Just this week, @DrSamSims wrote a very well-argued blogpost giving four reasons why  instructional coaching is the most well-evidenced form of CPD,  and which concludes that All schools that aspire to be evidence-based should be giving it (instructional coaching ) a go.  Unfortunately - Sam’s last sentence is a tad over-enthusiastic and for three reasons mars what would be an excellent post.   First, it’s not for researchers to tell school leaders and teachers what they should or should not be doing in their schools and classrooms .  What school leaders and teachers prioritise in their schools and classroom is down to their professional judgment.  Indeed, the last sentence of Sam’s blogpost is grist to the mill for the opponents of evidence-based education.  Second, the role of research evidence in evidence-based practice is to provide the backing for warrants.  As such, research evidence plays an indirect role in developing an arguments supporting the use of the intervention - Kvernbekk (2016).  Third, even if you think that instructional coaching meets an obvious priority for  your school i.e. supporting the improvement of teaching learning – that does not mean your school should automatically do it.  Ideally, school leaders would use a disciplined process to work out whether what worked ‘there’ is going to work ‘here’.

So in the rest of this post I am, once again, going to lean on the work of Kvernbekk (2016)  to examine the process you might wish to undertaken before adopting even the ‘most evidenced’ intervention.

Last weekend saw the annual education evidence fest – aka- ResearchED  2018 take place in St John’s Wood, London.  Unfortunately, one of the inevitable disappointments of attending #rED 18 is that you are unable to see all the speakers that you would like to see.  As such, you are often have to do with other people’s summaries of speakers.  So I was particularly pleased to see Schools Week come up with a headline and article ResearchED 2018 Five interesting things we learned and was even more pleased when I saw it contained a short summary of Dr Sam Sims presentation on the positive impact of instructional coaching.  However, my excitement was short-lived as when I came to read the article, and especially references to the statistically significant positive effect of instructional coaching being was found in 10 out of 15 studies, which was then used to infer that “probably the best-evidenced form of CPD currently known to mankind”