Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Hello and welcome to our coaching and education podcast. I'm Leigh Hatcher with a significant announcement. GCI has established a new partnership agreement with Dr Jim Knight and the Instructional Coaching Group. That will enable GCI to offer a range of instructional coaching programs to educators in Australia and New Zealand. Jim is a senior partner of the instructional coaching group and a research associate at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning. So, let's explore Jim's background.

Jim Knight:
I started out as an English teacher and I'll try to keep this under 20 minutes, Leigh. Started out as an English teacher and worked really with a wide range of students, mostly in community college but especially work with kids with learning disabilities. And I started to use a particular approach developed at the University of Kansas. I was living in Toronto at the time. And this approach from Kansas came up and I was trained in it by a person named Neela Franz. And it worked amazingly well. In fact, I got a full time job and an award for the class. So I was forever grateful for having the job. And I started to do training around the strategies that I learned. I went to Kansas. I became a trainer and I did all this professional development in Toronto and Southern Ontario.

And I found that my professional development had no impact. So I became kind of consumed with the fact that although I did a workshop, nothing really changed. And I thought well we've got these great ideas. How do we get them in the hands of teachers? I went to the University of Kansas and started doing research on how can we work with teachers in a way that actually leads to implementation. Became really clear to me at first that that has to involve positioning teachers as professionals. Seeing them for the professionals that they really are. Giving them some choice and discretion. And from about 1993 until today we've been doing this research where we're continually refining what coaching is, instructional coaching in particular. We didn't even really start out to do coaching.

First term was a learning consultant then an instructional collaborator. And then around about 2004 we thought well everybody kept telling us we were coaches so let's just use the term instructional coach. And that's kind of how it went.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
So, I'd like you to define instructional coaching for us. What is it, Jim?

Jim Knight:
Well I think an instructional coach, part of it is the relationship you have with the teachers. And we call that a partnership relationship. What that means is we see the teacher as at least as important as we are as the coach. Their opinion is just as important. We see the teacher is the one who makes decisions about what happens in his or her classroom. They have some autonomy, really an enormous amount of autonomy. They have voice in the process. But at the same time we don't hold back on our voice. We share ideas. And so instructional coach is a bit like a curator of knowledge.

They have expertise. They know a lot about what effective instruction is. There's billions of dollars of research that's been spent on effective instruction. And they're able to go through that and then with the help of other professional development they help people learn strategies to help the teachers hit the goal. First off, the teacher hits the goal, sets a goal. And the instructional coach says, "Here are some options. Do you want to try any of these practices? Do you want to try something else?" Then they help the teacher learn the practice. They try it out to see if it hits the goal. In the case it doesn't hit the goal. And so they have to go back and make adjustments. Maybe change the strategy. Maybe change the way they're using that particular strategy and so forth until the goal gets hit. And the goal needs to be a powerful goal that makes a big difference in kid's lives.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Yes. So that's the theory and the application of instructional coaching. I'd like to know what personally drives you in this, Jim. Where's your passion come from for this important work?

Jim Knight:
Yeah, I think the answer involves at least three things. One thing is, it's not rhetoric for us to say we really want what's best for kids. Our goal is to have kids bliss out on learning but also on wellbeing.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
What a great term.

Jim Knight:
And to do that, we have to keep getting better at what we do in schools. It's not to say we aren't already doing good work, but not every student's being met. I am profoundly passionate about the importance of every student no matter what she or he might be like, whatever their individual characteristics. I'm really keen that every student learns.

The second thing that kind of drives the passion is I think the whole concept of getting better is a fascinating concept. And what it takes to continually improve at what we do. A sort of running philosopher, George Sheehan has written several books about the ideas of striving for a personal best, trying to get better. What it means to kind of continue to get better. And in my own life, unfortunately, I have a lot of areas where I could get better. But I am kind of consumed with this. How do we set things up so that people can get better.

And then the third thing behind this, and I honestly don't have a really good way of answering this. But the third passion for me is promoting the notion that we should be benevolent towards other people. That we should have an attitude of stewardship and that our first movement should not be towards self-interest but I should be towards caring towards other people. And I believe if we're more benevolent, more caring, more kind, more concerned about other people, ultimately, we'll all benefit from that kind of thing.

