Introduction
I am a firm believer of the sayings, “The power comes from within.” and “YOU can do it.” When working with teachers communicating these ideas enables them to be the best they can be. They learn how to break down the walls that have been limiting their abilities and use innate knowledge that has been begging to be used. In the following paper I discuss Cognitive Coaching and its utilization within the education profession. It includes a description of how cognitive coaches go about helping teachers use their own thought process to improve performance. Also, it describes conversation maps and tools employed to tap the Five States of Mind, the internal drives that are within every person, to improve performance. Finally, it concludes with how Cognitive Coaching has impacted the education profession.I hope that the information is helpful to those who find themselves in a mentoring situation and want to help a person be his or her own resource for learning. I have found the methods useful and easy to use. Good luck to all!
Cognitive Coaching
Cognitive Coaching coaches use conversation maps and tools to work in energetic and individualized ways with how their mentees think about their teaching. The cognitive coach is trained to mediate another’s thinking in this dynamic and personalized way. This assistance helps the mentee steer through the areas of his or her mind and have more autonomy, efficacy, and self-awareness. The result is improved intellectual processes of performance. Cognitive Coaching helps move teachers from where they are to where they want to be. It gives them the process to evaluate good from bad, appropriate from inappropriate, and effective and ineffective (Costa & Garmston, 2002).
The four support functions: coaching, collaborating, consulting, and evaluation are used with cognitive coaching. The coach or Building Resource Teacher is concerned with coaching, collaborating and consulting and the principal does the evaluation. These four functions shift teachers from working by themselves to working collaboratively. This will result in building positive school cultures (Hayes, C., Noble, P., Simmons, L., & Stronahan, R. 2012).
The purpose of Cognitive Coaching is to build trust between the mentor and mentee and to build self-directed persons with cognitive capacity for superior performance both as individuals and as community members (Costa & Garmston, 2002). The outcomes include: increased student test scores, growth in teacher efficacy, increased reflective and complex thinking, better professionalism at school, more teacher collaboration and helping other teachers, and augmented personal benefits for teachers. Also, Cognitive Coaching’s purpose is to change focus from procedural to instructional and to increase teachers’ communication toward the specific (Costa & Garmston, 2002).
Cognitive Coaching doesn’t show or tell a teacher how to teach as other coaching models do. It facilitates thinking through questioning and more precise language. It is not an evaluation method. It helps teachers use their own thought process to improve performance. It is non directive and uses data and reflection questions to assist and develop a teacher’s cognition regarding students’ learning process. Advice and judgment are not part of the process. Cognitive Coaching differs from Literacy Coaching in that Cognitive Coaching has core duties, a theory and a definition on how coaches perform their jobs. Literacy Coaching is very loose and is described as anyone who supports teachers with the goal of increasing literacy. Also, modeling is one critical element of Instructional Coaching and that is not an activity with Cognitive Coaching. One of the big criticisms of Instructional Coaching is whether or not the coach has enough content knowledge to teach lessons (Knight, J., 2009). With Cognitive Coaching, the coach mediates with the teacher to use his or her own abilities to improve instruction. This is very different from Differentiated Coaching’s goal to identify what information a teacher needs during change. This information is affected by the teacher’s personality type which influences the teacher’s style, beliefs about education, and main concerns during change. The personality type is discovered because it is probably different from that of the coach and the coach might not naturally meet the teacher’s needs. The coach then has methods of working with the teacher based on personality type. Knowing whether the teacher is an introvert or extravert, sensing or intuitive, thinking or feeling, or judging or perceiving person results in different tactics (Knight, J. 2009).
.jpg)
