Adam Robbins Education

Steven, a science teacher, meets with his coach. He is praised for his recent lesson, then told what to improve. His coach, a more experienced science teacher, models the technique and asks Steven to practise it before setting it as his weekly target.

Julia, an experienced food technology teacher, meets her coach. They discuss what went well in her last lesson. Julia decides what she wants to work on next, and her coach, an equally experienced history teacher, shares ideas from their own classroom.

Ashraf, a new Head of Maths, meets his coach. They review recent work scrutiny and student voice feedback. Ashraf asks for advice on creating an action plan, and the coach, an Assistant Head who used to lead maths, helps draft it.

Shay, an experienced Head of English, meets their coach. The conversation turns to a departmental incident. The coach listens carefully, asks reflective questions, and helps Shay explore their options before Shay decides what to do next.

Gabriel, an experienced French teacher, meets with her coach, the Head of Department, and the rest of the MFL team. Their group coaching session focuses on accountable speaking. The coach explains the problem, demonstrates a new technique, and the team practise it in trios.

All of these scenarios are called coaching in today’s educational discourse. I could write more, but you get the point.

If everything is coaching, then maybe the word itself has lost its edge, like when a teenager uses ‘literally’ or ‘iconic’ for everything.

The problem with definition drift

Adam Boxer captured this perfectly in a recent tweet meme.

When I began writing Unlocking Teacher Development, I knew I wanted a chapter on coaching. What I didn’t realise was how slippery the word had become.

The term coaching has exploded across education. Everyone seems to have their own bespoke version, schools, consultants, companies, and that is precisely the problem.

Coming from a science background, I care about clarity. In science, words have agreed meanings that help experts communicate precisely.

Take the word organic. To a chemist, it has a very specific meaning. To a shopper, it means something completely different. Without context, the two conversations quickly drift apart.

Coaching is experiencing the same kind of definition shift. I have previously written about lethal mutations in educational ideas, small shifts in meaning that end up undermining the original purpose. In my model I suggest these are the consequence of good-faith actors trying their best to help each other. You can read more about it here.

If everything is called coaching, then nothing really is. Leaders will be told to install coaching without a clear sense of what that means. The result is confusion, inconsistency, and wasted effort.

Why it matters

You only get one shot to establish buy-in.

If someone has a poor experience of coaching, whatever that looked like, they may carry that impression into every future encounter. When offered coaching again, they will assume it is the same thing. If the first version was ineffective, they will dismiss it altogether, confirmation bias is a powerful thing.

Over time, this breeds cynicism and erodes openness to professional development.

This is not pedantry, it is pragmatism. In a field as complex as education, where values, logistics, and psychology intertwine, clarity is not a luxury, it is a necessity for improvement.

What is coaching, really?

Right now, coaching seems to mean any situation where one teacher helps another to improve. Beyond that, the similarities end.

Early Career Teachers experience instructional coaching. Leaders receive executive or leadership coaching. Steplab CEO Josh Goodrich calls his model responsive coaching. Cottinghatt and Kohlbeck offer cognitive coaching. Each says they are coaching teachers but with differing methods and philosophies.

I am currently completing my Level 7 Diploma in Executive and Leadership Coaching and Mentoring with Educoach. This approach sits at the opposite end of the spectrum from instructional coaching.

In fact, within the qualification, any activity where the coach gives direction or guidance is classed as mentoring, not coaching. By that definition, most school-based coaching would actually be mentoring.

Even beyond education, the confusion persists. A friend who works in international banking told me about their leadership coach who, as it turned out, spent sessions demonstrating how to chair meetings and manage teams. Helpful, yes, but also mentoring by another name.

So what is the solution?

We are not putting this genie back in the bottle. The word coaching has already spread too far. But we can make our conversations clearer by always adding a modifying adjective.

Instead of saying coaching, say instructional coaching, group coaching, peer coaching, or executive coaching. The modifier does the heavy lifting. It tells others what kind of relationship, autonomy, and mechanism to expect.

Take Gabriel’s example from earlier:

Gabriel, an experienced French teacher, is meeting with her coach, the Head of Department and the rest of the MFL team. Their group instructional coaching session focuses on accountable speaking in lessons. The coach explains the problem, the new technique, and when to use it before they practise in trios.

Now we know exactly what kind of coaching it is, what freedom Gabriel has (low), and what to expect from the process (rehearsal and deliberate practice).

When writing Unlocking Teacher Development, I created a coaching continuum to classify different approaches according to their level of autonomy. Group coaching did not appear because I covered it separately in a chapter on designing effective CPD for teams, which, to me, serves a very similar function. Here is the illustration that accompanied the chapter:

Final thought

As I finish my diploma, I have been reflecting on what I have learned and what I wish I had known sooner. I will be writing about what I term ‘pure coaching’ here a lot in the future, so if you are interested in expanding your pure coaching skills make sure you are subscribed to the blog, my Substack or any of the other ways to keep updated.

If you want to enhance whatever coaching model you choose to use, then Unlocking Teacher Development is an approach agnostic way of upskilling your professional development staff.