Active & Passive Tech Coaching: Meeting Educators Where They Are

Purpose & objective

In this session, we'll explore practical content and activities to help you become a more effective tech coach. We'll start by discussing why it's essential to use different coaching techniques, considering that staff members vary in availability, skills, and openness to coaching. We'll link these principles to Malcolm Knowles's Adult Learning Theory, or andragogy.

We'll define "Active and Passive Coaching" and share real-world examples that have worked for us and our colleagues. These include individual coaching using the Dynamic Learning Project's Challenge-based Coaching Model, sending out regular newsletters, organizing contests, hosting community events, and using coaching-style social gatherings to identify “the willing”.

Throughout the session, attendees will actively participate by responding to polling questions and collaborating with others to create a shared resource document full of practical ideas they can bring back and implement in their role. This document will serve as a valuable reference for all participants.

Our goal is to equip participants with practical insights and tools to enhance their tech coaching skills. We'll measure the success of this session by the depth of engagement, the quality of insights shared, and participant feedback, which will help us improve our suggested coaching methods.

Outline

Content and Activities:
The content we plan to present will begin with the rationale for differentiated technology coaching techniques. We will explain how staff members have different availability, capabilities, and willingness to be coached, which aligns with Malcolm Knowles’s Adult Learning Theory, or andragogy. We will explain our terms “Active and Passive Coaching” and review successful examples that have worked for us and our colleagues, including individual coaching utilizing the Dynamic Learning Project’s Challenge-based Coaching Model, weekly/monthly newsletters, school and distinct wide contests, district based community events, coaching-based recruitment-style social events, and others. The audience will participate by answering polling questions throughout the informative portion of the presentation, as well as collaborating on shared resource documents to add successful tools that have worked for them throughout their career. This document will be shared with all participants.

Time:
(5 minutes) Our session will begin with an introduction of the presenters and our background, with an immediate lead into the principles behind our presentation.

(10 minutes) We will explain what active and passive coaching looks like, and explain the rationale of why these coaching methods can be helpful to an educational staff.

(15 minutes) We will review successful examples of passive and active coaching that we have personally completed, as well as our colleagues.

(20 minutes) Participants will be invited to brainstorm active and passive coaching ideas, create an outline, and share it through a collaborative resource document that will be shared with the entire group of attendees.

(10 minutes) We will debrief with participants by reviewing their shared ideas and providing followup resources that can be used in their future coaching initiatives. We will also review the supporting resources and encourage participants to do the same.

Process:
The audience will be engaged through two methods, participation throughout the informative presentation using device based activities and peer-to-peer interaction where they can collaborate with their peers to contribute to a resource document. They will also be able to speak on their contributions during our debrief period at the end of the session.

Supporting research

- Malcolm Knowles’ Adult Learning Theory
- Instructional Coaching Initiative from the Dynamic Learning Project: https://digitalpromise.org/initiative/dynamic-learning-project/
- Courageous Edventures by Jennie Magiera
- ISTE Article “The Whys and Hows of Edtech Coaching”: https://www.iste.org/explore/professional-development/whys-and-hows-edtech-coaching