Student achievement through staff development

In this chapter the authors explain how they have developed and refined their vision for training as the means by which new knowledge is added to the teacher’s professional repertoire. They suggest that over the years since they first advocated coaching as an essential ingredient in using new knowledge to change practice in the early 1980s, training designs have come to distinguish more effectively between awareness-raising as a training objective, and behaviour change. They argue that learning how to learn is just as important for teacher professional development as the acquisition of new knowledge and skills; and they explore a model of coaching in which joint planning and resource development, together with mutual observation and learning from each other are the key elements.