Leaders as Problem Solvers

Leaders as Problem Solvers Mohammad Abbas Roehampton University Problem Statement

According to a wide range of thinkers and scholars, the prosperity of any nation depends primarily on the excellence of its teachers (Feiman-Nemser, 2001). Consequently, policy makers and educators should pay prominent attention to the professional development programs provided to teachers in order to fulfill the requirements of building its teachers and thus its students. National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (1996) denotes that teachers achieve according to what they know and can perform with their students. Here lies the importance of assisting teachers to apply what they are taught and trained on proficiently. This is why a growing body of research states that the reform of teaching and learning processes is a result of developing effective instructional leaders (Hallinger & Heck, 1998; Leithwood & Mascall, 2008; Leithwood et al., 2004). However, other researchers deny that most principals have the capability and the sufficient time to behave as instructional leaders (Fink & Resnick, 2001; Levine, 2005; Spillane & Hunt, 2010; Supovitz & Buckley, 2008). Accordingly, surveys still indicate that teachers necessarily need more support and coaching programs than they regularly receive (Zenger and Stinnett, 2012). Moreover, teachers always need to make sure that they have reached the right implementation of those new professional programs; and they need to find on-demand experts to discuss the differences between theory and practice inside their classes with them- instructional coaching is trying to meet these challenges successfully. In the following insights, I will highlight some of the stunning contributions that have been suggested and verified through instructional coaching approach.

1- GROW Model John Whitmore (2009) suggests the GROW Model to help raise the awareness of the importance of maximizing the human potential to reach its ultimate. He adds that his model not only focuses on what are done in the coaching activities, but also pays great attention to how are these activities are done. Whitmore conceives that coaches have to master the art of coaching as well as the emotional intelligence rather than having the experience in the content of the subject taught. Therefore, the effectiveness of a coach relies on his ability to raise the coachee’s sense of awareness and responsibility “through effective questioning”.

Stage1 of the GROW Model – Setting Goals

In this stage, the coach tries help his or her teachers identify challenging goals that have to be met through short and long terms. Such questions will help teachers envision their wishes and intentions in order to reach them purposefully.

Stage 2 of the GROW Model- Reality understanding After setting goals, teachers need to assess their current situation and speculate their strengths that helped them grow and develop and weaknesses that prevented them from progressing and reaching their goals.

Stage 3 of the GROW Model – Identifying Options Reaching this step, teachers or coachees try to bridge the gap between their goals and their realities. They start to explore all options they have or they can benefit from to achieve their goals. Consequently, teachers start to feel empowered and take the ownership of their progress.

Stage 4 of the GROW Model – Willing to move forward Finally, teachers should have the will to plan for next steps and keep moving forward in achieving his goals. They have to put their action plans and stick to achieving them.

2- Instructional Coaching, a partnership Approach to Improving Instruction Knight has adopted seven steps for coaching cycle. First, the coach creates rapport with his or her teachers through enrolling and sorting them upon their experiences. Secondly, both the coach and the coachees are to plan the new instructional procedures that will be implemented in the coaching cycle. Third, the coach conducts example lessons in front of his or her teachers. Fourth, a reflection session is to be held in order to discuss the findings of the model lesson. Fifth, the coach in hi turn observes the teacher when introducing the new strategies in his or her lessons. Sixth, they both analyze the collected facts from the mutual lessons to measure the teacher’s performance and progress. Finally, the coach continues in supporting the teacher until reaching the mastery level (2007). Knight also has highlighted the Big Four processes that teachers must master to promote their success with their profession. These Big Four include 1) Knowledge or content area as teachers should be aware of their major very skillfully. 2) Assessment; teachers should conduct several types of

assessments to gauge the performance of their students. 3) Classroom management is an essential factor that should be adjusted to fostering positive environment for the students through a proved system called CHAMPs. 4) Instructional strategies should be convenient to the types of students and relevant to the taught content.

3- Hay Group Coaching Wheel

Fig ure 1 Š Boyatzis Hay Group model considers coaching as a key factor to precipitate the cycle of change as a paramount of any positively achieved success (aitsle, 2013). Accordingly, this model builds its premise on two principles. First, it looks at the individual as the center of the coaching cycle. Secondly, it defines coaching as the heart of the change process. For these reasons, Hay Group has embraced the Boyatzis Model of self-guided change (see figure 1) as an effective tool. The effectiveness of this tool lies in that it suggests that we as adults accept to learn and change only when we want to do that. Therefore, it gives more focus on the role of the coachee rather than the coache’s. The model depends primarily on a coaching wheel (see figure 2) that comprises six main conversation areas that enable coaches to create an

atmosphere of rapport and camaraderie between the coach and his

or her

coachees.

