Cultivating a collaborative coaching community: the co-creation of a Noticing and Wondering Protocol

Recognizing the critical role that embedded clinical experiences, coupled with high-quality coaching and mentoring, have on the development of teacher candidates (AACTE, 2018), a key tenet of the University Residency Program (URP; pseudonym) was sustained coaching and support from school- and university-based clinical educators. URP was an 18-month federally funded teacher residency program designed to prepare residents alongside rural school and district partners. Throughout the entirety of the program, residents participated in supervised clinical experiences designed to complement and align with the program’s elementary master’s level coursework and professional learning experiences.

Noting that sustained coaching and supervision were a central component of our residency model, the URP’s design included the development of a supervision as responsive coaching model to guide residency experiences. Included in the development of our model was the creation of a professional learning space to support our school- and university-based clinical educators (to be called coaching teachers and university supervisors from this point forward). This learning space was paramount in cultivating shared capacity related to the content and pedagogies required to engage in supervision as responsive coaching.

Informed by tenets of instructional coaching (Knight, 2007), cognitive coaching (Costa et al., 2016), transformational coaching (Aguilar, 2013), and the University of Florida Lastinger Center’s coaching model, the URP supervision as responsive coaching model was a non-evaluative experience in which teacher residents engaged in inquiry-oriented coaching cycles and received ongoing site-based supports from various boundary spanning educators. Noting the critical position boundary spanning clinical educators hold in coaching and mentoring residents as they learn to navigate the emotional, procedural, and conceptual aspects of teaching (Burns & Badiali, 2016), we sought to develop a sustained learning space dedicated to the ongoing development of our coaching teachers and university supervisors who enacted the supervision as responsive coaching model.

The overarching goal of this curricular initiative was to establish a cadre of URP coaches—a community of coaching teachers and university-based supervisors working together to enhance teaching and learning in [State] schools. Our community consisted of two university-based teacher educators, ten school-based coaching teachers, and two university-based supervisors who worked collaboratively to support residents throughout their program. Across our community, we were situated in two partner school districts, three cities within [State], and four elementary schools (two schools in each partner district). As our partner districts were not located in close geographical proximity, our professional learning space occurred virtually via Zoom.

Our work began in the summer with five one-hour learning community sessions occurring during a two-week virtual summer institute. During this institute, residents gained content and pedagogical knowledge alongside coaching teams, and then had opportunities to engage in authentic supervised teaching enactments. The objectives for these five learning community sessions focused on developing common knowledge of the URP residency program, gaining insight into the role of a coach, exploring the role of co-teaching as a catalyst for mentoring interactions, and the strategic use of our program’s practice of noticing and wondering. Additionally, embedded within these initial sessions was the opportunity to enact and reflect upon knowledge gained during our learning community sessions into the institute’s authentic teaching enactments (for more information on the summer institute, see Thompson et al., 2022).

Following the summer institute, our coaching community continued to meet monthly throughout the school year. During the monthly, hour-long sessions, we focused on topics that ranged from programmatic logistics (i.e. coaching cycle calendars and paperwork) to refining our coaching moves and examining strategies for productive coaching conversations. Additionally, most of our community opted to engage in a deeper dive into coaching through a book study centered on Aguilar’s (2013) The Art of Coaching. Both the learning community and book study sessions embodied an action-oriented inquiry stance in which we facilitated differentiated exploration into coaching skills (e.g. active listening, creation of data displays, facilitative vs directive coaching conversations, noticing and wondering) to include “try-its” that enabled coaching teams to apply, reflect upon, and revise their implementation of learned coaching content and pedagogy.

From a design perspective, a goal for the development and facilitation of learning community conversations was to provide a space for ongoing reciprocal dialogue across all coaching team members. With an eye for improvement, we collectively unpacked our residency experiences and engaged in reflective conversations related to our processes and protocols, making strategic adjustments and enhancements to the coaching and supervision our residents received. Specifically, we engaged in a collaborative design process that resulted in the co-creation of a Noticing and Wondering Coaching Protocol. This protocol guided the enactment of coaching and embodied the responsive nature of dynamic coaching cycles. A key component in our professional learning was the iterative process of enacting and refining the Noticing and Wondering Coaching Protocol, which, in turn, enhanced our coaching capacity, school-based coaching skills, and coaching community.

