Advocacy

Applying Instructional Coaching in Private Schools in Saudi Arabia Mohammad Abbas ID: J00048722 Roehampton University

Dr. Kedmon Hungwe  Part I: Professional Practitioners as Agents for Positive Social Change

Although it is well known that nations depend on teachers to achieve the welfare and prosperity of their people (Feiman-Nemser, 2001), results still indicate that the worldwide-exerted efforts to prepare teachers to achieve this inspired role did not reach the expectations. According to increasing body of research, the transformation of schooling and teaching methods depends heavily on effective instructional change agents (Hallinger & Heck, 1998; Leithwood & Mascall, 2008; Leithwood et al., 2004). However, the majority of teachers are not aware of this role or are not prepared initially to be aware of it. Teachers are the first and most significant station that society depends on to bridge the gap between families and the bigger community. The ability to manage social change enables the community with all its members and institutions to respond to social problems positively. It is the fine-tuning of all needed values for society to live and work in harmony (Leadership Paradigms, no date). As noted by Fullan (1993), “Teaching at its core is a moral profession”. This vision may not be so clear to many teachers when practicing their profession. Moreover, in the past, teachers were assessed according to their mastery level of the knowledge and content areas they used to handle (Hurley, 2013); this is no longer the case.

Researches have proven the importance of addressing students with different teaching strategies according to their learning styles (Pritchard, 2013). It is clear that teachers have to design their tasks differently to meet the diversity in their classrooms. If teachers are successful at training their students to live and enjoy this diversity consciously and intentionally, this will undoubtedly help students get ready for social change in their societies (Carroll, 2010).

The Metropolitan Center for Urban Education (2008) assures that teachers are responsible for building a communicative and multi-cultural environment with their students. Teachers have to be comprehensively aware of their students’

cultural backgrounds in order to create an effective communication with them (Sheets and Gay, 1996). This will help build a strong relationship between the teachers and their students. Such relations will result in reaching high performance for both teachers and students (Madhlangobe, 2009:143). In the meanwhile, we cannot call teachers to accomplish this inter-cultural communication role, unless we provide them with the required repertoire of professional development and continuous support as teachers are at the core of students’ success (Schleicher, 2012). A leader of learning should be able to have sufficient information about his or her team members’ diversity in order to have an overview about their expected performance, ethics and communication styles.

Yet, this should not lead to forming stereotypes. In addition, educators need to examine their behaviors and routines to make sure, if they are fair to every team member or not.

Jim Knight is one of the most significant educators who works hard to develop and improve the role of instructional coaches in the educational arena (Center for Research on Learning, 2016).He has authored several books and articles on learning, teachers’ professional development and instructional coaching. He has won many awards and prizes in his field. As a Director of the Kansas Coaching Project in Kansas University, he has worked on developing a fruitful coaching theory through creating a collaborative partnership with the school community.

This partnership allows instructional coaches to maximize their roles with teachers and principals in order to lead the needed and required change in schools. Knight has spent most of his vocational life examining the most appropriate learning experiences in order to help teachers and educators reach their utmost while practicing their profession. Instructional coaching is a promising approach that has been developed and improved extensively by Knight. He denotes that instructional coaches are to focus teachers’ efforts on the

big four processes that confine the profession of any teachers: knowledge, instruction, behavior and assessment.

