AZPP Administrators

Coaching

10 Key Policies and Practices for Instructional Coaching—with Strong Evidence of Effectiveness from High-Quality Research
Research has shown that coaching improves professional knowledge, use of evidence-based practices, and student learning. This guide provides research-based guidance to educators interested in adopting new coaching programs or refining existing ones.
Publication Date: January 2023
Publisher: The University of Texas at Austin/The Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk

Arizona Principal Supervisor Professional Standards
The standards are intended to provide Arizona Local Education Agencies (LEAs) with guidance in establishing the role and responsibilities of a principal supervisor, as well as guidance in their development and professional learning. The standards are written in ideal language meant to provide a target. It is expected that the interpretation and enactment of these standards will vary to accommodate the needs and capacity of each school system.
Publisher: Arizona Department of Education

Arizona Teacher Leader Professional Standards
These standards are intended to provide Arizona Local Education Agencies (LEAs) with guidance in establishing the role and responsibilities of a teacher leader, as well as provide guidance in their development and professional learning. The standards introduced here are presented as Domains, or realms of knowledge, action, and leadership. They are written in ideal language meant to provide a target to work in alignment with other educator development guidance provided by the state including teacher induction standards, professional standards, and instructional leader standards.
Publisher: Arizona Department of Education

Coaching for Ongoing Professional Learning Within Tiered Support Models
This document provides content-specific examples of how to structure educator-level and/or systems-level coaching as a mechanism to ensure ongoing professional learning to support tiered intervention occurs. It provides examples of coaching supports, models, and functions within the context of tiered intervention and data-based decision making.
Publication Date: March 2020
Publisher: National Center on Intensive Intervention

Coaching for Teachers: What School Leaders Need to Consider
Coaching is an opportunity for experienced teachers to develop themselves further and for new teachers to gain confidence, skills, and self-awareness needed for a long and successful teaching career. This article explains instructional coaching, peer coaching, video coaching, real-time in-ear coaching, and online coaching.
Author: Andy Newell
Publication Date: Updated March 2025
Publisher: IRIS Connect

Empowering Principals: Building Instructional Leadership Skills through Coaching
This article discusses four strategies that supervisors and principals can adopt to push their coaching practices to the next level. Included are using a strengths-based approach; engaging in a variety of school settings; making evaluations more meaningful and relevant; and fostering a schoolwide culture of coaching and professional collaboration tied to teacher and student needs.
Publication Date: November 2020
Publisher: National Institute for Excellence in Teaching

Encircle Families
Collaboration between families and professionals results in the best possible outcomes for children with disabilities. Encircle Families is an Arizona nonprofit organization that provides free training and information to parents to help them understand their rights, roles, and responsibilities in their child’s health care and education. Training for pre-service and in-service professionals in education is available to improve collaboration between families and providers and achieve better results for children.
Publication Date: 2025
Publisher: Encircle Families

Evidence-Driven Classroom Walkthroughs: 7 Keys to Sustainable Impact
This webinar explores how to schedule time for classroom visits and deal with interruptions; covers three roles for differentiated feedback conversations that change teacher practice; examines how to maximize teachers' intrinsic motivation with evidence-driven, open-ended questions; and includes walkthrough myths and misconceptions that hold leaders back from having the greatest possible impact.
Author: Justin Baeder
Publication Date: February 2024
Publisher: Ed Leaders Network

How School Administrators Can Serve as Productive Partners in Teacher Coaching Programs
Based on data from our study of instructional coaching across 163 schools, this guide describes specific actions school-based administrators can take to serve as productive partners in instructional coaching programs.
Authors: Mahsa Bakhshaei and Angela Hardy
Publication Date: May 2021
Publisher: Digital Promise

Improving Teaching Practice with Instructional Coaching
This brief covers design principles for improving practice with instructional coaching, the evidence base for instructional coaching, the best candidates to coach and to be coached, what effective coaches do, supports coaches need to be successful, and key considerations for designing an evidence-based coaching program.
Authors: Laura Booker and Jennifer Russell
Publication Date: January 2022
Publisher: EdResearch for Recovery

Instructional Coaching: Key Strategies for High Impact
School and district leaders are challenged to support, retain, and develop their new and seasoned teachers. This webinar explains best practices for coaching and retaining teachers.
Publication Date: June 2024
Publisher: Teaching Channel

Learning Walks Artifacts: Examples/Nonexamples
This document provides examples and nonexamples of Learning Walks, a collaborative coaching process to be modeled and experienced with partners, grade-level teams, content area teams, and/or leadership teams. The purpose of the process is to assist educators in staying focused on what matters most in comprehensive learning environments, instructional practices, student interactions, and student engagement. Another purpose is to collect evidence of shared professional learning and collaboration over time.
Publication Date: 2020
Publisher: Arizona Department of Education

Principles of Instructional Coaching - How to Coach Administrators
This video explains how coaching an administrator is no different than coaching a teacher—we honor their ability to make decisions and honor their professionalism. It is grounded in the partnership principles, grounded in autonomy.
Author: Jim Knight
Publication Date: May 2023
Publisher: Instructional Coaching Group

Study of Teacher Coaching Based on Classroom Videos: Impacts on Student Achievement and Teachers’ Practices
For this study, about 100 elementary schools were randomly divided into three groups: one that received fewer highly structured cycles of focused professional coaching during a single school year, one that received more, and one that continued with its usual strategies for supporting teachers. The study compared teachers’ experiences and student achievement across the three groups to determine the effectiveness of the two versions of the coaching.
Authors: Melissa Clark, Jeffrey Max, Susanne James-Burdumy, Silvia Robles, Moira McCullough, Paul Burkander, and Steven Malick
Publication Date: June 2022
Publisher: Institute of Education Sciences

Understanding Coaches’ Access to Support Teaching and Learning: Three Coach-principal Dyads’ Perspectives
This interview study employs a distributed leadership perspective to explore three coach-principal dyads’ perspectives on: the strategies coaches use to gain entry to teachers’ classrooms; the barriers that impede coaches’ access; and the supports that facilitate coaches’ access.
Author: Evthokia Stephanie Saclarides
Publication Date: 2021
Publisher: Journal of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies