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TRANSCRIPT

[Upbeat music playing. After a while, a male voiceover starts.] 

Welcome to the Educational Leadership Series proudly brought to you by the Global Innovation Network for Teaching and Learning. 

[Upbeat music continues for a bit.]

[Podcast host Sam – male voice different from the voiceover]

Hello and welcome to the third episode of the podcast series on educational leadership organized by the Global Innovations Network for Teaching and Learning. I am Sam and I work on international collaboration in the field of education. We are familiar with the idea of a coach and the role of coaching in sports and business. In this episode, I am joined by Kaisa Isotalo and Shruti Mushran to discuss coaching as a process in the professional development of educators and educational leaders. Kaisa is a retired school principal from the city of Seinäjoki in Finland. Shruti is a senior manager at Simple Education Foundation (SEF), India. SEF works to raise the quality of education in India’s public schools through a whole school transformation approach. The SEF team is also the Delhi State Council of Educational Research and Training’s knowledge partner in the development of a competency-based teacher development framework and state-wide in-service teacher education program. Besides Delhi, SEF’s operations are present in the states of Uttarakhand and Punjab. Both Kaisa and Shruti have been working on professional development of school leaders and have rich experience of coaching being used as a tool for the professional development of individual school leaders and teams of educators and educational leaders. In our discussion of coaching, we will touch upon who makes a good coach, the importance of coaching in the education sector, and the role a coach plays in a learning community.   

Welcome Kaisa and Shruti to the 3rd episode of the podcast series. The first 2 episodes covered the concepts of educational leadership and pedagogical leadership against the backdrop of our running team of learning communities. Today, I would love to inquire with you into the topic of coaching for professional development of educators and educational leaders. Thank you for joining and it's a privilege to have the opportunity to learn from your combined experience and expertise. I'm going to build my first question on the notion that coaching is an important part of the learning and developmental journey of an individual or a team, be it in the field of sports or education. I'd like to start with Kaisa, and I'd like to direct this to you– who is a coach and what is coaching made up of?

[Kaisa Isotalo – female voice]

Thank you. Well, a coach actually is a professionally trained that work and they have a background of different fields of education. They could be business managers or whatever, but they have to take a special training for, to be a coach. The idea of coaching is that they help, they give their all their experiences and their education their personal strengths to help to coach those persons or the groups to meet their goals. So they are not offering a specific course of anything, but they are coaching some individuals or groups to grow towards their personal goals and this concept of coaching is then used in many ways in in both leadership, management, or I would say further educational courses for teachers. So you could always use the same method in helping other people to move towards their personal goals. Then we use terms as mentoring or tutoring, but then if you use the word coaching so that then you need to be a qualified coach for to do that. That's how I would kind of express it.

[Podcast host Sam]

Shruti my next question is aimed at validating the notion we began with. Why would you say is coaching an important part of the professional learning and development of educators or educational leaders?

[Shruti Mushran – female voice]

Yeah, I think I'll just draw a little on my experience here. This is not coming from a professional coach, but my experience with the teacher that I had way back in college and this teacher didn't really teach me anything academically. I was just part of a society in my college, and this particular teacher saw immense potential in me and the feeling that I walked away was with somebody believing in me and I think that's how I also see a coach. As somebody who believes in you, pushing you towards that journey of growth and development. And I think that has had immense impact on me. So when I think about, say, like the educators or the leaders that I've worked with. Also I heard this word training, I hear the word training very often and it brings me to the question of how much weight does that word also carry? It gives me personally a sense of a very technical thing. But when I replace it, say with the word coaching and development, it adds certain humanness to that journey of educators and towards their professional development. Also the words that we use and why coaching is such a different world from from a word like treating, yeah.