When questioning how big countries were able to build their civilizations and achieve the well fare for their citizens, you will find one answer; they have succeeded in building a strong education system through building good teachers (McCaffrey, Lockwood, Koretz & Hamilton, 2003). According to many researchers, teachers need to find a partner who helps them bridge theory with practice (Zenger and Stinnett, 2012) since most of their principals spend their times managing the administrative tasks giving no attention to the academic assistance their teachers need (Fink & Resnick, 2001; Spillane & Hunt, 2010; Supovitz & Buckley, 2008). Heston (2012:1) has seen Instructional Coaching as an effective methodology for preparing and assisting teachers to participate in this educational reform in the United States. Trying to pave the way for Instructional Coaching in the Arab Countries where it is still new and unproven, I tried to explore and examine several resources about Instructional Coaching as follows: 1- GROW Model I saw it suitable to start with The GROW as it depends primarily on drawing teachers’ attention to the important planning skills that many teachers lack. The model was developed by John Whitmore (AITSL, 2013). He seemed to build his model parallel to what life coaches do when starting their coaching sessions with helping their clients identifying their goals for life (Canfield, no date). Moreover, the model depends primarily on the coaches’ skills of introducing probing questions that enable them to maximize their teachers’ potentials and create an incentive momentum to achieve well in their careers. According to his model, coaches should pay more attention to how the coaching activities are introduced

in relevance to the teachers’ needs rather than focusing on just practicing some sets of prepared activities that may not achieve their objectives. AITSL (2013) assures that besides the skills of coaching, coaches should master the emotional intelligence, as they need to build fruitful relations with their teachers.

Step1 of the GROW Model – Goals Initially, coaches will work with their teachers to define certain goals to be achieved by the end of the coaching cycle. This step is crucial for teachers to start up a new successful journey in their career, yet I would proceed it with certain analysis for the teacher’s current situation in order to reach realistic goals that fit his or her abilities.

Step 2 of the GROW Model- Reality Consequently, coaches are to help their coachees analyze their reality in terms of examining their past actions that may or not hinder their progress towards their goals. However, such analysis shows only what ways to achieve goals and does not reflect if these goals were initially built on accurate initial analysis.

Step 3 of the GROW Model – Options Then coaches start to empower and motivate their teachers to achieve those goals through exploring their surrounding opportunities that may be useful catalysts to let teachers take the risk of progressing towards goals.

Step 4 of the GROW Model – Willingness Finally, teachers show their willingness to move for these goals through putting an actual action plan for their goals under assistance of their coaches.

2- Instructional Coaching by Jim Knight

Knight is one of the educators who has spent more than twenty years studying and developing a coaching model (Center for Research on Learning, 2016) that fits and meets the bad needs of the teachers to find expert teachers who are able to bridge with them from theory to practice and offer them the recipe of good teaching. Teachers need to focus their interest on major big four areas that have been called as the Big Four (Knight, 2007). These areas are, “Knowledge” and awareness required to teachers to be able to teach the academic content before his students; secondly, teachers need to master effective Instructional strategies that fit all their students and enable them to understand the content smoothly.

Then, teachers have to fine-tune their students’ behavior while demonstrating their lessons to guarantee that every student gets his needed interest and support effectively. CHAMPs tool (Sprick, Garrison &Howard, 1998) are recommended by knight in this area. Finally comes Assessment where teachers will be able to use variety of tools to check the progress of their students towards achieving the instructional goals.

3- The Coaching Wheel (Hay Group) The Coaching Wheel of Hay Group sees coaching as a means that affects positively on people to maintain a constant change in their behaviors in order to reach success (Aitsle, 2013). Therefore, the model counts on two pillars. First, individuals are the central

Figure 1. © Boyatzis theory of self-directed learning

concern of the coaching cycle. As a result, Hay Group has been affected by the Boyatzis (2006) Model of self-guided change (see figure 1). The model proposes that adults always change only when they want to do that. Thus, it offers more Figure 2. Hay Group

Figure 2. Hay Group

emphasis on the coachee to progress for change under the assistance of the coach. Secondly, Hay Group indicates coaching as the key factor for achieving any required change. The model counts mainly on a coaching wheel (see figure 2) that suggests that the coaching process will include one of six types of conversations. The wheel defines what type of conversation is needed and how to move from one type to another in order to keep an atmosphere of camaraderie during the coaching activities.

