Professional development of ECTs through instructional coaching

By Gabi Spears, Assistant Headteacher, Charles Dickens Primary School

I am an assistant headteacher at Charles Dickens Primary school and I oversee CPD and training across the school. I am the current Head of Year 6 and I work alongside two class teachers and a 1-1 SEND support staff member. My wider school responsibilities include my role as ECT Induction Tutor and History Lead. My responsibilities within school allow me to collaborate with a wide range of colleagues, whether it be managing my team on a daily basis, or planning for whole-school CPD to meet training needs across the school.

I decided to undertake the SSAT Lead Practitioner (LP) accreditation as a means of furthering my leadership skills within my own school and expanding my professional network beyond my school context.

As part of my role as ECT Induction Tutor, I am responsible for coordinating the induction programme for ECTs and carrying out assessments and progress reviews. As well as managing the training framework and reporting to the appropriate body, I am dedicated to providing a rigorous, evidence-informed, practical training programme to all ECTs at my school so that they feel supported in the early stages of their teaching careers. I plan and deliver a series of CPD sessions each half term, specifically designed with ECTs in mind. The training sessions cover a broad range of themes, from how to plan PPA time effectively to managing the classroom environment and embedding consistent behaviour management routines, with the main aim being to:

• induct ECTs into our school setting, giving them a rigorous overview of our policies and practices
• provide ECTs with evidence-informed, practical strategies to implement within their own classroom contexts.

These training toolkits run every half term and take the place of one whole-school CPD slot. This allows time for ECTs to meet in a smaller group and engage in an open, professional dialogue about their classroom experiences to date. I have seen the benefits of ECTs creating a safe space with each other to share successes and problem solve to overcome any challenges.

When I am planning each training session, I draw upon current educational research from the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and ensure that I make the link between theory and individual classroom context. I adopt a cyclical ethos for my ECT training: introduce, implement, evaluate (Effective Professional Development, EEF) and I allow time for ECTs to reflect on any teaching strategies they may have applied in their own classrooms at the beginning of each new training session. This professional dialogue encourages ECTs to become reflective practitioners and spend time analysing what works and what doesn’t and – most importantly – why. ECTs have found this a hugely rewarding experience and their reflections often inform my planning for future training sessions.

My school uses Josh Goodrich’s Instructional Coaching Framework as a means of providing weekly feedback on teachers’ classroom practice. The overall aim of this feedback model is to identify a specific area for improvement and provide opportunities to model and rehearse teaching strategies so that teachers get into the habit of adopting those that are the most successful within their own classroom contexts. This framework plays a crucial role in shaping my ECT training sessions; in particular, the ‘modelling’ and ‘rehearsing’ aspects of instruction. I am a firm believer in leading by example, therefore my training often takes the form of teaching workshops where I model classroom pedagogies in practice. I deliver these workshops in a number of ways:

• Through CPD sessions.
• By inviting ECTs into my classroom to model a specific strategy e.g., routines, managing behaviour, shared writes.
• By teaching lessons in ECT’s classrooms so they can see how teaching pedagogies can be applied to their own classroom contexts.

I find live-modelling a hugely rewarding part of my training role as it allows ECTs to see how strategies can be embedded in real-time. As well as imparting specialist expertise and knowledge, my overall aim is to build ECT’s confidence in the classroom and encourage them to try out new strategies in a nurturing, supportive space. ECTs have commented on the benefits of seeing how pupils in their class respond to certain strategies and have been inspired to embed these in their own classroom practice after engaging with the live-modelling process. In order to close the feedback loop, I give ECTs time to rehearse and reflect upon the modelled strategies and discuss how they may tweak these based on pupils within their own classroom contexts. My overall aim is to encourage collaborative, professional dialogues so that ECTs at my school are reflective practitioners.

I have built up a strong professional bond with the ECTs and ECT mentors across my school as a direct result of my training sessions and workshops. Furthermore, my LP accreditation has enabled me to grow in confidence as a leader. I now co-facilitate ECT Year 1 training within Southwark. This has been a hugely rewarding experience and has allowed me to extend my professional network beyond my school.

I would encourage those considering applying for LP accreditation to start building a bank of evidence as soon as possible, whether that be collating training slides or creating a folder with any testimonial emails from colleagues following coaching, training or professional conversations.