do. As a manager I’ve always always focused on teaching and learning and I still do despite all of the other things we’ve just talked about. I’m quite good at ignoring some of it because we all focus on teaching and learning. In a vocational area as well, particularly, we’ve all come in to FE to support young people and help them get jobs. You know, we get out of bed in the morning to come and train the next generation of beauty therapists and make-up artists, you know. So teaching and learning is hugely important to all of us. I don’t think the Beauty team has got a perception that that’s not the case. If anything, I think they do see middle and senior managers as really focusing on teaching and learning.

What do you think conveys that impression?

It’s probably me. And I think that comes back to the culture we had in Hair and Beauty for years – we’ve always worked together. We were lucky to have very good previous managers who you obviously learn from.

And a continuity in the team is what you’re describing…

Yeah, yeah. I do think we’ve been at an advantage with that. When former H merged with former B there was very little Hair and Beauty at former B, so that enabled us to stay cohesive as a team. Same with former B, former S, there was only a small amount of basic Hair and Beauty at Southgate, so we’ve been very fortunate actually in being able to have that consistency. Where I have managed other teams in that period, I line managed the fashion team for a while and I’ve been able to see that other departments don’t have that same cohesion. So they therefore perhaps don’t see teaching and learning as being so valued, whereas Hair and Beauty really do still see it as core.

[Operational discussion removed]

Great. Is there anything else you’d like to add that we haven’t covered?

No, I think we’ve covered everything I thought about this morning. Just time and all the different agendas. I just would love to work in the college one day where teaching and learning was much more able to be focused on, really. I do worry that it’s becoming a bit hidden. Not on purpose, but FE’s just changing so much.

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Semi-structured Interview with Middle Manager D: Appendix F

A first question about your general understanding of coaching… what do you understand by the term?

Performance. If I take the example of a teacher, for example, if I get somebody to coach another teacher, they will be going through the procedures and helping them understand the procedures of the College and give them some tips and support them in the job they are doing. It can be formal, it can be informal as well. It can be structured…

Thanks. Have you seen any impact on teaching and learning improvement in your team?

Definitely I have, because I have allocated teachers to teaching and learning teachers through your department, and the coach has supported my staff and provided them with training as well, and guided them through in terms of what they need to improve their grades in teaching and learning. The TLC has provided training for the whole department as well which has been very helpful. And one thing that’s been helpful again was the fact that we had a Health Check and some action came out of that Health Check. On my own it would have been very difficult for me to do that, so when I asked for some advice from the quality department, we decided to divide this into what management needs to do and what could be handled by TLC to make things easier and quicker in the department. That worked well. That’s for the whole department, but if you look at individual members of staff, the type of support they’ve had from TLC and the improvement they’ve made…I’ve got a concrete example, someone from last week was observed who got a 4 in the Health Check, but I was present in the observation and there was a huge difference. The way lesson was planned, the delivery and how the lesson was planned to make it learner-centred. The type of resources that were used, the type of question, they stretched and challenged. I was present in the lesson, so that was very good, I was very impressed myself to see that. It was a grade 2 but we’re just waiting for a final report, it could have been 1. That was after intensive working with a coach.

One of the functions of the coaching role - implicit, not necessarily stated - is around cultural cohesion, within the team and across the College. To what extent do you feel your TLC has helped to cohere your team and support the change we’ve gone through recently?

I can only talk about my team, because I can’t talk about across the college. But yes I can see the difference, and I can see the work that they’ve done. They’re always supportive in meetings and stuff, and in meetings when they try to input something, because always on the agenda is something to do with teaching and learning, that’s when I get them involved. And outside the meeting, this is a formal meeting, as far as I know the TLC does support staff quite a lot, but it’s just a matter of the staff themselves taking this in.

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You’ve had a situation where your staff have been spread across all 3 campuses, has that had any impact on binding the team identity across different sites?

Yeah, the way I’ve decided to do that was to get them together every month, which did not happen before. This has helped quite a lot. We do quite a lot of standardisation meetings. The problem we used to have was consistency, but bringing them together and getting them talking to each other, and mixing the group, I can see the difference. And that worked well when I got the TLC to do a workshop when we had the last conference day. So we had everybody in one room from all campuses, half of the day was dedicated to teaching and learning, looking at the actions from the Health Check. And everybody participated, yes, you would have one or two being negative, but that was cleared eventually when the objective of what is being done, in conjunction with quality and the TLC became clear. Maybe at the beginning it wasn’t, but as it went along it was clear, and everybody had some kind of input and participated in the activities and to discuss the plans, what could be done to move the department forward. The department SAR has been 3 for the past few years, we cannot afford to have a grade of 3 again.