4- The Marzano Framework It is important that coaches help teachers understand how to communicate high expectations for their students (Marzano, 2010). I tried to explore Marzano’s contributions in this field in order to examine how coaches can help their teachers reach every single student in their classes. Marzano notes that if teachers communicate low expectations for their students, this will be evident through two things: “affective tone and interactions�. Affective tone means that teachers tend not to show good deal of praise and emotions for low students. In addition, Interactions means that teachers tend to expect less from low students and thus give them less feedback.

5- Using the Stages of Change Norcross & Prochaska (2002) have made many researches on great number of alcohol and drug addiction and they were able to elicit that change cannot happen though a one-step process; change encompasses consecutive steps. These steps are as follows:

1- “PRE-CONTEMPLATION” (I have not realized the necessity for change) 2. “CONTEMPLATION” (I am thinking of taking serious steps towards change) 3. “PREPARATION” (I am planning for this change) 4. “ACTION” (I am actualizing this plan) 5. “MAINTENANCE” (I am ready for keeping this change) Accordingly, our role as coaches is to realize that the process of changing teachers has to pass all these stages before achieving our expectations together.

Undoubtedly, this requires lots of efforts and patience.

Part II: Advocacy Action Plan (PowerPoint)

Part 3: Critical Reflection on Professional Growth

1- Developing Critical Practice in Education

According to Appleby and Pilkington (2014), we do not have proficiency by birth nor do we get it easily through our life. Developing my role as a critical practitioner in education has been a long yet productive journey in my master’s program. I remember when I received a feedback from one of my instructors that I need to stick to academic writing. In those times, I have not even understood what academic writing means. Under her assistance, I tried hard to refine my arguments, choose a suitable style for writing, find credible resources, cite my references well (University of Roehampton, no date), and many other kills and I am still saving no efforts to improve it.

One major challenge I have experienced was getting rid of my biases and being able to analyze the events and form objective viewpoints about some questions (University of Reading, no date). As educator, I have learnt how to stay alert in different situations and solve problems effectively. I have realized that any effort can be examined and questioned in order for getting the best impact and benefit.

Consequently, I have grown in communication skills. I got the ability to interact with different colleagues from different countries and share knowledge and ideas about challenging topics such as diversity and leadership. In my work area, I started to plan to play my role as a change agent. I helped my school reorganize the strategic plan. Accordingly, we have come up with a new vision that will surely participate in building our community. In my department, I started to train my staff on leading the change process. I started to motivate them to develop their work areas. I became more flexible to new suggestions and point of views. I became able to listen attentively and show interest and empathy while discussions. We succeeded in building a true learning community that led the school to many prizes and awards locally and even internationally. As a team, we started to consider our job as an effort that will precipitate the development of our society. We started to practice our social responsibility effectively. In their turns, my staff started to spared the word, they launched the s

Studying online was very challenging in the early beginning of my master’s program. I felt overloaded with additional tasks that consume my time and effort.

I struggled a lot to adapt myself to the requirements of the study. I have to admit that the good organization of the master’s program on the blackboard has helped me progress in my study. There is always scheduled activities and assignments to be delivered on fixed times. This routine helped me organize my time. Although, I am still suffering in my time management, I still able to catch up the assignments and work on them. In all the previous modules, I was able to submit my assignments on time, yet, due to workload, I failed to do so in the current module.

That means I have to reconsider my time management and pay more attention to my weekly tasks. I think prioritizing my activities along with fixing certain timings for my study will help me avoid such problems in the future.

2- My Professional Goals Reflecting on the first draft of my professional goals has assured that I am stepping forward in the right direction of my vocational career. My goals tries to cover three main areas. These areas are as follows: - Increasing my knowledge and research skills - Increasing my leadership skills -

Developing and enhancing outstanding vocational career through adopting effective and research-based techniques and methodologies ( i.e. Instructional Coaching program)

For the first category, I have certainly proceeded in developing my research skills through my journey in my master’s program. That is very evident even when reading my past assignments where I had met difficulties in finding the right resources and citing well those resources. Yes, I still receive some comments from my instructors, but now I know how to research and cite my resources through Harvard style. One of the most significant benefits I have gained through gaining these research skills is the ability to measure the credibility and reliability of my resources. Additionally, one major paradigm shift in my thinking that has happened. It is that learning is a life-long skill. Therefore, this goal will stay my first goal in my professional journey.

