I have been coming out recently as a MOOC junkie. I have lost count of the number I have signed up to and even of those that I have completed which of course is a much smaller number.
The latest one I have completed stands above many of the others. Coaching Teachers: Promoting Changes that Stick from Match Education in Coursera was a five week course which really worked for me.
Granted the coaching model presented was quite different to the one I have been using for the last few years but I could see a great deal of value in it and the content of the course was presented in a rigorous and humorous way by Orin Gutlerner (is that a clever German pseudonym?). I particularly appreciated that the videos included class teaching scenarios and coaching conversations. Even though these were scripted they were done in such a way as to be incredibly useful. And the final ‘exam’ was based on the analysis of a coaching conversation video.
The Match Education coaching approach is directed coaching where the coach takes a much more pro-active role in what is to be coached than the appreciative coaching model I have been using with Powerful Learning Practice. I don’t think that one is right and the other wrong, just that different contexts call for different approaches.
One of the most appealing aspects of the course was that it could be summarised in an equation.
Teacher change = Clarity of Instructional Vision X Quality of Feedback X (1 – Fixed Mindset Tax)
At first I wondered if this was just a gimmick but long before the end of the course became convinced of its usefulness in summarising the topic.
The course was all about Big Takeaways, so what are my Big Takeaways?
- Have a common instructional vision
- Work on one thing at a time.
- Focus on the student experience
One thing I don’t like about Coursera is that you can’t search the participants to find the people you know. But I did pick up on the fact that Silvia Tolisano was participating and even though I had no direct contact with her, she enhanced the course considerably with her sketchnote summaries of each week.
Image credit: Silvia Tolisano
