Regularly evaluate and reflect on their professional practice and dispositions to improve and strengthen their ability to effectively model and facilitate technology enhanced learning experiences
ISTE Coaching Standards (2014)
Resonant Ideas: Evaluate and reflect on our own coaching practices
This capstone project has required that we review how the work we have done in the Digital Education Leadership program supports the ISTE Coaching standards. I have covered the importance of evaluating programs and practices in Standard 4, but indicator 6c describes the need for coaches to shine the light on their own professional practices. So how to best do this?
The skills such as small scale evaluations that we learned in EDTC 6106 “Professional Development and Program Evaluation” can be applied to assessing coaching work, such as surveying teachers after professional development to see whether they found it effective, or examining whether teaching practices and student outcomes changed after coaching sessions.
The experience I had in developing the questionnaire and evaluating the results of a Computer Science pilot program in our district for the 6106 Community Engagement project could easily apply to assessing the effectiveness of any program I help implement in the future. And that project included an aspect of self-evaluation by recognizing limitations in the research design and planning how to address those limitations in future research.
The same protocols that apply to lesson evaluation that I describe in Protocols: Safe Havens for Discussion could also be used to examine whether a coaching approach or series of sessions were working. This could be done with another coach as the facilitator and could help both the person doing the coaching and the teacher being coached.
When I worked in product management we always conducted a post-mortem analysis after a product launched. These were invaluable in determining what went well and what we would do differently in the next product release. I think about applying this approach to my own work this spring as we were thrown into remote teaching: knowing what I know now, what would I do differently? How could I have been more effective in supporting the teachers I work with? What worked well and should be expanded? These are the types of questions coaches need to ask themselves in order to deepen their professional knowledge and practices.
