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Pam Robbins wrote this book to describe how schools can implement a peer coaching program that serves as a professional support group for teachers. She describes peer coaching as a confidential process in which two or more colleagues work together to reflect on current practices; expand, refine, and build new skills; share ideas; teach one another; conduct research, or solve problems.
Robbins states that a variety of other names are used in schools for this type of activity: peer support, consulting colleagues, peer sharing, and caring. The discimfort with the term coaching is said to be because the word coaching implies that one person in a collaborative relationship has a different status. Regardless of how coaching relationships are labeled, Robbins says they all focus on the collaborative development, refinement, and sharing of craft knowledge.
She also says that peer coaching relationships have nothing to do with evaluation and ought to be supportive. The coach’s function is to ask questions that encourage the teacher to reflect, analyze, and plan. Even when a lesson does not go as expected, the coach’s role is not an evaluative one. Instead, the coach needs to help the teacher to compare what was expected with what happened and to analyze what might have contributed to the outcomes of the lesson. The focus of coaching should change to meet the needs of the inviting teacher, in other words, the client sets the agenda.
The peer coaching description for teachers in this 1991 book appears to be much closer to coaching as we know it today than some of the management books of the same period.
Any thoughts to add?
Vikki G. Brock, Ph.D., EMBA, MCC
Leadership & Mentor Coach
Director, History & Archives Division
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