[Kaisa Isotalo]

Yeah. I would then like to add a concept of peer coaching. So as a method for teacher development or leader development, you can use peer coaching in such courses or in municipalities so that two teachers or two leaders do agree that they help each other to grow. But then of course, there needs to be somebody who takes over this project, let’s say Shruti who is responsible for that kind of development programs in in your country, so that could be a tool to help because you cannot be a coach for too many people. So then you could be coach for peer coaching pairs. So to help them to do coaching for each other.

[Shruti Mushran]

 Yeah. And that also makes me think of the role that a coach plays in these professional communities or things that are there is also creating that safe and equitable space for the participants or an individual as well. And and this is something again that I see happening is when when there are school leaders and teachers, there are certain power dynamics that come into play, but the minute that I see only school leaders or school principals in the same space, it's a very equitable space that I see. And as a coach, can that also be brought out for certain individuals? Yeah, just I think I love the idea of peer coaching in that sort of capacity, yeah.

[Kaisa Isotalo]

Yeah. Then again, you can always think of a principal being a coach for her or his school, the whole staff, and even the students. So there always needs to be that kind of attitude that we we are not ready. We don't know everything. We we try to grow together and we have a common goal. We want every student to meet their own personal goal. So that's how we need to have the same kind of spirit among teachers in each school. So that coaching idea goes through whole educational system. I even would like that idea to go to the Minister of Education and and those higher departments.

[Podcast host Sam]

You've already touched upon some elements of good coaching and some examples of how coaching could be organized. Kaisa, you mentioned peer coaching when it comes to qualities of a coach and requirements of coaching. Shruti you you mentioned the ability, or the mindset, to be able to create an equitable space for all the people involved. Let's build on that and maybe try to give our listeners a more comprehensive picture of what coaching could look like in terms of the qualities and the processes involved. What have you observed or learned or enacted in your experience as a coach? And in Finland, Kaisa, you called the role a tutor. So what have you learned or enacted in your experience as a coach or a tutor that you would say is key to effective professional development through coaching? 

[Kaisa Isotalo]

Well, the main thing is to be interested about the situation, the situation of your – could I say student or the student leader. What kind of situation he or she is facing right now? You have to study a bit about what kind of person he or she is and what kind of experiences of of educational life they have. So you know their starting point because you can do coaching in every every part of your professional sphere. At the beginning, everybody needs that as you are a starting leader.  I'm now retiring and I've been a principal for 24 years in this school. I now have a new principal here. I've been coaching her for this spring term because I knew that she will be the principal already in February. But now she's taking the school for her. And so we've been going through all kinds of things that these are the facts and these are the feelings and this is how you could probably fit yourself towards this in these circumstances. She's brilliant. She's so good, so it's easy work for me. But anyway, so the first step, somebody is there for some help. How could I figure myself in this position? Then once you are a leader so then during your path you face some difficulties for sure. That's how life is. That's part of leadership. And so then you need a coach to support you once you are facing the difficulties to share the ideas to somehow solve the problem. The coach is not solving the problem for you, but he or she helps you to kind of take another view. Think it in a different way to accept the cruel fact if that's how it is, and so on, to cry for somebody and to get it over with. Then once you are in this point of, right. And I have had some good coaches to help me to understand how you have to prepare yourself for retirement and how would you like it to be after your retirement. So I know now perfectly happy with this position that I can be coaching younger ones and I still have something to give them, but then I have to let this school continue the good work that is happening here every day. So you need coaching in every part of your life.

[Shruti Mushran]

Yeah, I want to build on something that Kaisa said about taking that genuine interest or concern in an individual or anybody that say one is coaching and it also brings me to that experience that I've had with a coach and for them to understand what is my learning style or my style of engaging as well. And that also comes from that place of genuine interest. So say I'm somebody who's very visual, and this person made it easier for me to get that coaching through a set of different visual exercises, and that's a practice that I've also taken back that really knowing about individuals really knowing what works for them and that immediately just came to my mind as Kaisa was sharing about that. Yeah. And something else that I also heard when Kaisa shared that the job of a coach is not to give the solution but to guide individuals to reach that solution. Now I could just immediately go back to these two-three words. One is about actually being a listener as well. Being able to listen to people asking questions or just using the right sort of questions that also push an individual or guide an individual to move towards a certain direction. And I I think those qualities or those skills really came up for me as Kaisa are worth sharing that about coaching.

