Peer coaching, a mentoring process for individuals of equal status, is a highly effective, but underused professional development tool. This book provides the first rigorously researched and road tested three-part model for fostering peer coaching relationships at work.

This guide trains teachers to help each other refine their classroom strategies and tailor them to 21st Century needs. Insights include how peer coaching involves much more than just one teacher offering another advice, how a coaching relationship is first built on trust, and then on the willingness to take risks, and why peer coaching should focus on adapting teaching methods to the technological future of education.

How can educators work together more effectively to improve professional practice in a way that enhances student performance? The answer, says author Pam Robbins, involves combining collaborative activities and peer coaching—teachers supporting teachers. This book describes how any school can implement these proven practices and experience positive changes in teaching, school culture, and learning. Robbins explains how to develop a collaborative, learning-focused culture and build trust among colleagues; offers strategies for participating in difficult conversations that yield useful feedback; clarifies how to develop, sustain, and evaluate peer coaching efforts; and showcases exemplary peer coaching practices used in real schools. She also includes coaching tools, scenarios, process guidelines, and reflection questions that make it easier to transfer these ideas into a school setting. Peer coaching offers a job-embedded learning strategy; it’s a valuable structure for supporting schoolwide and districtwide priorities such as analyzing data, improving instruction, integrating technology, and implementing standards. In short, it creates an effective way to support the growth of every teacher and enrich learning processes in any school. Pam Robbins is a former teacher, coach, director of professional development, and school leader. She consults with high-performing and low-performing districts and designs and conducts workshops on leadership, school culture, organizational change, mentoring, and peer coaching.

The author describes how schools can implement a peer coaching program that serves as a professional support group.

You don't need to be intimidated by the idea of being somebody's coach. Yes, many people make coaching their profession: executive coaches, business coaches, parent coaches, life coaches, athletic coaches, trainers, counselors, consultants, therapists, and others. For sure, they've had plenty of education and training to prepare them for these careers. But the idea that people can coach each other while they're trying to be more effective is not revolutionary. For example, experienced school teachers have always done this to help others who are new to the profession. And moms have been getting together to share their know-how with each other for, well, forever. Today, we call this helping activity "peer coaching." Coaching someone who is working to improve a skill is more like being a friend or a mentor. You do it because you care about someone else's success. Very likely the person who needs your help is someone you know well, such as a friend or a coworker. The purpose of this book is to give you a few ideas to make your coaching interactions more effective.

Supervision is increasingly required for a coach’s and a mentor's professional development, and engaging in reflective practice with peers can be a valuable way of meeting these needs. Peer supervision brings unique challenges though, including the possibility of collusion or stagnating at a shared developmental level. This book is written by practicing professional supervisors who engage in peer supervision themselves and train communities of coaches and mentors. It guides practitioners to develop and integrate their range of individual and group reflective practice activities alongside professional supervision. It draws upon essential theory and methodology, explores challenges and ethical dilemmas faced within peer supervision, and provides concrete guidance, useful techniques and helpful templates. This practical guide will be vital reading for individual coaching and mentoring practitioners and peer learning groups including within communities, universities and/or training programs. It will also support professional supervisors and organizations developing coaching cultures.

When it comes to mentoring, peer coaching is an undervalued workhorse. It's effective, inexpensive, widely applicable, and relatively easy to implement. Many coaches consider it to be the next wave in professional development. Peer Coaching at Work draws on research and practice to deliver a hands-on guide to this powerful relational learning technique. The authors—all leaders in the field—present a rigorously tested three-part model for facilitating peer coaching relationships in one-on-one settings and in larger groups. With lively case studies, they define peer coaching as a focused relationship between equals who supportively learn from, actively listen to, and judiciously question each other, which leads to breakthroughs that may otherwise lie dormant in one's career. A fundamental guide for anyone with an interest in mentoring and transformational learning, this book is a must-have for the talent management bookshelf.