Do you feel that helped to establish the coach in the team, was s/he well received?

Yes

Do people accept the role and do they approach willingly?

No, it depends where they are unfortunately. My TLC is based at Southgate, and staff there would not hesitate to discuss something, or they come to me, and if it’s something I’m not too sure about I would get the TLC to talk to them. But I haven’t seen someone from another campus, even if they know s/he’s been introduced as our TLC, come forward by themselves to say ‘I want this’. The interaction doesn’t have to be physical, it can be a phone call. Having said that, teachers whose lesson was not graded 1 or 2, were allocated TLCs who are not based on Southgate and they’ve met. Either the TLC has gone there, or staff have come to Southgatxxxe It could be a day where we have team meeting, because what I’ve done is rotate the team meeting across sites to make it easy. So people can’t say “okay you’re just doing meetings at wood street” or “you’re doing the meeting only at southgate”, so I‘ve done it in a such way that it’s at each site.

What about the levels of staff proactivity in the team? Their ability to work in self-directed ways, to take feedback?

It’s mixed. Personally I haven’t had any resistance to a grade that I’ve given to a lesson, I’ve never had that. Whatever I’ve observed had been translated to a report, discussed with the

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member of the staff and they could reflect on what happened that day and we could agree on that grade that’s been given. But you could have resistance of some members of staff to something new that you want to do. It could be that they’re too busy, I mean we are all busy, or they find it useless. A good example was the experiment that we wanted to do. At the beginning I received a few e-mails saying “we don’t have time to do that, yes we discussed it on staff development day, but unfortunately we don’t have time to do that”. But if you manage to get a small group to agree with what you’re doing, this is my tactic, it depends on the situation. Either you get everyone involved, it could be everyone in to show what’s happening and praise those who’ve done the work, and then others follow. So for the last experiment, there were two members of staff who had sent, in a way I could say, for me, personally, not professional to send this kind of e-mail related to something the College or department wanted to do. But what happened was 4 or 5 members had already done some work, so we sent an e-mail to praise them; the quality director praised staff as well, so then others found that they were adulated, they had to do something.

Building that critical mass. Yes. In the end I think you had quite a high take-up of the experiments?

It was high but personally for me, for a IT, computing department, I think we could have done better.

Knowing what you know about your team, to what extent do you think they view the orginastion, management within the organisation, lining up with teaching and learning, rather than against teaching and learning?

The question that sometimes staff ask, is that they don’t know what they’re doing, because they have the impression that senior managers don’t know anything about Teaching and Learning. What tends to happen, is that people tend to carry on doing things the way they’ve done it. When quality department or management want to bring something new, in their minds ‘these are people who don’t know, and they are trying to force us to do this.’ They can’t see the benefit of that, they can’t see the bigger picture. They can’t see the world is changing. One other thing that could be the reason that they react this way, is because they are busy. They live in a small world of their own. They do preparation, they go home and do preparation, the next day they do marking. They don’t think outside the box unfortunately, and they don’t have time to look at new things. To give you an example, I think the How2s are a great tool for teachers, but nobody knew about it, because nobody had the time. When we introduced this to them, it’s very difficult to know how much they use it, but we advise them to look at this as per their report ‘this is what was identified, and I would like you to look at this part,’ for example teaching and learning or classwork management. I think they look at that part, but they don’t go beyond that.

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Ok. The next question is around communication with your coach, and the vehicles which you provide for contributions they can make. For instance do you have meetings, is there anything structured into your relationship with the coach?

Yes, it could be formal it could be informal but we have regular meetings. I could ask after a lesson observation if I didn’t identify something that needs to be done, or somebody needs support, I just go to the TLC and say ‘okay this person needs…’, sometimes I have to go through your department, but also the timing. If it’s local I speak to the TLC direct and say so-and-so needs this kind of support. And I’ve then sat with the TLC to devise an action plan for the member of staff, on a few occasions actually, to agree that what I’m doing is going to be beneficial for the department and for that person, and this is something they can support with.

You say your team meetings always have a teaching and learning slot, I’m assuming your coach contributes there?

