Busting the Coaching v. Supervision Myth
By
Dr. Gary Bloom
I wish I had a nickel for every time I have bumped up against the
notion that a supervisor can’t serve as a coach. Thinking has shifted around
this topic over the past few years, but the idea that a supervisor cannot both
supervise and coach is still out there in the K-12 universe.
How did this myth come to be? I believe that it has its origins in
Garmston and Costa’s early dissemination of Cognitive Coaching, the model that
first popularized coaching as a professional development strategy in K-12.
Don’t get me wrong, their work was a great contribution to our profession.
But Garmston and Costa initially took a hard line, suggesting that an effective
coach could not serve simultaneously as a supervisor and evaluator. They later
modified this position, but the taboo stuck.
Garmston and Costa are not the only thought leaders who have
advocated for a wall between coaching and supervision. Jim Popham argues in Evaluating
America’s Teachers: Mission Possible (2013) “a teacher evaluator cannot
simultaneously be a summative and formative evaluator. That’s because a
teacher who needs to improve must honestly identify those personal deficit
areas that need improvement. Weaknesses can’t be remedies until they’ve
been identified, and who knows better what teachers’ shortcomings are than
those teachers themselves?” This statement is oozing with mythology. The
myths: 1. The notion that somehow by reflecting upon personal practice alone
one can arrive at professional growth. It ignores the fact that there is
a body of professional knowledge that should shape our teaching practice and
that can be learned from others . 2. The fallacy of a judgement/coaching
dichotomy. “Individuals who truly believe that a combined formative and
summative teacher evaluation effort can succeed are most likely to have
recently arrived from outer space.” Come on, Jim. Really?
In their book (Supervision that Improves Teaching and Learning (2005)
Sullivan and Glanz argue that “bureaucratic inspectional supervision should
have no place in schools in the 21st century” .. that we should move to a
“democratic” model recognizing that “teaching is complex and not easily defined
or understood”. Apparently teaching is a mystical undefinable practice that
cannot be improved through the outside perspective that might be provided by a
supervisor.
In her book Talk About Teaching (2016) Charolette Danielson
suggests that there are three distinct categories of professional
conversations; formal reflective conversations following formal
observations conducted for the purpose of teacher evaluation, coaching
conversations, by invitation of the teacher to the administrator, and
informal professional conversations that follow a principal’s unannounced
observations. This conceptual framework reinforces the false barriers between
formal and informal supervision and the practice of coaching-based
supervision.
I can’t find a whit of research that supports these notions. It is
all opinion that flies in the face of practical experience.
The presence of the supervision/coaching dichotomy K-12 is
particularly ironic. Every teacher is both a supervisor and a coach of
his/her pupils. Every teacher has the responsibility of both nurturing and
supporting the growth of his/her students, and of evaluating their progress. In
secondary settings, teachers make judgements, assign grades and write
recommendation letters that directly shape their charges’ futures. Every good
athletic coach both provides feedback and direction to their team members, and
decides who is going to make the team, and who is going to play.
I have interviewed senior leaders in medicine, law and the
military and in these professional domains it is understood that supervisors’
first responsibility is to support the growth of their subordinates from a
coaching stance. Effective supervisors grow and support their people through
coaching relationships, at the same time that they ensure that their charges
meet standards by providing supervisorial direction and feedback and ensure
accountability through summative evaluation. In classrooms and in healthy
organizations it happens every day.