[Kaisa Isotalo]

Then, of course, coaching, at least in in Finland, it's a profession too. So once you have a coaching agreement. So you get paid for that. But then again you can have some, let's say, mentors that are free. It's only an agreement between two people that let's help each other to grow. And it's always a relationship that helps both grow – it's a win – win situation. And I've been doing that with business people too. So they want to learn from educational field, especially about the social relationship. How to be a leader? They know how to be a manager. How to be a leader and then again we in in schools, we need to have some management skills too, so it's it's been win again. But in those coaching relationships I have, we are not changing money, it's it's changing knowledge and ideas, learning from each other. Yes, coaching is a profession and and you can have a a contract. Money is combined, but then again coaching and mentoring can be also between two professionals just to learn from each other. Or you can do it pro bono. 

[Podcast host Sam]

Speaking of it being a profession in Finland, what does that look like? Where do these coaches come from? Who forms the the collective of coaches in Finland?

[Kaisa Isotalo]

Well, further education centres to organize that kind of courses. It's to be qualified. It's kind of a tricky thing in in Finland, we have all kinds of courses for coaches, but then if you want to be professionally qualified so there is some is an association of work counselors and coaches that accepts only some training courses that if you have that kind of training then you are qualified as a qualified coach and you can call yourself a professional and if then some organization wants to have a professional coach, so then they can check if if that person is in the catalogue of those specialists. It's kind of like if you are a real doctor or not. But then then there are lighter courses, and of course they can give you some skills, but then I would say that it is so that if you, if you really want to pay for it so then then you have to check that the coach is a professional coach and they have a qualified education for that. But then if you need a mentor, if you need a tutor so then you can think that who would I like to have to there so that I can share ideas with that person. So it's only to ask. And then again. Every time once I'm starting coaching, so if if it's a paid coaching, so I always want to have one session so that it's kind of a negotiation. Once they learn to know what kind of person I am as a coach and I learn to learn what kind of organization, what kind of person this is, who needs coaching. It's after that we kind of know that is this beneficial. Am I the right kind of coach for this person or this organization? There's no idea of paying anything. If the relationship is not fruitful, so that's how actually a professional coaching should go that you meet with the team, you meet with the with the person and once you have the negotiation first then you know if we wanna go continue or not then you make a contract.

[Podcast host Sam]

Does every teacher in Finland have a coach.

[Kaisa Isotalo]

No, this is a new method, so it's going and in many teacher training courses we now use this method in in different ways. It's it's a growing attitude that you need that kind of support on your professional career. But no, not everybody has, in fact, in my school, we've used one tool which has been fruitful. So we have a saying that everybody in this school needs to have one support person. So it regardless if you are a student, if you are a cleaning worker or if you are a teacher, so then that means that you have a peer coach. They make pairs and they have peer coaches and then it's it's a professional agreement between the teachers. That I can share my professional problems with this person and since I have a big school, so there's no way I could be that kind of peer coach for every teacher in this school or every cleaning lady and everybody. So they need a pair coach and we have discussed and made an agreement that on professional issues you can use that peer coach. And then if you two as a pair think that this issue is too big for us, this is something we have to ask help from the principle so that they many little problems will be solved between the the staff and the staff. But then those ones that are really kind of hard cases, they come to principal’s table and then we start discussing and and coaching that how would be solve this kind of problem. But so that that way I think it it always also gives us some strength to all teachers that they are capable of doing this kind of coaching for each other. Because they are professionals, they know.