It might not be in the agenda, but it might be something I talk about, and then get them involved to back me up because of what’s been done and what can be done.

[Operational discussion removed]

We’re coming to the end of the 2 year cycle. Any changes or refinements that you’d like to suggest, in terms of what the service looks like in 15-16?

I would like more peer observation for some members of staff observing TLCs because they are more experienced. I don’t know how this can happen because they can’t have 1 or 2 people every week, but at least some arrangement has to be made, some lessons to get some of those whose lesson has been graded 3 or 4, or even 2, to share good practices. There should be more follow up.

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Semi-structured Interview with Senior Manager A: Appendix G

I’d like us to start by talking about coaching generally – have you had any personal experience of coaching?

I’ve limited experience of coaching because I’m new to it myself. Coaching to me is a way of getting advice and ideas about how you can move forward. So, for example, if you’re in a work environment and you want to develop yourself through managing people, it’s a way for you talk to someone and give some clear examples or areas you’re struggling with and say “this is what I think I should do” and they can come back to you and say “well actually have you tried this model or this method”, so it’s a way of getting different models and methods to perhaps overcome a barrier of some kind. Perhaps on the flipside it’s a way of developing yourself and getting different ways of informal teaching and guiding if you’re wanting to further your career for example, and you want ideas and thoughts around how to do that.

So focusing in on our T&L coaching network, is that your understanding of what they do?

My understanding is that if there is a teacher who is perhaps an inexperienced teacher and wants to develop themselves and so they can go to a coach and get support depending on the area of teaching they want to develop or have issues with. Also, we have a formal observation process we have to follow, and again if we have teachers, whether they are inexperienced or have been teaching for years and years, it’s a nice support for them if their teaching methodologies aren’t as relevant as they should be in the current climate. So we are helping them develop and update.

Have you seen any impact around T&L coaching?

Massive impact, there are two people actually, one member of staff, an older gentleman, had got a grade 4 and was really struggling with teaching, very much a situation where you might perceive s/he can’t learn anything new , s/he’d reached his/her “glass ceiling” if you want to call it that. We had a TLC who went round and worked with him/her for 16 weeks and s/he went from a 4 to a 2. S/He changed his/her teaching to learning focused, that was the difference I think, that’s one of the biggest things I’ve seen with the teachers paired with coaches. Another example was an older female teacher who jumped from a grade 4 to a grade 1 with a similar experience. And then in between that you’ve got people who seem to not move in any direction, maybe a solid 3, but don’t seem to develop. There’s someone I have in mind who goes to T&D all the time, and I don’t quite know why, I don’t know if it’s because they might not think through what they need to do for an observed lesson, so it falls apart on that day because they put together their own lesson. Sometimes maybe they’ve been taught how to

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teach in a certain way, and they’ve stuck to that model and then anything else seems to confuse them.

You’re suggesting that it wasn’t just an impact on T&L that you saw, but it was preceded by a change in mind-set or understanding?

Exactly.

Have you been aware of that more widely? Can you see any ways in which they’ve helped to cohere teams, create a more positive culture generally?

When the college was first merged in 2011, one of the newly merged college areas had a very strong distrust of management, and therefore any process which was perceived as coming from management was resisted. Xxxx was very much like this, very distrusting of anything we did, wasn’t willing to listen, it was all about him/her and the impact the change had on him/her rather than anyone else. When s/he was made a TLC and given that title, s/he felt s/he had some sort of gravitas and could impart his/her own professionalism and knowledge, s/he changed overnight, s/he spent about a year at Graham Park and helped promote T&L there and helped drive through quality processes, s/he was driving force behind all of that. Because of him/her and what people had thought of him/her before, s/he changed the culture of Graham Park practically overnight. What s/he’s done is s/he’s been going to Wood Street for the last year and a half and some of his/her effect has happened there as well. While there’s still some way to go at Wood Street, you can definitely see the impact where someone like him/her who people perceive to be someone like them is delivering that message.

From your vantage, working across all sites from early on, can you flesh out what you mean by differences in culture? Can you describe some of those differences?