Part 2: Leaders in Action My Ten Leadership Responsiveness Indicators According to Northouse, it is very critical for leaders to understand their responsibilities when building and functioning teams (2012:298).

Instructional coaching, as a new approach in Arab Countries, needs a lot of interest and patience in order to get the maximum of it. As a head of academic supervision department in my school, I need to restructure the whole processes of my department according to the new concept of instructional coaching instead of the ordinary advisory system applied all over the region.

Getting involved in such a process needs necessarily a comprehensive set of leadership responsiveness indicators that should guarantee success of this initiative. In the following lines, a number of indicators will be discussed and critically analyzed in order to highlight their important role in solving several problems in the educational arena.

1- Passion I chose to start with passion as my first indicator in order to change it! Yes, I really believe that passion is a key factor to achieve any progress. Yet, passion alone is not enough, as it needs to be accompanied with certain routine (McKeown, 2014) that drives it to the right directions. I would turn this indicator into “Strategic Vision”. According to Newmann and Wehlage (1995), there is a great correlation between creating a shared vision about the students’ performance and the effective functioning of the school. Starting a new department for Instructional Coaching in my school is a big mind shift that has to be implemented strategically. One of the major role of Instructional Coach (IC) is to reach teachers where they are and help them step forward (Aguilar, 2015). If ICs do not able to create a shared vision that encompasses long and short-term objectives , they will not be able to help teachers have this step forward.

2- Change leadership

ICs have a critical influence overall school system change (Aguilar, 2015). They should see and analyze the school’s big picture related to students’ progress, teachers’ performance and administrators’ efficiency. As ICs are responsible for developing the educational processes as a whole, they have to help the school community see this change happening and encourage all the staff to get involved.

3- Focus on students, learning and teaching Heck, Larson, and Marcoulides (1990) donated that higher performing school principals spend most of their time supporting their teachers and managing the instructional program in their schools. However, enormous body of research has indicated that the daily managing of schools administrators is only to handle the managerial tasks (Wolcott, 1973; Martinko and Gardner, 1990; Spillane and Hunt, 2010). This is why Heston (2012:1) has seen Instructional Coaching as a promising solution to this dilemma. Accordingly, ICs will have to take responsibility of supporting teachers and students achieve their instructional goals through their best-proven applied practices.

4- Policy and Procedures There is nothing to be exist in a vacuum (Graça and Passos, 2014). Developing and agreeing upon defined sets of policies and procedures that confine the whole work of ICs and their teachers will definitely pledge the effective activation of the coaching approach. ICs should always inform their teachers of the expectations about their performance.

5- Cultural responsiveness ICs works with diversity of teachers, so they should possess a variety of skills to meet these differences effectively (Barge, 1996). Since the main role of ICs is to transform their teachers’ performance, they need to meet teachers at their area of interest and start to guide them to the best practices gradually.

6- Collaboration Instructional coaching is a collaborative, proven-based approach that is confined by a reciprocal interaction between the IC and his or her coachees (Devine, Houssemand and

Meyers, 2013). Through the coaching cycle, a collaborative planning to introduce and apply the new practices and techniques is conducted by both ICs and their teachers (knight, 2007).

7- Communication ICs should have selection of special communication skills and be able to listen and nurture a sense of confidence (knight, 2007). ICs are good listeners. They should give their teachers several opportunities to express their interests and speak their minds in order to reach a consensus of what should be implemented and why. This process of dynamic interactions requires good communication skills.

8- Building and managing relationships Not unlike life-coaches, ICs have to own a repertoire of skills and capabilities in order to build mutual rapport and sustain strong relationships with their teachers to avoid change resistance and waste of efforts (Devine, Houssemand and Meyers, 2013).

9- Monitoring and controlling It is undoubtedly that one of the inconvenient experiences that teachers face frequently is being visited and monitored. As stated by Avolio (1999), the main concern of leaders should be how to improve their staff. In this case, teachers will welcome ICs in their classes and receive their feedback good-naturedly.

10- Celebrating Success One of the eventual goals of all these efforts is to help teachers perform exceptionally and meet our expectations. Reaching this point, ICs as leaders have to define what type of support and help should be provided to their teachers. Teachers can exceed our expectations and achieve excellence if they receive the needed recognition and celebration (Larson & LaFasto, 1989).

Section 1: Introduction Effective Instructional leadership theories suppose that principals and teachers together should realize their major and mutual role in achieving a common and shared vision if they

want to improve their educational community (Pajak, 1989; Blase & Blase, 2004).

Attempting to gain practical insights and examine certain leadership capacities of some informal leaders in their schools, I developed various types of open-ended questions. These questions were formed to help me indirectly identify the different practices of these informal leaders regarding the targeted leadership areas. Moreover, trying to survey major insights of those leaders about the most impressive leadership areas, I tried to relate my questions to the educational settings in order to get relevant and practiced-based answers. For example, for the research-based leadership practices, I preferred not to ask them directly about their preferred leadership styles and practices, but I tended to ask them, as teachers, about the techniques they may use to make decisions about choosing the most effective teaching strategies. This is because determining on choosing certain strategy rather than others is one of the important responsibilities and leadership actions teachers have to take ownership of.

In my turn, I tried to infer their preferred practices through their answers. These leadership areas are as follows: •

Research-based practices/actions

•

Collaboration

•

Communication

•

Cultural responsiveness

•

Change leadership principles

I picked three informal leaders in their schools in Saudi Arabia to interview. The first person, Mr. A, is British. He is an ESL senior teacher in the international section in my school.

Although he is twenty-six, his extensive experience in teaching spans over schools and universities. The second person, Mr. B, is Egyptian. He is an ESL senior teacher in an Arabic school in the same city. He has taught English as a second language in Egypt and has moved to Saudi Arabia twelve years ago. The third person, Mr. C, is Egyptian. He is an ESL senior teacher in international school in my city. His experience in teaching English a second language spreads over twenty years in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Getting my interviewees on board, I talked to them about the interviews and the reason for them. Furthermore, I

explained the nature of the questions and I sent them the questions via emails to get them prepared early for the interviews.

Section 2: Interview Analysis 1-Research-based leadership practices - How do you decide on the best instructional strategies in your classroom?

- How do you measure the effectiveness of these strategies?

- How can you grow your students as future leaders?

These questions were tended to measure the research-based leadership practices amongst my interviewees. As denoted by Harris (2003) the functioning of school community still depends primarily on “the social exchange theory” that legislates the clear distinction of roles and responsibilities between school administrators and teachers. However, Beachum and Dentith (2004) call for a new era where cooperative and research-based collaboration between the whole school communities exists. Trying to activate this call, I tried to pose the previous three probing questions. The first question targeted to explore if the teachers follow some leadership practices towards teaching their students and how they use these practices to choose the suitable instructional strategies that fit their students or do they depend on their academic supervisor on determining these strategies on their own? Though it is indicated by (Blase & Blase, 2004) that operative “instructional supervision” repeatedly supports independence for instructors to decide about their teaching process. The answers of the three teachers were nearly the same. They have all stated that they depend on their students’ needs to determine the suitable strategy. For Mr. (A), he has stated that “he does not believe in a one size fits all strategy”. Furthermore, Mr. (B), has stated “he may get feedback from his students” to measure the effectiveness of his teaching. And Mr. (C) has clarified that “he applies the strategies that help him provide a positive learning environment to his students”. In total, what has been stated by the three of the teachers depends directly on what Hall (2002) states that Differentiated Instruction is a teaching approach that emphasizes the adoption of different teaching techniques according to the students’ individual needs and diversity.

The second question aimed to help me know if the three senior teachers really depend on research-based theories to check the validity of their previously chosen teaching strategies or not. Exploring their answers has shown an agreement on the necessity of using a blend of formative and summative assessments (Black &Paul, 19993) to check the impact of the applied strategies on the students’ performance. However, only Mr. (A) has given more attention to the necessity of giving more attention to the students’ reactions and if they were satisfied (Hong, 2002) during the application of the teaching strategies or not.

The third question has extended the impact of using these research-based leadership practices to investigate how teachers, by their turn, will help develop the leadership skills on their students. Although every interviewee has suggested different practices and topics to enhance his students’ leadership capacities, such as confidence, responsibility and teamwork. Yet, they all have made an agreement on the necessity of giving special attention to high order thinking skills (Lewis &Smith, 1993) in order to enhance the leadership capacities to their students.

Communication - How do you consider communication as a critical tool for practitioner learners?

- What are the most effective ways of communication that you use to reach out all your stakeholders?

According to MacDonald and Heidi (2011), Effective communication is an essential means for getting all stakeholders understand how they play a critical role in a student’s progress.

