Instructional Coaching in K-12 Education: What It Is and What It Is Not

Despite being an empirically proven strategy for improving student outcomes, instructional coaching can still have a bad rep among K–12 educators. Resistance to coaching is costly for districts that have invested significantly in such initiatives, face tighter budgets, and have limited personnel capacity. To address this resistance, administrators must balance honoring teachers’ concerns about coaching while keeping programs going.

The best place to start? Ensuring both leaders and teachers understand what instructional coaching is, and importantly, what it is not.

This article explains why teacher coaching is so often misunderstood in K–12 education, the most common reasons why teachers resist coaching, and how administrators can navigate each concern.

Table of Contents

I. Why Instructional Coaching Is Often Misunderstood in K–12 Education
II. What K-12 Instructional Coaching IS
III. What K-12 Instructional Coaching Is NOT
IV. How Does Instructional Coaching Support Teacher Growth?
V. Why Teachers May Be Resistant to Instructional Coaching
VI. 3 Approaches To Instructional Coaching
VII. How Schools Can Strengthen Their Instructional Coaching Success With Level Data

Why Instructional Coaching Is Often Misunderstood in K–12 Education

Teacher resistance to coaching often ties into a district’s consistency (or lack thereof) in defining it in conjunction with professional development and evaluations. To gain teachers’ trust and to support them in embracing instructional shifts through coaching, administrators must clarify exactly what coaching is and how it will fit into their unique ecosystem.

What K–12 Instructional Coaching IS

Instructional coaching isn’t about casual conversations between teachers and coaches, nor is it constant critique of a teacher’s abilities. Instead, coaching is a highly structured, measurable, and informed process to build educators’ skills. Through it, teachers understand the state of their current practice, identify specific changes to improve it, and receive clear, specific feedback from coaches on their progress. Along the way, coaches and teachers examine how instructional shifts are reflected in student academic and observation data.

Here are three key qualities of effective coaching in any school district.

Instructional Coaching Is Established as a Collaborative Partnership

Like any healthy partnership, coaching works best when its participants share responsibility and autonomy. Coaches and teachers are equals, and it is through these relationships that they give and receive support with the shared intent of improving instruction to improve student learning. This dynamic is quite different from the top-down support teachers may be accustomed to receiving from their principals or district administrators.

Instructional Coaching Is Embedded in Daily Practice

Unlike isolated training or professional learning sessions, which typically remove teachers from the classroom, coaching is an embedded practice with an immediate impact on students’ learning experiences. Teachers and coaches focus on current lessons, recent events or strategies practiced, and upcoming instructional needs. Coaches regularly observe classroom activities. Teachers receive precise feedback on their instructional strategies within days, if not hours, and can quickly shift course as a result.

Instructional Coaching Is Goal-Oriented and Data-Informed

Importantly, coaching must be focused, concentrating on a few highly specific goals for instructional changes. Coaches and teachers use data to measure those shifts and their impact on learning in an ongoing manner, like a hiker using a compass to stay on the right path forward. The iterative process of coaching prioritizes small, incremental changes that build over time.

What K–12 Instructional Coaching Is NOT

Instructional Coaching Is Not a Teacher Evaluation

Employee evaluations are a formal process designed to appraise a team member’s performance in their role, with tangible consequences related to salary, career progression, and more. For teachers, these reviews happen about once per year and usually involve top-down, generalized feedback about their performance.

In contrast, coaching is an ongoing cycle in which a teacher receives specific feedback and guidance with the goal of consistent, incremental growth. While coaching outputs may serve as evidence of a teacher’s improvement or growth in performance (and thus make an appearance in an evaluation), coaching itself is separate and should not be perceived as a tool to determine a teacher’s compensation or eligibility for advancement.

Instructional Coaching Is Not Professional Development Workshops

A common misconception is to dismiss coaching as a one-and-done event, like PD workshops or one-day seminars. These single-event strategies often fail to create tangible changes in a teacher’s instructional work. Effective coaching requires a regular commitment of time spread over the school year. You can think about the difference between reading a book chapter by chapter to apply knowledge versus watching a condensed one-hour presentation.

Similarly, coached teachers are not passively receiving information, like they might at a workshop or single training event. Instead, both coach and teacher participate actively in the process as equals in the relationship.

Instructional Coaching Is Not a Scripted Fix-It Model

Last, teachers may misunderstand instructional coaching as an effort to remove teachers’ autonomy from the instructional equation. This is especially potent for veteran teachers, or when the strategies they are being asked to use or change differ greatly from the methods they have used for years.

Instead, coaching is the means by which to enhance a teacher’s existing knowledge with the latest insights offered by learning science and research. Coaching should enhance, not extinguish, a teacher’s unique touch in the art of teaching.

How Does Instructional Coaching Support Teacher Growth?

At the macro level, coaching encourages teachers to align their instructional practices with empirically proven strategies that drive student learning. But for an individual educator, coaching also builds critical self-reflection and analytical skills necessary for navigating the complexity of each student’s learning experience. That growth mindset—the same that many teachers encourage their students to practice— is invaluable for a teacher’s long-term career, too, whether they choose to stay in the classroom or move into a district role.

Why Teachers May Be Resistant to Instructional Coaching

Perceived Loss of Control

Teachers resistant to coaching may value maintaining their professional independence, viewing coaching as a challenge to their agency. This concern is exacerbated when proposed instructional changes contradict a teacher’s deeply held beliefs or professional perspective. Leaders can overcome this perception by giving teachers ownership within the coaching program, even inviting them to help plan the initiative itself.

Uncertainty About Unknowns

There is a reason why the saying “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know” remains relevant. It is human nature to fear the unknown. For teachers, this anxiety may arise as opposition, confrontation, or unwillingness to engage in coaching, which is often a new experience for them. Clear processes, transparent timelines, and upfront communication about the purpose and goals of coaching can ease this fear. It may also help to share empirical research or case studies of successful coaching to reduce uncertainty.

Lack of Transparency

No one wants to learn about a major change to their routine or work right before it happens. K–12 leaders should embrace transparency when building a coaching program, sharing what they can early and often with staff to get ahead of the aforementioned uncertainty. Consistent and clear communication is one of the best ways to overcome teacher resistance to instructional coaching.

Fear of Change

When administrators implement a program like coaching, which itself requires some amount of change to a teacher’s day-to-day life, there will be some teachers who feel the weight of the change more than their peers. Wherever possible, administrators can keep a teacher’s routine stable and familiar. Where change is necessary, communicate often and clearly why the change matters, how it may benefit teachers and students, and what teachers can expect from the change.

Loss of Face

Some teachers may believe that by offering coaching, their district or school leaders are implying that they or their long-used methods of instruction are somehow “wrong,” which can feel deeply personal. Administrators should ensure that coaching in practice and in conversation is the opposite: building on that teacher’s existing knowledge and expertise with the latest understandings about learning science. Even instructional strategies found not to improve student learning still offer insight into what does work and often have nothing to do with the teacher themselves.

Concern About Competence

Much like the misconceptions about coaching and evaluations, some teachers may be concerned about receiving top-down directives from coaches. Additionally, it can feel tremendously vulnerable for teachers to “expose” their professional skills to a coach through classroom observations.

Building structural and cultural reassurance with teachers can help shift this concern from one of scrutiny to one of continued growth. In kind, administrators should be prepared to support coaches and step into situations with particularly reluctant teachers to clarify expectations.

Perceptions of Increased Workload

Unsurprisingly, teachers don’t want more work added to their already full plates. Even the teams responsible for designing and implementing a new coaching program have other responsibilities. Combined with initiative fatigue, a coaching program may fail before it even starts. Extra participation incentives, clear planning, thoughtful organization of coaching cycles with respect to teachers’ schedules, and a slower implementation can all ease the perception of coaching being “one more thing.” Online teacher coaching platforms that streamline core coaching processes and data collection also help reduce time and effort for everyone involved.

Ripple Effects

One of the pitfalls with a new initiative in K–12 education is failing to account for its intersection and impact with other programs. Rather than create circumstances in which coaching is perceived as competing with other key initiatives, administrators must plan for these potential ripple effects. For instance, they can map coaching against all existing programs and initiatives, identify points of friction to resolve, and communicate ways that coaching should coherently support other key areas like literacy.

Past Resentments

Veteran teachers may have experienced unsuccessful program implementations in the past. These failures, at least in the minds of the resistant teachers, suggest that a new instructional coaching initiative will follow the same course. Some teachers may also believe that a new program will pass as each new administration tries to make its mark on the institution, even holding cynicism toward administrators based on past interactions.

Leaders should take time to understand why past programs failed and transparently commit to rectifying these errors during the new implementation.

Coaching Model Mismatch

A teacher entering a coaching relationship may hold entirely different expectations than their coach does. Some may be ready for shared problem-solving, while others expect coaches to provide expert advice or to simply validate their current practice.

Administrators can work with coaches to avoid these headwinds by emphasizing rapport-building and addressing potential mismatches in expectations upfront, especially with teachers who may be initially hesitant.

3 Approaches To Instructional Coaching

Teachers may feel any one or several of the ten reasons above when they resist coaching, and each requires a different method to ameliorate.
By listening carefully to what teachers say and the questions they ask, a coach can determine if a facilitative, directive, or dialogical stance would support the teacher, changing their coaching approach as needed to match the situation. Let’s examine each approach more closely.

#1: Facilitative Approach

In this approach, coaches listen with empathy, paraphrase, and ask powerful questions, rather than share their expertise or suggestions for what a teacher can do to improve. The facilitative approach works best when teachers already have the knowledge they need to address instructional issues, but it is less effective for newer or less knowledgeable teachers.

#2: Directive Approach

Conversely, a directive approach sets up the coach as a specialist with in-depth knowledge to transfer to the teacher. The coach helps the teacher build these specific skills, similar to a master-apprentice relationship.

#3: Dialogical Approach

The dialogical approach has aspects of both the facilitative and directive methods. The coach asks powerful questions, listens, and collaborates with teachers to set goals. They do not withhold their expertise, but neither do they give direct advice. This approach is often most effective for most teachers.

How Schools Can Strengthen Their Instructional Coaching Success With Level Data

Consistency and transparency within a coaching program can transform teacher resistance into enthusiastic engagement. For that, districts need the right digital infrastructure to centralize, streamline, and scale their coaching initiatives. Grow by Level Data gives schools and districts the instructional coaching tools they need to create accountability and visibility within their instructional culture and help every teacher grow.

Take a tour to see the solution in action.