Secondly, as denoted by Northouse (2012), leadership is a mean of improving all aspects of life; I was planning to boost my leadership skills. When starting my master’s program I was searching for certain programs to enhance my leadership skills. Going through the master’ program has enabled me to develop different leadership skills. I had an entire module on how to practice leadership and

enhance these skills. In order for mastering these skills, I started practicing those skills in my professional and social life. Consequently, my coming goals in this area will include conducting training programs on the skills that I have gained and enhancing my leadership skills through reading and attending extra training programs on leadership.

Finally, I always plan to develop and enhance my vocational career. One of my dreams was helping teachers perform their job smoothly and professionally. I do believe that teachers can transform the whole society. According to several scholars (Aguilar, 2012; Heston, 2013; Knight, 2007), Instructional Caching is one approach that can participate in helping teachers meet our expectations.

This is why I had a goal of applying Instructional Coaching as a supervisory approach in my school. Reaching module five, I have read and explored many researches and articles about Instructional coaching. I have examined several models that suggest different ways of it. Accordingly, my goals will be developing a new model of Instruction Coaching that suits our teachers’ needs in the Middle East and especially in Saudi Arabia.

3- My Philosophy of Development and Learning

It is a mazing to decide to change yourself, and then you find that you have to lead the change around you. When I decided to boost my knowledge and get a master’s degree in educational leadership, I realized that I would get a big amount of information and skills that will qualify me to be a good leader in my career. Once I started the study, I realized that this is not enough. I have to lead the change not only for myself, but also for the sake of the whole society. As educator, I need to work as a change agent who helps students get ready for their lives (Cited in Laureate Education: Day, 2103).

Three Domains

I depend on three basic principles in my learning philosophy. First, education is a life-long process and not a temporary project or activity (Leicester, 2003).

Education is the main gate through which the whole society can improve and sustain. According to Kalantzis & Cope (2000), schools are responsible for getting students ready to be involved in the social life successfully. Consequently, teachers need to possess a variety of communication and collaboration skills that qualify them to adopt such roles (Hourcade and Bauwens, 2003). Teachers are able to fulfill their tasks efficiently if they are equipped with the required “knowledge and skills� for their profession (Feiman-Nemser, 2001).

Secondly, every individual has the right to receive differentiated assistance according to his or her needs, learning styles and social contexts. Similar to students, teachers need to be supervised and guided individually according to what they really need. Individualized support is an influential development tool where a coach can draw a unique and measured career path for every teacher according to his or her settings (Aguilar, 2016). Realizing this issue helped me target suitable professional development programs for my staff. It is also clear that I am eager to apply instructional coaching in my school for this reason as the first role of it is meeting teachers where they are and helping them achieving the agreed upon goals (Aguilar, 2015).

Finally, understanding the functioning of the brain helps us teach better (Masson, 2014). Recently, the brain research has proven three amazing facts about brain that led me to change my mind in the way we learn and the way we teach our students. First, as we continue in learning, our brains make new neuronal connections that affect the structure and size of the brain. This shows clearly the relation between learning and brain growth, the issue which is our own

responsibility as teachers. Secondly, the students’ “architecture of the brain” effects the way of learning. That means that better understanding of the brain structure will help us offer better teaching for them. Thirdly, the way we teach impacts the way the brain grow. Accordingly, different styles of teaching may form different influences on the growth of students’ brain. This clarifies the major role of teachers when choosing the most effective teaching approaches that fit their students’ needs.

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