I would always say that Southgate College workers did not have this built-in distrust of anything that came from management. We were quite a united staff body, we still had our issues, but our structure was a lot more flattened which helped a bit. We also felt like we could talk to anyone about anything, whereas Barnetxxxxx culture was very protocol-driven, very hierarchical, you couldn’t do anything without having to run it past someone who had to run it past someone else. We also felt there was a very clear marked divide between any manager and non-manager, as well as a union member and non-union member. I’m not sure why it was like that, perhaps it came from the type of manager style that they’d had before where it was a very direct kind of management, where it was directive and that was it. Whereas at Southgate we were used to having discussions, we could argue and talk about it, it wasn’t as direct. That’s also something I feel we might have lost now. We had an element of trust at the college and I think that’s disappeared.

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Because?

Whether or not it’s because of the last 4-5 years of restructures, whether or not it’s because we’ve seen a lot of people change, perhaps there were people who we felt were ‘on our side’ before we realised it is just a job and people might support you but they’re not on your side because ultimately they’ve got to look after themselves. So should you go down the road of restructure or voluntary redundancy then you are on your own, very much so, and people that you thought were there to support you, you actually see they aren’t there anymore.

Winding back, there was a pre-merge merger between Hendon and Barnet, did you notice any distinctions between Wood Street and Graham Park?

Not really no, the only time I’d heard it mentioned to me was in January, and someone said to me that some of their administrators that worked in Graham Pa said “oh, they’re from Hendonxx camp they don’t know anything about us”, so there was stuff like that. They were aware of the merger, but there wasn’t a cultural difference. The only difference was that Wood Street had a shiny new building which helped them feel like a separate college, whereas GrahamParkandSouthgate were the poorer cousins. And then on top of that They were all shiny and new and a lot of the ESOL team came from Stanhope Road which was similar to Edmonton Green and they still had a Stanhope Road culture in their own staffroom, communities that nobody can break into unless they have the same true values and principles.

Are your other TLCs moving between sites?

Not at all, largely it’s to do with their timetable, but I think I would like them to do a bit more work on making it cohesive, because I’ve had to step back myself this year, that’s separated it a bit too much, I don’t like that because I think what they can learn from each other is phenomenal.

We’ve started talking about barriers, and you’ve mentioned restructure, a lot of change in a short space of time and the lost trust element. Is there anything else you’d add?

I don’t feel like we’ve cracked it, when I think that we have and communication is fine, a teacher says something where they had a team meeting with other teachers and they just had completely the wrong idea about everything and I couldn’t understand where that came from, because I thought that was clear. So I don’t think we’ve cracked communication properly and that’s the biggest thing. I think it was interesting there was a twitter hashtag from last night, #UKFEChat, one of the things was whether it is possible for large colleges to have effective communication, and they were all saying it was impossible. It’s so difficult to have a situation where you’re delivering the same consistent message because it becomes Chinese whispers, so what is the most effective way? Not everyone reads all their e-mails, [the College bulletin]is

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useful, but teachers don’t read that either. I think the biggest challenge is that until we get staff on the same contracts we are never going to get a trust culture, because there has to be a parity between our staff members before we can move forward.

Okay, so coming back to the coaches, and apart from contracts, do you see the coaching network as part of a solution to the communication problem?

They’ve been helpful. With a lot of coaches they might have other roles, they might be a course leader for example, so they might be responsible for having mini-team meetings. What we find useful is some of our course leaders, TLC’s as well, have, for example, corrected teachers about a basic miscommunication, and said it’s not what you think it’s actually this. So they’re quite good at a College level at correcting misconceptions which I think is key. As they’re not seen as managers it will be more valued and trusted.

There was a piece of research by the IfL a few years ago saying that the quickest way to trust-building in an organisation is for staff to see their middle and senior management and leadership firmly aligned with T&L. Do you think staff see us this way at all?

Not at all, from personal experience I don’t think I’ve been at all visible this year, which I don’t like. I do make an effort to go into staff rooms and talk to teachers when I’m at different campuses, but I know the perception of WoodStreet is that that’s just what they want us to do. If they’re thinking that about everything, they’re definitely thinking that about T&L. We feel that the observation process, that despite everything we’ve done, they perceive that through a fear culture and they dread that e-mail coming up. But in saying that, the Learning Walks have helped with that, the e-learning one especially, simply because people at WoodStreet camp who don’t know how to use a computer were able to do that and were happy to do that and didn’t do it because they felt they were having to do it. That non-mandatory approach helps that trust culture. If everything is mandatory people get sick of that and feel they’re railroaded to do things.