I think the opposite's also true. I think an attitude of self-centeredness, it's destructive in many, many ways.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Yes.

Jim Knight:
And the Western culture kind of moves you towards a self-centred world where I think an attitude of benevolence and that's there in our philosophy. It's there in our work. And a coach, first off, is there to serve the teacher, to do what they could do to help the teacher. Those three things drive the work. We want beautiful lives for children. Where they can realize their dreams and we want an attitude of benevolence to be promoting what we do and all of us who work here are really fascinated by the idea of just the concept of continuous improvement and getting better. Life is short. Why not get better?

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
You're listening to the coaching and education podcast. I'm in a skype conversation with Jim Knight, senior partner of the Instructional Coaching Group about its new partnership with growth coaching international. I'm keen to know what kind of research is emerging in relation to coaching and its effectiveness as a form of professional learning?

Jim Knight:
Well, we've been studying coaching for 20 years. And initially we really didn't know what it was. Like I said, it was called the personal learning consultant and an instructional collaborator. Initially we just tried to figure out what does this person do. And defining the job. Then we started to do some more serious studies. One of them was to look at that approach, the partnership approach and we did what's called the counterbalance design where we compare two different workshops. One of them grounded in partnership, one grounded in an emphasis on fidelity. And the partnership approach just was four times more likely to lead to people to want to implement what they learned than the other approach. But it also had higher levels of engagement and also the people enjoyed it and they learned more based on our assessments.

And then we did workshop, we did a study and all these things I'm describing were presented at AERA, the American Education Research Association and some of them are out for publication. We did a study where we did two workshops and then we randomly assigned the coaches to one of two different workshops. Or the teachers, they went to a workshop and they were randomly assigned to two different groups, one group got a coach, one group didn't. We compared the level of the quality of implementation of what was in the workshop. And the level of implementation. And what we found was when people have coaches, they were way more likely to implement, way more likely to plan to keep implementing, and their quality of implementation was four times better than the when they were in the other group.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Wow.

Jim Knight:
Then we did more studies looking at what's called a multiple baseline design. But all along the way we're also continuously improving the coaching process. So the study we did, say in 2004, the model we used in 2014 is quite a bit different. And we found a really large effect size. Like 1.02 in terms of level of engagement of students pre-coaching versus post coaching. The last thing I'd say is that in the midst of all of this and probably the most important research is we do design research. Where we are trying something out, that happens to be the coaching model. We identify roadblocks or friction points. We try to come up with a solution to that roadblock or friction point. And then we problem solve what to do by either talking to experts, reading a literature, or problem solving with our team of coaches.

And then the coaches implement again. And then we do the same thing. What are the next set of roadblocks. We continuously just like we're designing a new blender for the kitchen or a new motor for a car. We’re designing a process and trying to get really good at it. And The Impact Cycle which came out last year, it's the result of 11 loops through that process of continuous improvement. We call it lean design research. It's kind of a combination of the book, The Lean Start-up and more traditional forms of design work.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
It's a fascinating process. Jim, you've been a friend of GCI and a fellow advocate for coaching and education for many years. Can you share with us a little of the common ground that's led to this exciting new partnership with GCI and what are you looking forward to about that partnership?

Jim Knight:
I think what John and Christian have been doing and the work they have done now for quite a long time. And the work that we do. If you drew a Venn diagram, most of it would be overlap. We have the same set of principles. We use many of the same skills. Some of the skills I learned from John and Christian. And the partnership principles that we use, I think inform what Growth Coaching does. And so in terms of how we would interact with other people and our beliefs that drive what we do, which is communicating a deep level of respect to teachers, affirming the people we work with, validating what they do. Those things are very common. The difference is, and actually what's exciting about it is that was John and Christian do is different than what we do.

And they serve different purposes. And so we're excited about the fact that we can work with Growth Coaching because we believe if we do something they don't do, and we know that they do something we don't do and so if we start to offer their workshops in North America we're going to meet the needs of more people that we wouldn't be able to reach because we don't necessarily do the approach that they do.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Jim, it's a marriage made in coaching heaven, I reckon. And we always love to finish with a story where kind of the rubber hits the road of your work. Can you relate one particular instance where you've seen this working for the good of a teacher or education?

