Navigating learning and instrumental obligations to resolve divergent perspectives in coaching conversations

We explored how three coaches following a content-focused-coaching [CFC] model conducted lesson planning meetings with teachers. We used the lens of obligations to study how the coaches navigated two obligations central to the CFC model. The first obligation, the instrumental obligation, refers to the obligation to produce a lesson plan, which we attribute to the institutional and personal obligations described by Herbst and Chazan (ZDM 44:601–12, 2012). The second obligation, the learning obligation, refers to the obligation to push teachers’ thinking with respect to learning disciplinary content, which we attribute to disciplinary and interpersonal obligations described by Herbst and Chazan (ZDM 44:601–12, 2012). We studied the interplay between these two obligations, with a particular emphasis on how this interplay influenced how the participants resolved divergent perspectives that emerged during the planning conversations. We used a collective case study Stake (in: Denzin (ed) Handbook of qualitative research. Sage, 2000) of three coaches who were involved in a larger project; the three cases were selected due to the relatively strong emphasis on the learning obligation. The implications of our study are that coaches following the CFC model should anticipate which divergent perspectives are likely to emerge and make tentative plans for how to address them in the conversation.