During the 25/26 school year, members of the AAICIS research team interviewed instructional coaches and administrators working across 11 countries and 4 continents. You can read the final installment in the TIEOnline Newsletter. Additionally, if you missed the earlier pieces, here they are: Part 3, Part 2, and Part 1.
The concluding report from our focus groups emphasized the need for clarity and alignment to help coaching programs be successful. While there are several fantastic resources available to support your coaching work (some written by our very own board members, Joellen Killion and Steve Barkley), there is no one-size-fits-all approach to this work. Understanding how coaching fits into your school’s context is incredibly important.
Previously, we have shared the AAICIS Conditions for Coaching Success and the AAICIS Principles of Practice. Both of these tools are excellent places to start if you are looking for guidance on how to do this work. But a step before this is the alignment on the WHY among school administrators and/or section leaders (think: Principals and Assistant or Deputy Principals), curriculum leaders (including IB coordinators, Assessment and/or Technology leads, or any other dedicated curriculum team members aligned with a specific initiative, for example, literacy or math team leaders), and instructional coaches. It is essential that these key players understand how each role can support and enhance the work of the others to present a united front in service of achieving the goals of the school’s strategic plan. The AAICIS Instructional Coaching Standards are an excellent place to start.
AAICIS has identified 9 standards to ground instructional coaching programs. These standards “offer a common framework to elevate and align the work of instructional coaches in international schools. Built for reflection and professional growth-not for evaluation-these standards clarify core practices, promote meaningful dialogue, and help connect coaching to schoolwide priorities.”
In November, representatives from one of our founding member schools shared their experiences about exactly this at an AAIE leadership webinar. This team spoke about the importance of the alignment among three essential yet distinct bodies in the school: coaches, the curriculum team, and the principal/leadership team. Arriving at this alignment took dedicated time and a commitment to a process. One cannot assume that everyone knows what the other is doing, as each team member brings their own experiences with what has worked in the past into the mix. If you are ready to help achieve clarity in your school, here are a few guiding questions to help get you started:
Planning for the conversation
- Make sure you have included essential stakeholders. Who needs to be in the room? Whose voice is essential to hear?
- Book at least 2 hours for this conversation, and be prepared that it may not come to a satisfying resolution, especially if this is the first time you are coming together.
- Have the different groups review the AAICIS Standards for Instructional Coaching, and then complete a self-reflection on the AAICIS Conditions for Coaching Success. This is a great starting point to look for differences and similarities in the perception of your coaching program.
- Gather copies of your strategic plan and any other school-wide documents (lesson planning templates, mission and vision statements, portraits of a graduate, etc.) These will help focus your conversation.
During the conversation
- Identify a facilitator who is ideally not a participant. (AAICIS can support you with this!)
- The conversation might follow four phases.
| Phase 1 | To begin, you can look at individual contributions, with a guiding question such as “How does each team represented here support our strategic goal of _________?” | You may be surprised at what is uncovered here if people are not fully aware of what others do. |
| Phase 2 | Now, you can move to an intentional focus on collaboration, with a guiding question such as, ““How can each team represented here work together to support our strategic goal of _________?” | Here, it may be important to look at the needs of individual sections, primary school versus high school, for example. Knowing that you are all in service of the same strategic goal can allow for flexibility and differentiation in how sections are working to meet this goal. This is essential to state for everyone in the session. |
| Phase 3 | This phase moves to planning, potentially guided by the question of, “What is our unified message to our teachers about our intersectionalities, and how will we support them in their classrooms?” | Again, section needs will be important here as you align context and messaging. |
| Phase 4 | After the conversation: Plan for monthly check-ins with this team to make sure everything is working as planned. | We all know how easy it is to drift back into our sectional silos once the school year is in full swing. Scheduling these meetings in advance will help identify what is working well and where support is needed. This type of maintenance will help your school create its context-specific framework for instructional coaching success. |
AAICIS Is Here to Support
Thank you for following this research series. If anything has piqued your interest and you’d like to learn more, please connect with a member of our School Support Team to schedule an introductory consult. We’d love to hear about the work your school is doing and see where we might support you!