This is why professional teachers should possess good communication skills. They should always be ready to express their feedback, concern and any needed interventions to their stakeholders brilliantly and proactively. The above two questions were aimed to reflect the degree of interest that my interviewees have about the importance of communication and to highlight the most effective communication tools that they prefer to use in their educational settings. All my interviewee have shown great interest in communication skills where they all considered them important assets in managing productive relationships with all

stakeholders. One of them has denoted “good communication gives a practitioner a space to express his ideas and feedback”. When analyzing their preferred communication styles, I found that Mr. (A) tends to be formal when commutating with his stakeholders. That may be clear in his techniques as he has chosen to hold frequent meetings and follow up through emails. According to Hart and Robinson (2010), Mr. (A) is nearly to be a DOER as he likes to initiate his communication styles and prefers one-way communication channels. On the contrary, the other two interviewees seemed to be RELATERs as have stated that they prefer two-way flow channels of communication. They have even expressed that they like to start their communication with a SMILE and then start the ordinary communication. This reflects how RELATERs are motivated through relationships and motivation (Hart and Robinson, 2010).

Collaboration - What is your opinion about working in teams?

- As a team member, what do you consider more: achieving goals or keeping relationships?

- Tell me about a situation when you felt that your team was working properly?

Miscisin (2001) distinguished between four main personality styles using a color scale: (a) Oranges who are spirited, lively, negotiators and welcome change; (b) Blues who are thoughtful, attentive, wholehearted, and relationally oriented; (c) Greens who are thinkers, systematic, reasonable, and perfectionist; and (d) Golds are organized, task oriented, reliable, and have a strong will to perform. Depending on Miscisin (2001), I tried to analyze my interviewees’ answers. The first question tends to measure the importance of collaboration and teamwork spirit from my interviewees’ perceptions. The second one is an under pressure one as the interviewees have to choose between achieving goals or (Golds) and keeping relationships or (Blues). The third question is a story from which I can infer certain factors, from the interviewees’ point of views, which leads to team success. Analyzing the answers, it was very evident that Mr. (A) is Gold. He has chosen achieving goals than keeping his relationships with no doubts. Even when telling his story he was praising his

team because they all had specific tasks and deadlines .While the other two people seem to be Blues, as they have chosen keeping relationships. When coming to their stories, they have praised the teamwork spirit they were feeling when working in their teams.

Cultural Responsiveness - What kind of values that you consider the most effective in a diverse community?

- In your opinion, are there any instructional strategies that fit better with a diverse classroom community?

- Do your school’s vision, mission and values reflect any attention to diversity?

As denoted by (Andrews & Sonder, 1987; Blase & Blase, 2004), highly functioning schools depend on successful leaders. Amongst those leaders, should exist successful teachers who are able to lead the different diversity of their students to excel and exceed the expectations.

In order to examine if my interviewees are armed with the needed repertoire of the essential ethics and teaching strategies to meet this culturally diversity of students in our educational community, the first and second questions were found. In addition, I wanted to get sure if these informal leaders work systematically through a well-organized effort that is driven by a visionary leadership in their schools through the third question. Exploring their answers, I have found that they all have stated similar ethics about cultural responsiveness such as respect, understanding differences, equity and open mindedness. Additionally, both Mr. (B) and Mr. (C) have seen Cooperative Learning as one of the most effective instructional strategies that may fits a diverse classroom community well, while Mr. (A) has not mentioned a specific strategy. Besides, it is worthy to mention that all the three interviewees have expressed that all their schools’ vision support a cultural responsive atmosphere (Sergiovanni, 2007).

Change - Is there always a need for a change?

-Tell me about your experience when you have had a work change and how did you manage this change?

- Do you think that working under pressure is entertaining? Why? Change facilitators in classrooms can act dynamically to be the most significant school improvement factors (Roach, Kratochwill &Frank, 2009). According to Hord (1992), “change facilitators” should have six major functions to enable change in their schools (see Figure 1): (a) creating, declaring, and sharing a common vision of change; (b) planning to support educators with needed resources; (c) providing educators with the required professional growth programs; (d) testing the validity of applying research-based practices; (e) providing continuous assistance for implementation; and (f) fostering change through supportive educational settings .

