The Launching Pad

Volume 5, No. 1                            Spring, 2011                            Exclusively online at www.EducationHall.com
 

Questioning as a Coaching Strategy: Ask and ye shall be enlightened
Megann Ollett

In the past decade, job titles and work descriptions for site-based staff developers have morphed from facilitators to specialists to instructional coaches and back again. One element of the position that hasn’t changed, however, is our charge: As a high school “math instructional specialist,” it is my job to work with teachers to help build their capacity for teaching and to make sure we are reaching all of our students daily. Here at Dulles High School in Sugar Land, Texas, our teachers’ capacity has expanded dramatically, leading to an increase in student achievement that has earned us Texas Recognized Campus status.

What exactly is the role of a math instructional specialist? Every day I meet with math subject teams to determine the scope and sequence of the upcoming lessons and to assess at what mastery level the students are performing. We use a variety of tools to determine the students’ present levels of performance and the direction of our immediate teaching strategies, but there’s one tool that trumps them all: the teacher. Since the teacher is the tool (metaphorically!), and no teacher comes with directions on how s/he works, it is my job to understand what makes each teacher function and why each makes the decisions that direct the day. I could hypothesize all day long, observing individual teachers and making assumptions about what strategies will lead the staff in professional growth, but these actions may eventually lead me down the wrong path of understanding the teacher. This brings me to the most important aspect of my job: questioning. I use a variety of questioning techniques daily to encourage reflective thought, to strengthen my own understanding, and most importantly to build stronger relationships with my teachers.

To illustrate this strategy, I’ll share an example from the field. A teacher I’ve worked with uses worksheets in his classroom as the predominant method of instruction. We know that current research implores teachers to use more creative manners to increase student engagement, collaborative learning structures, and authentic problem-solving. When asked why he chose worksheets, this particular teacher lacked a clear and powerful explanation. Rather, the worksheets dominate because that is what he has always used. My goal, then, was to lead that teacher to adopt more engaging instructional strategies – but how should I proceed? Like the old adage says “You can tell someone the stove is hot hundreds of times, but let the person touch it once and they understand.”

Similarly, if I were to just tell this teacher that he needs to create new resources and diversity the manner in which he presents lessons, this would doubtfully create the wanted change; rather, he will likely become even more attached to his old resources. Instead of charging out of the gate with “change your approach,” I opt to begin with a questioning strategy, starting by asking about his methods and decision-making:

“Why did you choose to this type of worksheet?”

“What were your learning goals for this lesson?”

“Will this worksheet enable students to master this objective?”

“What other ways could students demonstrate mastery?”

“What other resources do we have available that we could tap into?”

When we ask our teachers to reach out and touch the stove, they begin to truly understand their motivation for choosing particular resources to achieve specific learning goals. Questioning is the vehicle to put the stove within reach.

From our questions, we will start to gain insight into the teachers’ actual motives in the classroom, and we can learn to work with them more intentionally to accomplish the desired outcome. However, on the flip side, there are some teachers that have deeply rooted teaching moves, ones they have contemplated and believe in strongly, even if research and student data might indicate they are ineffective. Perhaps these teachers need simply to alter current resources, not completely abandon them. Through targeted questioning, we can push the teacher to explain, defend, and consider their actions. Other teachers on the team (department, grade-level, or other professional arrangement) hear that teacher’s response and can chime in, asking and responding to probing, clarifying, and extension questions. Our goal is to encourage the teachers to examine their habits, beliefs, thoughts, and actions. In my experience, I have found that teachers begin to accept and welcome this line of questioning. Often, teachers start explaining to me why they are using a resource before I even ask. The products that they use become richer because they have determined a purpose to their actions and they are making selections intentionally to meet their goals.

Now that we have teachers thinking and reflecting more deeply, the responsibility for driving professional growth shifts to the questioner. We must take the information we gather from the teachers’ answers to develop a plan to lead the learning and to initiate change…and productive, positive change is necessarily our goal, because no improvement is possible without it. To get teachers to think about changing, we must understand what drives their decisions. Does the teacher use Strategy X because it’s easier for the students to experience success? Does the teacher employ Strategy Y because it’s the simplest method to plan? Does the teacher enact Strategy Z because it’s a method she learned about in a workshop that seems plausible? Does the teacher even have a clear idea of the learning objective and the plan for accomplishing it?

