6 Ways Cognitive Coaching Can Move Your Teaching Practice

Are you wondering what the eight-day Cognitive Coaching training is all about? Here are six benefits to expanding your coaching and mentoring toolbox with this professional learning endeavor.

Dr. Taryl Hansen is an associate trainer for Thinking Collaborative. She’s facilitated Cognitive Coaching since 2012 and was first exposed to the training as a participant in 2006. The creative educational leader believes delving into Cognitive Coaching enables teachers in six specific ways.

1. Increases teacher autonomy. The ultimate goal of Cognitive Coaching is to support teachers in their ability to self-monitor, self-analyze, and self-evaluate. This is at the heart of being self-directed professionals. The non-routine nature of teachers' work requires complex, mutual decision-making, and an inquiry-oriented approach to practice. The teacher, not the coach, takes the role of analyzing and evaluating teaching success.
2. Enhances intellectual growth and cognitive pathways. Cognitive Coaching helps teachers explore the thinking behind their teaching practices. A Cognitive Coach, through the tools of pausing, paraphrasing, and posing questions, can help reveal the parts of teaching that might not be conscious, unveiling resources and making them more accessible to the thinker.
3. Fosters professional inquiry and supports continued professional growth. Teachers are natural inquirers. What can I do to improve my practice, day after day? How can I better reach students? How can I grow as a professional each and every day? Continued growth, development, and discovery are at the heart of Cognitive Coaching. No classroom and no school are identical. Every student is different, and every teacher has his or her own way of supporting students and families that meets the needs of these unique schools and communities. Cognitive Coaching respects these differences and sets aside solutions listening, replacing it with listening and responding in ways that mediates thinking. It is in the honoring of thinking that we honor the profession of teaching.
4. Supports informed teacher decision-making. Teachers make thousands of decisions each day. When teachers are able to articulate their teaching and articulate the thinking behind their decisions, personal awareness is heightened. Cognitive Coaching aligns the critical action of thinking more closely to the actions of teaching. Through specific tools and strategies, Cognitive Coaching helps teachers recall their experiences, analyze causal factors, generate alternatives, and evaluate the effectiveness of their decisions. When consciousness is raised around the "how and why" of teaching, what results is a change in teaching style, expanded teaching repertoire, enhanced ability to plan, monitor, and adjust, and the ability to self-assess and make effective decisions for future learning.
5. Helps develop peer relationships within schools. Current school reforms require collaborative cultures where practitioners reflect on their practice. Educators need to model risk taking, open-mindedness, and continuous learning to create schools that are communities of learners. Cognitive Coaching promotes these values.
6. Deepens reflective skills. Teachers improve their teaching practice by becoming more reflective about teaching. Cognitive Coaching supports a teachers' ability to become self-directed and make changes in their own thinking resulting in changes to teaching practice.