Create a Shared Vision and Culture

Unlocking the potential of a coaching culture in education involves fostering good relationships and clear communications. Coaching is about setting goals and embracing feedback and ISTE coaches using a coaching approach can help drive technology enhanced learning and transformation.

ISTE Change Agents are coaches who inspire educators and leaders, and other relevant educational stakeholders, to use technology to create equitable and ongoing access to meaningful learning.

ISTE 4.1a explains that coaches should create a shared vision by working together with common purpose and foresight to visualise the full potential of technology to transform teaching and learning. They should use technology to learn and accelerate transformation through a cycle of improvement for working with educators to set goals, plan, implement and reflect.

Another way of looking at this is that a coaching culture is developed through good relationships and communication within an education system, where all stakeholders are clear on the vision for the use of technology designed for learning and accelerating transformation. A coaching culture encourages people to set goals, and plan to achieve them. The goals might be SMART goals, or Jim Knight’s PEERS goals. Coaching also encourages requesting and accepting feedback, celebrating achievements and reflecting on all stages of the coaching cycle.

Are you a coach? Have you tried the TEACHER coaching model? How will you share your vision and get buy in to embracing the vision? How are you going to communicate and share the vision?

You probably have lots of answers to these questions and have probably considered how much technology can help you. Have you tried using collaborative spaces like Padlet, Miro, Microsoft Whiteboard or collaboration spaces within Professional Learning Community (PLC) Teams or OneNote to generate ideas for a vision?

Have you used Microsoft Forms for collecting ideas? It can be a really useful tool for finding out what people think the vision should be, and considering the insights on the results helps create a shared vision.

Have you created a vision board in PowerPoint for visualising your goal? Have you used Excel for creating plans for achieving a goal, and for recording reflections?

Have you encouraged others to become change agents? There are so many technology tools that support teaching and learning, and anyone might be able to find a new tool that would help others. Do you have a live or online forum for sharing technology tools and tips?

There are so many great technological tools available. What are your favourites to solve these problems?