Reciprocal Coaching Pilot Study

In this Pilot Study, funded by a small grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, ConnectED is working in partnership with the San Diego Enhanced Mathematics initiative to design and test several models for Reciprocal Coaching (aka ‘Peer Coaching’).  We are working with pairs of San Diego Unified teachers to co-design stuctures for teachers to partner with each other as coaches in a horizontal mode, as an alternative to the hierarchical model of traditional coaching. We are testing the hypothesis that Reciprocal Coaching helps teachers translate professional learning into their own practice through direct partnership with a colleague. Our intention is to generate a model that districts and school sites can implement as a supplement to existing coaching programs, which are vulnerable during periods of budget-stretching.

Design Principles for Reciprocal Coaching models:

(1) Teachers set their own goals for refining their teaching practice.

(2) Teachers partner with each other to serve as sounding boards for goals and planned actions, and as sources of feedback on progress toward goals.

(3) Teachers directly observe each other in practice, or share video taken from their classrooms together with artifacts of student learning, in order to ground all feedback in real evidence.

(4) Teachers document their work together in order to honor progress and collaboration, and to support collective learning for colleagues.