Fostering a change through supportive educational settings

Reaching this point, it is not as easy as the previous leadership practices to analyze my interviewees’ answers in terms of their change practices and principles; as it is well understandable that “Educational change is technically simple and socially complex” (Fullan, 2007). Using Hord’s model to shed the light on my interviewees’ change practices, I have grasped that they all possess a vision for the change and this comes directly from their thorough understanding to their job requirements and the expectations that their students have to reach (questions number one and two). Some of them have mentioned that at some times he had to more than what he is asked to do just for reaching this vision along with his

students. Secondly, they were all also able to express their ability to plan to support their students with any needed resources (question number two). Thirdly, it was clear from their answers to question number two that they provide their students with additional support when needed. Fourthly, they stated that both formative and summative assessments should be implemented to effectively and continuously measure the success of their interventions.

Fifthly, Both Mr. (A) and Mr. (B). have shown a good ability maintain their assistance continuously available for their students, while Mr. (C) has not seemed to have it as he has stated “ still struggling with my new job responsibilities” although his being in this job for the third year now. Accordingly, both of them have expressed their excitement and welcoming to work under a continuous pressure (question number three) to support the frequent needed change in order to achieve the required progress or even exceed it, while Mr. (C) only expressed that working under pressure is only “a human nature”.

Section 3: Concept Map A concept Map is a tool that is used to present a set of connected thoughts and perceptions together in one place (University of Delaware, 2011). It is also a tool for organizing the ideas and brainstorming the different thoughts about certain topic. In the following concept map, I tried to sum up all my interview analysis findings in order to organize the whole compares and contrasts that relate to all my interviewees. I have tried a lot to find certain key to guide the reader of it to easily reach the similarities as well as the differences between all my interviewees. It was not an easy task. At last, I thought to use colors as a key. So whenever you find the purple color that means the three interviewees have all agreed upon this point and hence I did not mention their names in the concept map. While if someone has a unique practice, you will find it in Yellow. In addition, if two of them have similar practices in certain leadership capacity, you will find that shaded in blue. Finally, in certain cases, none of them has any mentioned practices, so I left it white.

https:/ /bubbl.us/mindmap The Big Four

Knowledge

Assessment

Behavior

Instruction

Strength s

Areas for Grow

Trying to prepare teachers to meet the desired expectations and achieve their objectives, I will consider applying Transformational Leadership practices to precipitate the utmost benefits of applying the new Instructional Coaching model. As denoted by (Bass, 1985), Transformational leaders have to build their practices according to four major pillars, “Idealized Influence, Inspirational Motivation, Intellectual Stimulation and Individualized Consideration”. In consequence, ICs will start their journey with teachers through “Individualized Consideration” factor. Northouse (2012) states that leaders use this factor to listen carefully to their followers and he has even stated that leaders should act as coaches.

In this stage, ICs will use the KABI matrix that I have developed according to the Big Four of

Knight (2007) to define carefully with their teachers their strengths and areas for grow along with agreed upon objectives to be achieved collaboratively.

Afterward, ICs will use “Idealized Influence” factor to exemplify the best instructional practices that relate to their teachers’ needs and according to the shared objectives.

Consequently, teachers will be asked to imitate (Northouse, 2012) their coaches to reach excellence. Then, teachers will be encouraged to do their role and practice what they have learned from their ICs through the previous step. Using “Inspirational Motivation” factor, ICs will create the needed momentum for their teachers to discover their abilities and excel in their profession. In this stage, teachers will invite their colleagues and their ICs to visit them and provide reflective feedback about their performance. Finally, as ICs, we will end with “Intellectual Stimulation” factor. In this stage, teachers are asked to think critically on their performance and evaluate their progress in order to reach the expectations or even exceed them.

Part 3: My Vision of Education Leadership Elaborating to solve the problem of equipping teachers with their needs to achieve more effectively with their profession and trying always to be at hand as instructional coaches, I will summarize my vision of educational leadership as follows: 1- Developing a shared vision.

We cannot lead people to nowhere nor leave them determine our destinations. Moreover, achieving the desired transformation stage depends principally on defining a clear future vision (Kotter, 1995). Alike to administrators, coaches need to recognize a clear vision about their responsibilities in order to maximize their teachers’ efficacy and hence improve the students’ performance (Bellon & Beaudry, 1992; Boles & Troen, 1992; Murphy, Everston, & Radnofsky; Wasley, 1991). Accordingly, as an IC, I will work to reach agreed upon and shared vision along with my teachers. Johnson (2006) defines four major steps for educators to reach a shared vision. First, we should determine our direction and work for our purposes.

