Virtual Coaching: Strategies for Building Trust and Accomplishing Data-Driven Goals

Purpose & objective

Challenge/Solution: School districts in Kansas and across the nation are facing unprecedented challenges with teacher shortages including teacher attrition, lack of certification, and trouble filling vacancies. For instance, special education teacher vacancies continue to be an identified need and severe teacher shortage area in all states (US Dept of Education, 2017). Students in high poverty and high minority settings bear the brunt of teacher shortages. The Kansas State Department, in partnership with the University of Kansas have endeavored to find cost-effective solutions that do not sacrifice the integrity of adult learning best practice. Virtual instructional coaching has become a lifeline for many school districts and teachers who either have geographical or economical constraints that prevent them from accessing effective professional learning. Virtual coaching provides educators access to experts who can conduct coaching sessions, perform in-depth classroom observations, provide feedback, and brainstorm individual student learning needs, all via free video conferencing and a video analysis platform without limitations placed on schools surrounding distance and/or available personnel.

In order to ensure that coachees experience an equal or better coaching experience as what they would experience with an on-ground coach, VECTOR, which is an acronym for six phases of virtual coaching: Verify perspectives, Examine influence, Commit to Change, Take action, Operationalize performance, and Reflect/recommit can be used to guide new and experienced virtual coaches. Participants in this session will experience all six phases and the various technology solutions that make virtual instructional coaching a powerful professional learning solution. They will hear from veteran virtual coaches as they compare their on-ground and virtual experiences and the methods and strategies that have worked best, virtually.

Session Relevance: Coaches, administrators, and educators will find value in examining their practice through a virtual lens. Current e-coaching, virtual coaching, or on-ground coaching programs will find value in the activities, guidelines, and protocols shared during this session, which can be transferred and used in one form or another to other contexts. Session participants may be trying to determine if aspects of current on-ground coaching could benefit from partial or even all activities going virtual and the VECTOR model can help bolster progress. Many on-ground coaches across the nation are spending time traveling between sites and are unable to meet as frequently or as long as they would like due to time spent in a car. Even if attendees determine that virtual coaching cannot be accomplished in their context immediately, this session will help participants begin to build an argument for introducing virtual coaching into their context in the future.

Technology Interventions: This virtual coaching model uses technology to support coach and coachee understanding of the learning environment, set goals, and provide professional learning based on student performance data and evidence-based literacy strategies and technology solutions. Our instructional coaches use Zoom for our video conferencing solution, as well as YouTube, GoReact, Torsh, and Swivl platforms to perform video-based observations. The technology is agnostic and the model, strategies and best practice shared can work within any video conferencing and video-based observation platform. For this session, additional technology solutions will be shared including the use of Padlet and Google Docs or similar collaborative, free, open and available tools that can be used on-ground or online.

Model & Strategies Employed: The strategies and methods to be shared were born out of necessity, and help provide a feasible solution to many barriers traditional PL and face-to-face coaching have been unable to overcome, including barriers of time, money, and geographic isolation. As shown in the outline below, we will guide participants through three areas where virtual coaching and on-site coaching differ and how VCs have effectively navigated those differences. In addition, participants will have access to a free database populated with coach and coachee tips, tricks, resources, and tools to support each phase of VECTOR and will be available to session attendees.

Evidence of Success:
Through surveys, coachees shared how the focused, personalized professional learning built their capacity in literacy instruction and thus, increased the capacity and sustainability of professional learning in their school and district. The majority of coachees requested to continue into the following academic year, three years running. Indeed, the overall program was so successful that the year two experienced a tri-fold increase in both virtual coaches and coachees. Surveys with coachees, interviews and annual log data from coaches, as well as interviews with administrators will be shared. In addition, this year, we are sustaining the network created through grant funds due to preview coachee requests.

Outline

1. Introduction and session format description (2 minutes)
Participants will be encouraged to open the online handout and introduced to the virtual coach presenters, the free VECTOR Collection website, and the research guiding our efforts.

2. Why building a relationship of trust is critical to virtual coaching success (2 minutes)
The virtual coach (VC) will introduce the need for building trust and the unique challenges and advantages that virtual coaching presents. For instance, because the coach is not physically in the school building/district the challenge is that coaches cannot drop-in to say hi or informally chat in the hallway, but they also are also not immersed in the politics that sometimes follow that proximity. Having said that, they still need to understand the sphere of influence a coachee has so that they can recommend feasible and practical solutions that meet the needs of the educator and the building/district.

3. Demonstration of specific strategy and associated resource (2 minutes)
The VC will share a real-life example of how trust was built using a specific strategy and resource. In order to help the coachee feel comfortable beginning the coaching process, it is critical to understand all of the influences that impact their professional life. Using Padlet, coaches ask coachees to brainstorm everything that is weighing on them or that they are responsible for, professionally. The coach and coachee drag each item into two columns-what they can control and everything they cannot control. They then rank order the items in the “can control” column so that the ones most important to the coachee are at the top. These items will launch them into discussions around their goal.