Jim Knight:
Sure. And I'm going to tell you a story. It's in my book High Impact Instruction. It's about three people, a coach named Michelle, a teacher named Sarah, and a student whom we call Diana. And Diana was an English language learner was her designation. She was learning how to speak English. She spoke Spanish really well which put her ahead of most of her colleagues. But when it came to English she was about three grade levels behind on scores. And I think people underestimate how hard it must be to be a person who doesn't speak the language. Middle school is hard enough by itself let alone when you add to it that. And she got lice.

Her father was so frustrated that he shaved her head. And so she came to school. She had to wear a hoodie every day. And the school had a policy. You couldn't wear hoodies. But she tried to hide underneath this hoodie and in her case they just let the policy go. So she had all these horrible things going on in her class. And she was a student in Sarah's class. And Michelle said, "I'd like to work with you on this coaching study if you'd like to participate. Would you be interested?" And so Sarah, the teacher said, "Come on in." And she chose a class that that young student, Diana, was in.

So Michelle video recorded the class. And Sarah sat down and watched the video of the class. And then they got together and they went through a series of questions. Kind of like what John would call solution focused coaching. What Sarah said as she went through was, "She realized that all the kids in her class were learning English. Not one of them answered a single question." 11 students in her class were learning English. None of them answered the question. And Sarah was driven by social justice. She said that she really wanted to make a difference in kids’ lives. And she said if these kids don't speak up, and they don't start to answer the questions, they're going to become less and less engaged in school. By the time they turn 16 they're going to drop out.

And so they set a goal together. Michelle asked the questions and Sarah set the goal that they wanted kids to respond to all questions. 70% of the kids would respond to every question. But all kids would be responding to questions. And they decided they would use a strategy. The strategy's called talking tokens. And what you do is you give every kid three little things. And then they put it in the middle of the table every time it's their turn to talk. Sarah had a bunch of dominoes in her class so she said let's give every kid three dominoes. And when it's their turn to talk they can just put the domino in the middle of the table to indicate that they have done their turn. Everybody has to speak three times.

So every kid got three dominoes. But these are 13 and 14-year-olds probably. What do you suppose they did when they got all the dominoes? They just played dominoes. They stacked them up. But it actually made the class worse. So then they said, "Well, that didn't work. What could be do?" And then they tried a simple strategy called think, pair, share. But they thought really carefully about which proficient English speakers they would pair up with which students. And Diana was paired up with a friend of hers who is proficient in English, who she was comfortable talking to. And that strategy blew things away. Kids hit the goal. They did great. And here's what I wrote in the book about this story.

Sarah's students beat the goal. And Sarah was thrilled. Michelle, the coach said, "I remember her being so happy that she'd been able to determine that those students understood," Michelle said. "Whole dynamic of the class changed because everybody was participating. The students who were English language learners sat a little taller, smiled a little more, and they showed their peers that they knew the content. That," Michelle said, "had a very positive impact on the community in the classroom. And that's so important at the middle level because the kids see each other as smart and with it." And so they blew the goal away. And then Diana actually got up to almost grade level by the end of the year, according to Michelle's assessment. Michelle said at the end, "most important she stopped hiding beneath her hoodie, experiencing success she learned that she didn't have to hide. And she could leave sixth grade open to learning." And that story I have heard hundreds of…

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
I love it.

Jim Knight:
That's an example.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
How inspirational. How heart-warming as well. You've got to say. Jim, thanks so much for your time. It's been a great conversation. I know everyone at the GCI team in looking forward immensely to working with you in the future. Thanks so much.

Jim Knight:
I'm right there with you. I can't wait to watch where we go together and I love the whole team. They're wonderful people. Thank you, Leigh.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
You've been listening to the Growth Coaching International Case Study podcast series. I'm Leigh Hatcher. Check out some of our other great podcasts in this series Inspiring and educational. They're atwww.growthcoaching.com.au