[Shruti Mushran]

I also had a question that was coming to me and is. Also coming from the Indian context where I haven't seen a lot of these courses, but I also see that in different professions and different roles, there are people who are still playing the role of a coach. And the question that comes to me is that what is that professional training required exactly to become a coach? Or can people become coaches without actually receiving that professional training? And I just see it because there are so many multiple hats that we're playing in our day-t-day life, working with the team, you know, working with the school principal principals, working with a with their own team. And they're still playing that role of a coach and at least in the Indian context, I don't think many of them have gone through any professional training course to say, play the role of a coach. So that's just a question that is also coming up for me right now.

[Kaisa Isotalo]

Yeah, well, that kind of issue kind of leads up to the concept of power. So once you are coaching, of course you have some power because you use kind of social power. But then it's a good thing if you really have pure ethics as a coach. But if your idea is to influence in for your personal career or to get better paid, or to get power or something like that, so then that might be even damage some organization. So to become a coach, you need to kind of get their votes from your staff, from your peers. They have to accept that this person has something to give us, so it has to come from the people that are working with you or under you, but not the higher people. That's how I feel.

[Shruti Mushran]

Yeah, that's a beautiful perspective. I think because I know so many brilliant coaches and I don't know how many of them have actually gone through a professional training or a course, but it's just that people have been sharing that, oh, you know, this is a coach that we want and this is this person that we want to interact with. That's just a beautiful perspective here.

[Poscast host Sam]

I agree, and I'd like to get more clarity on how coaching is done in your context. Both you Kaisa and Shruti. So how does a coach organize his or her time in let's say a day, a week or month and a year? What does a coach do? What are the various activities? And you touched upon individual support. What does it look like in the case of team support in terms of building culture in, in the team? Essentially, what does coaching look like? How is it organized over a day, a week, a month, a year? What are the various activities that go into it?

[Kaisa Isotalo]

OK, well, it depends. It depends on what is the need of that organization, what is the need of that person. But if I make a regular coaching for one person, let's say one leader would need that and that would be a paid coaching. So then it would be one and a half hour session once a month. And it would be so that there is always some kind of orientation for that session so that somebody is speaking about the weather or whatever. And then as a coach, I always have some topics I want to share, something prepared. But the needs of the person I'm coaching, they come first. So first it is to ask what are you up to? Are there some questions that you want to share? I use word of tunnekoukku  in Finnish. It means that if there is the hook in your experience that has happened emotionally, that is really emotionally involving, either negative or positive. So would you like to share that because there is always something to be learned, especially those negative things. So they're like stones inside of you and we open the case with questions. So those are the best cases to learn. And so that's how we always started. So all those emotional things and even all I wish that all those people that I'm I'm quoting they they write down during that month. But those cases that this was really a hard thing for me this time, I didn't sleep during the night because I was bothering. Can I can I go through next day, and so on. So that would be the first step. But then sometimes the person comes to that meeting so that, well, nothing really special has happened. It's ordinary days. And so then I take my topic, then we start discussing about, let's say, well, the working climate of your organization. Whatever. And they share that. And then we make some, we try to conclude always that that session so that the person wants to take some actions in her work during that next month, and then we can continue. Then it's kind of like we start again after one month. That would be kind of a basic case. And with the organization, let’s say I would be coaching a team, the leadership team of some school. So it would be in a way the same, but since there are many people so then it it has to be more structured, it has to be more structured, but I usually use some electric tools. To collect some ideas, let's say in a duel or tablet or some kind of that to collect the ideas beforehand or during the session, so that everybody gets their voice to voice the the solutions. But yeah, so that would be the basic.

