Carnegie Education

Coaching: from dilemmas to hope

Professor Rachel Lofthouse from Carnegie School of Education writes about the positive impact of the Leeds Learning Alliance in helping educators develop new coaching approaches.

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Getting to the heart of the matter

In busy education workplaces, it is important to develop approaches which allow professionals to get to the heart of the matter when faced with dilemmas. It was interesting, at the latest meeting of the Leeds Learning Alliance’s inclusion network, to hear that getting to the heart of the matter with ease and relatively promptly was one of the outcomes of dilemma-based coaching.

Joining educators together in developing new coaching approaches

The inclusion network at Leeds Learning Alliance brings together teachers, leaders, and teaching assistants from early years, primary, secondary and special schools, and further education contexts. Their professional roles vary but they share common concerns about, and responsibilities for, inclusion. The inclusion network dilemma-based coaching group are meeting every half term throughout the year. They are supported by Tom Shaw, from Carr Manor Community School, Amanda Nuttall from Leeds Trinity University and both Rachel Lofthouse and Pinky Jain from CollectivED at Leeds Beckett University. The network participants are supporting and being supported by the ongoing development of a project which originated during CollectivED partnership work with Erasmus colleagues. The original project, called PROMISE, explored and extended professional learning through dilemmas which emerged in pursuit of inclusion in education.

Sharing dilemmas and exploring inclusion

The network meet in person by choice. At each meeting they share authentic dilemmas related to inclusion in their settings and in the context of their specific roles. They use the dilemma-based coaching approach as a means to generate discussion, support thinking and decision making. In addition to practising dilemma-based based coaching the network participants are helping to review and consolidate the coaching model and collectively explore matters related to inclusion through their discussions.

Freshest thinking

At the recent meeting of the inclusion network, and following further conversations using dilemma-based coaching, a thinking round was conducted. This allowed all participants to share their freshest thinking in relation to the approach that they were adopting. It was the first participant’s comment that led to the start of this blog. She noted that the dilemma-based coaching approach got quickly to the heart of ‘it’, with ‘it’ being the range of inclusion issues experienced in her education setting. She contrasted this with other models of coaching which she described as valid but sometimes more laboured, and less compatible with helping the coachee to gain clarity and insight in a timely fashion.

From instruction to coaching

In developing their coaching skills, and by taking the role of observers, the participants have been conscious of enhancing their listening skills. As teachers and managers, the participants feel that sometimes they were too quick to offer advice or even instruction, instead of creating enabling spaces for others to draw on their own understanding and skills in relation to dilemmas. They recognised that in developing a coaching repertoire they were breaking from these habits and instead opening up a quality space for reflection. They acknowledge how unique the coaching spaces created during the network meetings are compared to the daily rush of school life and the routine debriefings of incidents.

Complexity and change

The network participants reflected on how the dilemma-based coaching approach was helping them to unpack the complexities and multiple dimensions of the situations they found themselves in and to explore options for change in inclusion practices. They value the chance to engage in coaching conversations with members of the network who do not work in their schools and do not necessarily inhabit the same professional role. It is felt that this means that colleagues in the network typically bring no assumptions or bias to the coaching conversations. For example, the working through of the dilemma led to one participant noticing that she was correcting herself as she was talking, and as such identifying more clearly what the circumstances were and by focusing more positively on the opportunities for change that were present.

Positive thinking

The fact that this quality space encouraged coachees to think positively in relation to inclusion dilemmas was a recurrent theme. Instead of seeing the dilemma as a stubborn problem the coaching conversation encouraged participants to understand it with more subtlety. They found themselves thinking in more depth and detail about the needs of individual pupils and students.

It also led them to recognise that while individual students are unique many of the associated inclusion dilemmas are shared rather than singular. The fact that the coach was neutral while always curious meant that while dilemmas may trigger an emotional response this was acknowledged but tended not to overwhelm the conversation. Instead, the participants’ values beliefs and ethics seemed to be brought to the fore. The dilemma-based coaching approach was also deemed to be appropriate in helping to establish a balance between reflection and forward thinking. This forward thinking was described as ‘planting seeds’ which were already bearing fruit in creating new opportunities for inclusion.

Collegiality and connectivity

In our ever-more online professional world it is worth noting one last characteristic of the network which seems powerful. The request from participants to retain the in-person regularly scheduled meetings, and the fact that they prioritise their attendance at these itself, demonstrates the value they see in coming together as professionals, despite the battle through city traffic and the delayed return home that that implies. Being together and using dilemma-based coaching as a form of regular conversation is reported by the participants as helping them to feel reassured that their own professional experiences are shared, and that the dilemmas they face are not because they themselves are in deficit. Holding the conversations in small groups scattered around the room with the opportunity to share the key issues that are emerging create what was described as a lower-stakes scenario than the experiences that some of them have of line management, mentoring or coaching conversations conducted behind closed doors in schools and without the opportunity for shared reflection. They valued the expertise that each other brought as colleagues and coaches. They recognised that they were asking and being asked appropriate thought-provoking questions by people who could readily understand the terminology that was being used and the substantive nature of the contexts and communities in which each teacher worked.

From woeful to hopeful

Perhaps the most positive note, and one which was first highlighted by an individual in the thinking round but consolidated by others as they too reflected on the experience, was one of ‘hopefulness’. While the source of the coaching conversation was the authentic dilemma that the educator brought into the space, the structure of the coaching conversation meant that the conversation wasn't woeful but instead became hopeful. The teachers, leaders and teaching assistants grappling with the dilemmas of inclusion have found participating in the network and the adoption of a dilemma-based coaching approach both in the network and rippling out into their own settings as a professional opportunity to create hope. It is hard to over-state how affirming creating hope is.

Professor Rachel Lofthouse

Professor / Carnegie School Of Education

Rachel Lofthouse is Professor of Teacher Education in the Carnegie School of Education. She has a specific research interest in professional learning, exploring how teachers learn and how they can be supported to put that learning into practice.

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