We’re not talking much about your other charge, young college, you’ve got a coach there who’s had quite an interesting situation to deal with. Would you like to flesh that out a bit?

S/he has a foot in both camps. The biggest challenge s/he has is that the staff that s/he works with have their own ridiculous mini-culture, in that as colleagues they don’t get on that well and they don’t get on with their managers, and that seems to impact on everything else. They also don’t seem to respect any aspects of the college, I’m not sure if that’s a historical cultural thing from them because they were run in Southgate College by Val, if they’ve been always been told “you’re different”, that was the message given them consistently, so things like that have made them believe they are different, and me trying to bring them back into the College is just crazy.

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Has the coach there been able to help at all?

No, s/he’s tried to help them individually. S/he’s been much more effective in Science, and I’m not sure if that’s a personality aspect. I think it’s not, it’s because none of them actually care about their own development. People are not going to focus on their own professional development until they feel comfortable in their jobs and trust the organisation.

We’ve touched on communication, but this question is specifically about your local mechanisms for communicating with the TLCs ….

I backed off from that this year, because I think it’s a CM’s job to be operational with them, this year I’ve not been in communication with them. I’ve sent e-mails to thank them and things like that but haven’t given them any directives. I’ve tried to leave it to CM’s to run their own areas, they know they’ve got strong TLC’s and can trust their TLC’s to put on training. TLC’s tend to still copy me in to e-mails so I can see staff are doing things. Young college, I don’t think Chantelle has done any training this year. “She’s done a lot more for the science team” I’ve used Katie quite a lot this year, which has been good, I think having someone different come on has been more effective because it’s not someone from their team so while there’s an argument for TLC’s to be attached to curriculum areas in this case it doesn’t work.

Are you aware of the T&L action plans, the ones that the coaches put together based on last year’s data, because that’s potentially a very good point of contact. My hope and expectation is that they’re sitting down with the CM to co-develop the plan in the first place, and then to make sure they are implemented.

I haven’t seen it yet. In our centre meetings we regularly talk about (12:50) and we talk about innovations we’ve seen, what we tend to, especially with Lucy being quite new, we go over issues this week, talk anything through, do a quick 5-minute agenda. That’s been useful, we’ve talked a bit about what people are doing well and what they aren’t doing well.

Changes and refinements for the role, is there anything that you’d like to input into that?

I think the culture aspect can be brought about a bit more, so making sure that when key quality messages are coming out from whichever part of the college, they can be echoed to the people who perhaps are meeting on 1-to-1 basis as well as generally within their staffrooms, without people knowing that they’re doing it. Having seen what that can do, I think that sort of stuff needs to be stronger. What would be really good as well, areas such as motor vehicles and IT, instead of 1 person targeting 1 person, bring in a whole group of them. So you might have, not a check as such, but a learning and development week for that area. So ITxxxxx is quite a thin area, why don’t we put in 5/6 coaches to target that area for a week, maybe have a few

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focus groups, get some extra information, and see if there’s any TLC coaching type events that could be done.

“Preparation for the role. Going forward, how can we be growing other members of staff into those roles, because there’s a danger that the role gets taken up by a personality and others’ development isn’t encouraged because they don’t see anywhere for them to go …

I think that whole thing about talent and succession is something we’re not good at as a College and TLC’s are a way forward for doing that. Perhaps it would be nice if the TLC themselves encouraged people from their areas that they think are strong to apply for the role should it come up. It might be that CM’s can say to people “why don’t you apply for that role” and give them some confidence. Do you have something where you retire people after a couple of years?

Looking into it – but I think after 2 years is too soon, because you’ve got people who’ve really grown in that period who it would be a shame to lose, so maybe 2 terms and then make way.

I think that would be ideal because then they’re creating a growth network and then by doing that it’s clear from the outset that it’s a 2-term situation, and the people who’ve grown in that time would come out of that and won’t be a regular-type teacher because we might have a course leader role or something lined up so they still feel valued and I’d hope that as a result of the TLC process they won’t need that mollycoddling.

[Operational discussion removed]

Anything else you’ve not mentioned about the network that you’d like to touch on?

I think it’s been invaluable, it’s had a massive impact. I think every curriculum leader, despite maybe having resistance at first, can actually say it has impacted them in some way. I think sometimes I don’t know how much support we give a TLC who has to deal with lots of negativity. I don’t know how much more I, or other managers should be doing to support our TLC’s. I think some of your TLC’s might need some coaching themselves!

