Peer Coaching

Getting Started - Why Peer Coaching?

What sort of impact does professional development, including coaching, have on classroom practice?

Professional development that includes peer coaching, study teams, or peer visits to provide opportunities for collaboration, feedback, and reflection, has a clear impact on classroom practice, as the last row in the following table suggests.

Type of Training	Knowledge Mastery	Skill Acquisition	Classroom Application
Theory +	85%	15%	5–10%
Practice +	85%	80%	10–15%
Coaching, Study Teams, Peer Visits	90%	90%	80–90%

This table was adapted from information found in Showers and Joyce's research on the impact of professional development.

Take a moment to really think about how this impacts classroom practice. It becomes clear that professional development that provides opportunities for collaboration, coaching, peer visits, and feedback clearly has more impact.

Conclusion

1. Log in to the Canvas Peer Coach community and go to the page called "Why Peer Coaching? Conclusion".
2. On this page you will see guidelines for using the Conversation facility in Canvas.
3. Draw on what you know about coaching and have an online conversation about how coaching aligns with the characteristics of effective professional development.

A conversation is usually a communication with one or more participants that you can initiate at any time that you feel that this will be useful. You can also use it for sharing an attached document with the group. You use the Inbox for this purpose.

A discussion will be an assignment for you to discuss a question or issue with your whole group. There is a seperate but similar threaded discussion facility for this in Canvas. The discussions are marked with a speech bubble icon.

Characteristics of Effective Professional Development:

• On the job, job-embedded training
• Long-term, ongoing
• Focused on classroom activities
• Highly collaborative environment
• Structured to offer chances to learn from others

Previous Page

Related Scenarios

» Overview
» Preparing Coaches for Online Learning
» Why Peer Coaching?
» Coaching Roles
» Coaching Plan
» Closing