Subsequently, our new vision will implicate our long and short-term goals for our school (Méndez-Morse, 1993). .Here, I will collaborate with my colleagues to develop a new vision

for the department of the academic supervision. This will start with changing the department’s name into “Instructional Coaching Department” then pass through the stage of objectives formation and end developing our shared values and ethics that will confine our all efforts. Secondly, we need to determine the most critical stakeholders that we will involve in developing our new vision. Teachers, school principals, students and parents are our main stakeholders in this stage. As a result, a lot of SWOT analysis and KAPI Matrix analysis workshops will be held to determine precisely our current positions along with our areas of grow. Thirdly, the results of the previous analysis will outline the major and most important future changes that we have to focus on. Finally, we get to reach a written and communicated vision statement.

2- Deciding on fruitful collaboration and communication norms “Humans show a panoply of individual differences in their typical behavior, emotions, and thoughts” (Shiner& DeYoung, 2011). Therefore, building a team of well-qualified ICs will not be an easy trip. These differences are the main hinders that any leader experiences when forming or leading new teams. Accordingly, fostering an atmosphere that encourages my team members to work collaboratively to enhance their performance and use research based practices is indispensable (Cranton, 2003). In building the required degree of collaboration the team needs to initiate our Instructional Coaching, I will depend on Jim Knight’s Partnership Philosophy (2007). Knight builds his model on fostering a collaborative partnership between ICs and school community. He confines this partnership with the following principles: a) Equality: ICs and teachers are interacting and collaborating equally to develop and progress through the coaching cycle. This does not mean that they are equal in experience and knowledge but it means that teachers’ point of views are valued and appreciated. They both try to reach the best recipe that fits the teachers and achieve their common goals. b) Choice: the most significant point here is that teachers have the choice to determine if he will work with his or her coach or not. As a result, we will train ICs to possess a repertoire of effective communication skills that enable them to highly connect with your teachers.

c) Voice: our ICs should spread the culture of speaking out and sharing ideas in order to encourage their teachers to express their point of views and suggestions about improving the coaching practices. d) Dialogue: Conversations are one of the important tools that ICs will use effectively.

Teachers have to realize that developing their performance is not their ICs’ only. Teachers are partners with ICs in developing their professional progress. e) Reflection: ICs and teachers will have to use what is called “reflection for practice “Parker, 1998). That means that ICs are to encourage their teachers to reflect upon their performance freely and not to count only on ICs feedback. f) Praxis: ICs will have to deepen this principle with their teachers. Praxis initially means to frequently apply what you learn in order to reach a clear understanding of our current situation so as to reach precision (Freire, 1970).

3- Creating and agreeing upon a comprehensive monitoring and controlling system ICs build their work with their teachers upon rapport and good relationship (Aguilar, 2013). These relations may lead to waste lots of efforts if not monitored well and compared to definite benchmark. In results, we will develop key performance indicators that aim directly to gauge the progress of our ICs and teachers’ progress. We will get benefits from KAPI analyses that are conducted by teachers themselves. Elaborating to keep our progress towards our goals, we will measure these KPIs every quarter to guarantee the effectiveness of application. Every IC will have to create a comprehensive portfolio that includes his or her teachers’ progress. Moreover, every IC will deliver a biweekly written report about his or her team progress.

4- Tailoring a professional development plan that guarantees a continuous and positive change Teachers ICs Context PD

Program

Gutierrez, Parsons and Cox (1998:1) indicated that empowerment helps achieve the needed change. Educational change relies primarily on how professionally we prepare our teachers (Fullan & Miles, 1992; Spillane, 1999). This professional development is not to be activated if teachers receive no assistance and support (Ball & Cohen, 1999; Putnam & Borko, 1997; Wilson & Berne, 1999) from their ICs. In addition, to help our ICs reach our expectations and even exceed them; they themselves will need an intensive exposure to a continuous professional development programs (see the figure). Cohen, Raudenbush, and Ball (2003) have denoted the importance of defining clear expectations, instructional activities and assessment description when tailoring a well-developed instructional policy. Similarly, when talking about developing our ICs and Teachers, we will focus our interest on the Big Four: Knowledge, Instruction, behavior and assessment (Knight, 2007). Therefore, analyzing the KIBA Matrix that covers the Big Four will be sued as a need analysis tool to define the most impressing needs and areas for grow to enhance the skills of both teachers and ICs. It is essential to denote the significant advantage teachers will enjoy when receiving professional programs through their ICs who will accordingly assist them in applying these programs efficiently and promptly-this is one of the cores of instructional coaching.

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