[Shruti Mushran]

I'll share a little from my contexts. Also being the receiver of of this coaching experience and also being able to share that experience, I'll speak a little bit about being a receiver first and something that I heard Kaisa saying was also coming in with certain preparation and that goes both for the coach and for the coachee and it follows like a series of questions. So there are set number of sessions that happen say like on a fortnightly basis or it could be like a weekly basis. And there is a lot of homework which is also involved. It involves reflection on the part of the coachee and the prompt for the guide guiding questions actually come from the coach. So that preparation is quite present. And as a receiver of, say, coaching within my organization from different leaders, it involves the same thing. There is preparation. There are questions that are coming in, but something that I walk out with is always like clarity on certain next steps that I would be doing. That's the lengths that coaches have often provided me in whether it's within my organization or whether it's somebody external who's been coaching me, so as a receiver, that's what I've experienced. And I do tend to take some of these practices back in my role. I've also experienced that the role of a coach, manager, leader often overlap. Say I have a team that I work with. So there are individuals and there's a group that we have. We have weekly meetings where the meeting as a group also. But then there are individual check-ins, which again happen on a fortnightly or once in 3-week, kind of a basis where the focus is on the individual, what the individual needs, what are their learning and development goals and can we arrive at those together. What support would they require? Those are the kind of conversations. Questions that I also hold, and when I actually shift my role towards schools that I work with, where there are school leaders that are teachers, I think there is a similar approach of questioning that goes there and really understanding the individuals. That's where a lot of like coaching also comes into picture. So I think Kaisa started with saying it depends. And for me, it also depends on the role that I'm playing. It also brings up another thought for me and something around adaptive leadership. If I'm to bring that in here and it's just really knowing about individuals adapting towards their needs, what do they need? What do I need as an individual? Me and I'm just seeing this overlap with being adaptive and also being a coach, and that's just really coming up for me right now.

[Kaisa Isotalo]

Yeah. One thing that I would like to share, I I'm not sure Shruti if we talked about this once we had that process going on. There is a need for coaching, for coaches as well. And I so wish you had that in your country. For example next fall, I'm gonna be as a member in that kind of team that we as coaches get coaching. Because you know how it sometimes, although how well you try try to do your work, sometimes you get difficulties in in coaching. So then you get some support for that and that part is true for everybody. So I wish you have coach coaching for coaches.

[Shruti Mushran]

Yeah, I resonate with that statement so much. It popped up in my head sometime back, and like every coach, also needs a coach. And yeah, yeah.

[Podcast host Sam]

Well, that brings us towards the end of this podcast. It has been a very interesting conversation on coaching and the podcast’s running theme is learning communities. The 3 of us have been part of a learning community, an international one. What closing thoughts or advice would you have for someone who would like to build a a learning community and it doesn't have to be from the perspective of coaching or tutoring, but more a general hope for such communities? What would your hope be for international or local learning communities? In the field of.

[Kaisa Isotalo]

Well, what I think is so great that to get to know professionals who have warm heart and who want to really build a good educational system in different countries and and to be able to share the ideas, share the problems and find some new solutions. That's going to be needed in becoming years in the future. So yes, this is something that really gives you hope that we'll do it together.

[Shruti Mushran]

Yeah, like the big +12 Kaisa in terms of feeling hopeful and being the part of the space that we were also. There was just so much of exchange of ideas, questions, just understanding and being what we know about our context, respective context that was there. And it's just a very authentic exchange that happens between different people and these learning communities. That like motivates me at least a lot and that's why I hope that these communities can build that authentic exchange, that happens.

[Kaisa Isotalo]

Thank you Sam, and thank you Shruti for making this possible and all the best. For both of you.

[Podcast host Sam]

Thank you Kaisa and Shruti for engaging in this conversation. I wish you the best in the important and wonderful work that you do and hope to speak with you again.

That was the third episode of the podcast series. For those working in or interested in the field, I hope you found the conversation on coaching towards the professional development of educators meaningful. The next and final episode of the series is on sustainability and sustainable education. Thank you for listening and I wish you the best.  

[Upbeat music starts playing. Male voiceover speaks]

This was an episode in the educational leadership podcast series – proudly brought to you by the Global Innovation Network for Teaching and Learning. To listen to the other three episodes, and to find out more about the GINTL network, kindly visit