4. Reflection (2 minute)
Attendees will be encouraged to crowd-source, swapping additional ideas and resources with other neighbors and crafting easy action steps to support implementation of new ideas into their own educational settings. Participants will be encouraged to post their reflections on a Google Doc in order to maintain a repository of ideas and resources shared.

5. Why goal setting is critical for virtual coaching success (2 minutes)
The virtual coach (VC) will introduce the need for creating good goals and the unique challenges and advantages that virtual coaching presents. Goal setting needs to be specific, data-driven, relevant and feasible otherwise, coaches and coachees will spin their wheels and make little progress. Virtual coaching is flexible for when to meet, but usually the length of time is limited to the availability of the coachee, so sessions need to be effective and efficient.

6. Demonstration of specific strategy and associated resource (2 minutes)
To increase specificity and ensure data-driven attributes within a goal, VCs can use a specific formula we created for co-creating a goal with a coachee via screen sharing. We will demonstrate the process and offer tips for replication.

7. Reflection (2 minute)
Attendees will be encouraged to crowd-source, swapping additional ideas and resources with other neighbors and crafting easy action steps to support implementation of new ideas into their own educational settings. Participants will be encouraged to post their reflections on a Google Doc in order to maintain a repository of ideas and resources shared.

8. Why video modeling and observation are critical for virtual coaching success (2 minutes)
The virtual coach will introduce the need for using video to both model best practice and iteratively develop new practice. Modeling best practice and observing iterative change virtually is different than on-site. Asynchronous and synchronous video has to be used to enhance the strategy and ensure success.

9. Demonstration of specific strategies and associated resources (2 minutes)
For modeling best practice, coaches will share how they have gotten creative with video recordings and live video-based sessions. For observing iterative implementation of new practice in coachees, coaches will share their strategy for video-based observations and associated checklists used to produce feedback.

10. Reflection (2 minute)
Attendees will be encouraged to crowd-source, swapping additional ideas and resources with other neighbors and crafting easy action steps to support implementation of new ideas into their own educational settings. Participants will be encouraged to post their reflections on a Google Doc in order to maintain a repository of ideas and resources shared.

11. Summary of Session and Ensure Participant Access to Resources (2 minutes)

12. Participant Questions (8 minutes) Questions and whole group discussion.

Supporting research

Funding cuts have disproportionately affected high-needs schools, and have caused budgets for teacher PL to be drastically reduced or to be cut entirely (Yadavalli, Waldorf, & Florax, 2017). Recently, the Westat Equity Team found that “thirty-five states identified insufficient educator support and professional development as a root cause of equity gaps” (Williams, Adrien, Murthy, & Pietryka, 2016). Even more compelling is research stating that without job-embedded, personalized, ongoing support that includes classroom observations and feedback, transfer from knowledge to practice rests at an abysmal 10-15%, compared to 80-95% transfer for PL that includes those features (Tkatchov & Pollnow, 2012). These specific features were among those recently confirmed in a 2017 study from the Learning Policy Institute, which identified seven key features typically present in effective professional development (Darling-Hammond, Hyler, & Gardner, 2017). The seven features include: (1) A focus on content; (2) Incorporation of active learning; (3) Collaborative opportunities; (4) Use of models of effective practice; (5) Coaching and expert support; (6) Opportunities for feedback and reflection; and (6) A sustained duration (Darling-Hammond, et. al., 2017). Unfortunately, the task of ensuring these seven features are present in teacher PL usually falls to one or two administrators who have many other responsibilities – including student safety, state and federal compliance, and discipline, to name a few.

As Internet access has become more ubiquitous and teachers have sought out new strategies and methods for engaging learners (Hough, Smithey, & Evertson, 2004), the cost challenges of providing high-quality in-person professional learning for teachers in particular may accelerate a more widespread and centrally-organized use of online learning experiences in schools and districts (Kraft, Blazar, & Hogan, 2016). “The lack of any statistically significant differences in effect sizes between in-person and virtual coaching suggests that virtual coaching models may be able to maintain quality while increasing scalability. This finding is consistent with Powell et al. (2010), who did not find any meaningful differences in outcomes across teachers randomly assigned to an in-person coach versus a coach who met with teachers virtually (573).”

It is important to note that while the overall program was designed to reflect the specific features needed for effective professional development (Darling-Hammond, et. al., 2017) this session is also designed to model effective PD. Due to the nature of the conference, the content is technology-centric and it cannot necessarily be ongoing (although participants can join the social network to engage beyond the conference), but we are purposefully incorporating active learning, collaborative opportunities, the use of models of effective practice, expert support, and opportunities for feedback and reflection.