Over 20 Years of Research
For more than two decades, Jim Knight and his colleagues at The University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning and the Instructional Coaching Group have been studying instructional coaching, communication, and other forms of professional development. “In the early years, our work was about finding our way, finding names for what we did, grabbing what data we could to support what we were doing, and trying to get better at coaching every day. Over time, our instructional coaching model and our methodologies have improved.”
This page has been created to tell the story of instructional coaching through the research we have conducted. On each link, you’ll find (a) a brief description of the research and other publications and how they fit into the evolving story of instructional coaching; (b) a one-page summary of our findings; and (c) whenever possible, the complete text of our paper or a link to the paper so you can read what we did. If you’re especially interested in learning how our understanding evolved, we suggest you start at the bottom of the links and work your way up to the most recent research.
Knight, J. Learning consulting: Translating research into practice. Stratenotes. 1998. 7(1) 1-3.
This paper, published in our University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning publication Stratenotes, offers some very preliminary thoughts about the instructional coach as a translator of research. It explores the questions: What is a translator? And, if “learning consultants” translate research into practice, what does that mean for what they do? This is the first document I published, my early notes on what coaching is and what coaches could do.
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Knight, J. (1998). Do schools have learning disabilities?
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Knight, J. (2002). Crossing boundaries: What constructivists can teach intensive-explicit instructors and vice versa.
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Knight, J. (2009). Partnership learning: Putting conversation at the heart of professional development. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, California.
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Jim Knight
Instructional Coaching Group
Jim Knight, Senior Partner of ICG, is a research associate at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning.