Coaching Increases Transfer of Learning

Recently I received a wonderful letter and article from my friend and colleague Jennifer Alkezweeny related to our shared faculty coaching work with the Gateway to College National Network, Project DEgree (PDE). Jennifer sent this letter and article to the instructional coaches who work in the Project DEgree Programs across the U.S. to encourage us with the astounding impacts to transfer of learning that can occur through professional coaching. I thought her letter and the article would be an encouragement for others of you doing the slow and steady work of coaching teachers and trainers to do their best work. Here’s Jennifer...


Hello PDE Coaches!

The “other” Jennifer in our office passed along an article from the New Yorker by Atul Gawande about the impact of coaching.  Perhaps you’ve already read it. I’m planning on working it into my second visits to the Innovation Collaborative colleges. Not so much to convince them to work with me, but to convince them to keep challenging themselves in multiple ways and to challenge each other.

I really like the parallels of learning a craft, refining a craft, responding to situations that don’t go as practiced, and comparing results to national data. It also points to the importance of an outside observer in refining your practice, no matter how long you’ve been at it.

Gawande notes, “Jobs that involve the complexities of people or nature seem to take the longest to master: the average age at which S. & P. 500 chief executive officers are hired is fifty-two, and the age of maximum productivity for geologists, one study estimated, is around fifty-four.”

The article supports coaching over workshops as Gawande writes, “Workshops led teachers to use new skills in the classroom only ten per cent of the time. Even when a practice session with demonstrations and personal feedback was added, fewer than twenty per cent made the change. But when coaching was introduced—when a colleague watched them try the new skills in their own classroom and provided suggestions—adoption rates passed ninety per cent.”

And a parallel to spending money to find the “fix”: Gawande is a doctor and he notes, “In the past year, I’ve thought nothing of asking my hospital to spend some hundred thousand dollars to upgrade the surgical equipment I use, in the vague hope of giving me finer precision and reducing complications. Avoiding just one major complication saves, on average, fourteen thousand dollars in medical costs—not to mention harm to a human being. So it seems worth it. But the three or four hours I’ve spent with Osteen (Gawande's coach) each month have almost certainly added more to my capabilities than any of this.”

Check out the entire New Yorker article here: Personal Best: Top Athletes and Singers Have Coaches. Should You? by Atul Gawande and share your comments.

 

Guest post by Jennifer Alkezweendy, Manager Project DEgree Training & Partner Support 971-634-1524.  jalkezweeny@gatewaytocollege.org