The answers to all of these questions are vital things that we must know so that we can get to the root of what is desired….change for the better. Once we, as the questioners, can understand what is driving the teacher we can start to look at items that are aligned to that teacher’s thoughts, and slowly start to find a way to get that teacher to make some positive, intentional modifications that will lead to improved classroom instruction and heightened student learning.

Another example is a teacher we will call John Smith. Mr. Smith loved using note sheets everyday for his students. They were beautifully created with amazing diagrams all labeled and easy to read. All the important vocabulary was defined, described, and spelled out and prepared on the note sheets. All the students needed to do during the classroom lecture was listen to Mr. Smith and jot down a few important items, events, dates, or other information on these note sheets. When asked about these note sheets, his response was always that lessons were getting cut short because it was a tedious process for the students to draw the diagrams and the note-taking was time-consuming, so he decided to provide an incredibly detailed outline. It was clear that Mr. Smith did not want to sacrifice lesson time for the students to copy information; instead, he wanted students to be able to be attentive to what he was saying. Meanwhile, it was clear from assessments that the students were not comprehending the lessons at the level needed, their learning was suffering, and achievement scores were flat.

As I worked with Mr. Smith, I questioned him about the format and structure of the note-taking sheets. I asked a lot of “Why” questions, eventually leading to the question, “Are the students demonstrating the level of mastery you would expect? Why or why not?” He acknowledged that he was dissatisfied with their growth.

The first compromise Mr. Smith made was to create a few more blanks in which the students could write the important definitions down. Each day he added more blanks, giving more opportunities for the students to truly attend and own the material. As time went on, it was clear that Mr. Smith liked his note sheets very much and would not compromise on their use, even though his students were not performing as well as needed. As a team, we began to investigate other ways to teach the material, different ways to have students take notes, and a host of creative lesson delivery options. We also focused on ways to hold students accountable for the work and diagrams to help Mr. Smith to reach new conclusions. Over a series of months, we built trust together and agreed to compromise on a number of key issues, in particular that some lessons could be done differently (without note sheets) as long as it did not contain new material. In short order, Mr. Smith’s assessment scores showed that this approach was having a positive impact.

All of my conversations with teachers, asking about their educational practices, their intentionality, their self-reflection, and their learning goals would not be possible if I did not really know who I was working with. A strong interpersonal relationship is a key, and asking clever, well timed questions can open a window into their world. I usually begin by looking around a teacher’s room and seeing if I notice anything that appears to be a theme, and I start questioning that teacher all about it. In this sense, I’m a little like a five-year-old. Through my questioning, I make the teacher feel like the expert s/he most certainly is. If their room does not provide the right cues, I try to notice a pattern with the individual teachers, the clothes they wear (shoes tend to be a good place to start), or food they eat. With some teachers, as I’m trying to ease my way into a working relationship, I simply ask what they did this weekend or what happened in the football game last night. Once I start to see what they are passionate about and how they like to address certain things, then I can start asking them why they make the decisions they do while teaching.

Through questioning of outside topics, we can start to learn what drives a person as an individual. Gradually, we earn trust with personal information, and that leads us into a very personal discussion: why they might make the decisions they do while teaching. With that strong interpersonal relationship as a foundation, teacher generally feel more comfortable being honest with you and telling you what is really going on, leading to more open conversations and more direct change opportunities.

I have also learned that before asking a question, prefacing the question with “May I ask you a question?” or “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?” at least warns the person that they are going to have something to answer. While it does seem redundant to ask a question about asking a question, it mentally prepares the person and they will not feel caught off guard. Once the person is comfortable answering questions with you it opens the door to start talking about teaching practices, learning outcomes, and instructional decisions. These are the basis of truly impactful coaching relationships.

Every five-year-old out there knows to ask questions of every adult they meet. Ask a kindergarten teacher how many questions she has to answer each day if you don’t believe me. The inquisitive children are doing this for one reason - they desperately want to understand the world around them. They are trying to see why people do certain things and determine if it is something that they need to be doing. There is no doubt in my mind that questioning can lead to great things. One cannot assume when it comes to the intentions of other people; rather, to understand one must use some good old-fashioned questioning strategies. It was Albert Einstein, after all, who once said, “Never stop questioning.”

Megann Ollett is an instructional coach at Dulles High School in Sugar Land, Texas. You can reach her via email at megann.ollett@fortbend.k12.tx.us.

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