Commit to Continuous Improvement

Coaches should lead coachees through a coaching cycle to improve collaboration, coaching and teaching practice.

Coaches should establish shared goals with educators, reflect on successes and continually improve coaching and teaching practice. 

ISTE 4.2c explains that coaches should establish a set of mutually agreed objectives that guide collaborative work with educators. Coaches should reflect on successes and continually improve coaching and teaching practice. 

There are various stages in a coaching cycle. The Expeditionary Learning Education Coaching Cycle, the Knight Impact Cycle, the Professional Institute Coaching 3-Step Cycle and the Corwin Coaching Cycle are all described in details in the ISTE ‘Transform Learning Through Technology: A Guide to the ISTE Standards for Coaches’.

The EL Education coaching cycle involves: goal-setting, learning, observation and data collection, and reflection. The Knight Impact cycle’s stages are: identify, learn, and improve. and the Professional Institute’s cycle involves before, during and after stages. The Corwin Coaching Cycle has six phases: set standard based goals, develop targets, pre-assess, co-plan, co-teach and post-assess.

In addition to these the TEACHER coaching approach can be used including: target, enlighten, achievements, choice, help, encourage, and reflect.

However it is termed, the initial stage is target or goal-setting. When people are working in teams, they need to be clear on their agreed goals. Sharepoint can be useful for collaborating on objectives. Once the goal has been set a plan needs to be formulated.  Excel can be used to record marginal gains and to create a plan for goal achievement. The plan might include the use of Microsoft Learn and the creation of learning pathways.

As coaching is a cycle and a journey of continuous improvement, reflection on the goal, the plan, the progress and the success is important for greater learning in the future. Microsoft forms or Reflect in Teams are simple tools for feedback on teaching and learning, but also for feedback on coaching so coaches can learn and improve too.