When academics talk about coaching in schools, often the focus is on teachers’ and pupils’ performance (Knight, 2007; Bresser & Wilson, 2010). While there are laudable achievements of peer coaching in learning communities, I modelled how distributed leadership coaching (DLC) can be employed in its broader sense in my National Professional Qualification for Senior Leadership (NPQSL) school improvement project at a London inner city school.
This blog post highlights how distributed leadership coaching may have contributed to staff capabilities, pupils’ metacognition, and efficient school operation management in the UK.
DLC represents a culture shift from a top–down hierarchical authority model to a more lateral teacher autonomy model (DfES, 2003) where teachers (or coachees) are empowered by a colleague (a coach) to lead and contribute towards aspects of the whole-school priorities in a manner that is distinguishable from a mere delegation of tasks. This approach highlights questioning, discussion and inquiry as fundamental components of the learning process for the coachees.
My NPQSL project addressed a new school’s priority to having a whole-school consistent approach to aligning students’ attainment targets with students’ learning outcomes in lessons, and I evaluated the intended and unintended benefits of coaching from the teachers’ and students’ perspectives. In the process, I trained teachers and developed staff capacity to align students’ attainment targets with learning outcomes consistently.