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General Staff Survey: Appendix H

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Coaches’ Survey: Appendix I

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Managers’ Survey: Appendix J

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Semi-structured Interview Frame: Appendix K

Understanding of coaching principles and ethos generally – and of teaching and learning coaching specifically.

IMPACT: extent to which impact on T&L and team cohesion/ culture has been positive or not. Or if no coach – expectations of the role: EXAMPLES/ CASE STUDIES?

CHANGE/ CULTURE – extent to which coaching role has helped to cohere teams/ practices/ support change/ circulate messages etc.

BARRIERS and can coaching role be part of the solution? Staff proactivity/ self-directedness/ self- reflexiveness? Openness to feedback?

Ways in which the organisation/ management lines up WITH T&L – how do we state its importance/ give it value?

Communication and contribution mechanisms- with TLC? With Quality department? Sufficiently informed about cross-College role and commitments?

CHANGES/ REFINEMENTS: :

PREPARATION FOR THE ROLE: Relevant experience/ training/ mentoring/ workshop delivery etc. Professional Standards K/S/V&A

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Appendix L

Time barriers:

Teacher respondents • Insufficient time to acquire and implement new ideas and learning. • Insufficient time for preparation and follow-up. • Lack of timetable synchronization in departments. • Insufficient time to meet. • No common training slot to enable staff to attend training sessions. • Reduced tutorial and teaching time. • Providing cover for staff.

Related issues came up to do with workload: time taken up with ‘non-teaching’ responsibilities, burdensome administration, invigilation, marking, internal verification, ‘chasing students’ and frustration expressed at ‘not being informed about deadlines on time’. Mentions of ‘sudden changes’ to deadlines, rooming, exams, timetables and paperwork.

TLC respondents

• Remission of 3hrs for coaching activity being insufficient. • TLCs on part-time contracts have difficulty performing their roles - this was reiterated in

manager interview. • Timetabling constraints preventing peer observation and one-one coaching meetings: ‘Lack of

time - it is very difficult to progress unless both parties meet regularly and agree the agenda/timetable in advance. Sadly, often other factors come into play, meetings have to be cancelled, rushed, or are too far apart and the process becomes "bitty" and less productive.’

• Time taken up by travelling between sites. • Insufficient time to meet with the wider network. • Lack of time to dedicate to own research. • Uneven spread of activity from week to week.

Manager respondents • Lack of development time. • Insufficient time to reflect. • Reduced course delivery hours affecting quality. • Too many competing agendas squeezing teaching and learning off team meeting agendas. • Time implications of working across sites. • Manager workload. • Too many sessional and part-time staff making it impossible to find a common time to meet. A

teacher respondent expressed this as a ‘certain amount of discrimination on the part of the College against part time workers.’

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Appendix M Support-stretch features of the one-to-one coaching relationship:

Never Rarely Sometimes Often Always Total Often

and Always STRETCH SUPPO

RT

Performance enhancement 0 0 6 10 2 67%

Stretch conversations 0 0 6 5 7 67%

Experimenting 0 1 5 9 3 67%

Observation of teaching - you observe peer 1 4 7 5 1 33%

Giving feedback 0 1 6 6 5 61%

Goal-setting 0 1 6 6 5 61%

Motivating and inspiring 0 0 4 8 6 78%

Addressing professional misconceptions 1 3 5 7 2 50%

Modelling - peer observes you 2 3 6 3 4 39%

Collaborative problem-solving 0 0 2 12 4 89%

Supervision/ mentoring 4 0 7 5 2 39%

Planning advice 0 0 5 7 6 72%

Sign-posting and information giving 0 0 4 9 5 78%

Support conversations 0 1 6 5 6 61%

Dealing with stress 0 3 4 9 2 61%

Dealing with negativity 0 3 2 10 3 72%

Discussing wider personal issues 3 4 7 4 0 22%

Counselling 5 4 9 0 0 0%

(Breakdown of features drawn from Collett, 2012; Killion, 2009; Joyce and Showers , 1983a et al)

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Bibliography

157 Group and CfBT Education Trust (2011) Leading learning in further education Available: www.157group.co.uk/files/leading_learning_in_further_education_think_piece.pdf

Anderson, V., Rayner, C and Schyns, B (2009) Coaching at the Sharp End: the role of line-managers in coaching at work, London: CIPD

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