Within our coaching community, our collective learning goals focused on integrating noticing and wondering into our coaching enactments and the residents’ lived experiences and coaching interactions. Through ongoing and sustained learning opportunities, we developed, enacted, and refined our noticing and wondering processes, including the development of a protocol to guide our coaching conversations and coaching cycles. Below, we describe the co-creation and evolution of the Noticing and Wondering Coaching Protocol and our noticing and wondering practices that centered on coaching.

Noticing and wondering is a popularized pedagogical practice within the mathematics education community, developed by the Math Forum, a leading community in the field that is now part of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (for more information, visit: https://www.nctm.org/noticeandwonder/). Research supports the use of noticing and wondering as a way to foster students’ mathematical thinking, reasoning, and reflection by providing powerful language support and structure (e.g. Lomax et al., 2017; Ray-Reik, 2013). Furthermore, the practice of noticing and wondering is well documented as a way to provide structured support for teachers to engage in critical discourse around students’ thinking, for mentoring conversations, and for professional development within the mathematics education community (e.g. Dobie & Anderson, 2021; Roller, 2019; Smith, 2009). As a program, we integrated noticing and wondering as a practice within several of our content-specific methods courses (e.g. elementary mathematics and literacy methods) to enable our residents to observe, analyze, interpret, and question teaching practices and students’ thinking.

Furthermore, based on the success of noticing and wondering in course contexts, we considered how we might apply the practice of noticing and wondering within the broader context of coaching, and specifically as a practice among coaching teachers, university supervisors, and residents. Drawing on Smith’s (2009) application of noticing and wondering to engage early-career teachers in conversations about practice, we decided to formally apply the practice of noticing and wondering to the URP’s coaching as responsive supervision model.

Using Smith’s framework (2009) as inspiration for designing a coaching protocol, we began by incorporating the noticing and wondering language itself - using the phrases “I notice…” and “I wonder…” as a structured language support for our observations and reflections on interactions during the summer institute. The “I notice…” component stemmed from direct observations during an observed teaching experience and provided a space for clinical educators to identify “pedagogical practices to be reinforced or refined” (Smith, 2009, p. 40). The “I wonder…” component applied wondering language in a way that “facilitates nonthreatening conversations about pedagogical practices that need to be refined” (Smith, 2009, p. 40), and served as a catalyst for discussion focused on refining instructional practices.

To document our initial noticings and wonderings, we created a protocol to record our thinking. Expanding on Smith’s (2009) framework, we included notice and wonder language that focused on both the teacher and students, allowing for this observational and reflective practice to hone in on the intentional pedagogical/content focus from two perspectives (see Figure 1 for the initial Noticing and Wondering Protocol). Using this initial protocol, we began to develop a common lexicon and shared practice of noticing and wondering within our URP residency community.

Once we established the noticing and wondering practice across all stakeholders in our residency community, we then shifted our focus to how we might leverage this reflective practice to better guide our coaching conversations and coaching cycles. To initiate this process, we developed an extended version of the initial Noticing and Wondering Protocol to better reflect its application within a coaching context. The extended Noticing and Wondering Coaching Protocol provided a space for the coach to engage in the practice of noticing and wondering individually, as well as a space for the coach and resident pair to engage in collaborative noticing and wondering during debriefing. Lastly, the extended protocol included a space for “next steps/takeaways” for the coach and resident to discuss collaboratively as well.

During the summer institute, we shared a draft of the extended version and began implementing the Noticing and Wondering Coaching Protocol as part of the coaching community’s professional learning time. We first engaged in a try-it session with a video lesson during the first week of the summer institute, followed by try-it sessions with residents as they participated in authentic, supervised teaching enactments during the second week of the summer institute. Then, as our coaching community continued to collaborate throughout the residency, the co-creation and co-editing process emerged. Collaboratively, we worked to enhance, adapt, and refine the Noticing and Wondering Coaching Protocol, drawing on insights gained from reflective dialogue among all clinical educators and specific feedback from coaching teachers and university supervisors on their use of the protocol.

For instance, after trying out the Noticing and Wondering Coaching Protocol during the first month of residency, the coaching teachers noticed the need for a more specific focus in their coaching cycles. They expressed a need for a more focused lens for the noticing and wonderings; therefore, adapting the protocol to include a “topic/area of focus” was critical based on feedback. Moreover, as coaching teachers and university supervisors continued to use the protocol to guide coaching conversations and coaching cycles, it also became apparent that the “topic/area of focus” could be more closely aligned with our state teaching standards. Initially, the topic/area of focus was more general in nature, such as questioning, feedback, or pacing; as we moved into the second semester of the residency, the topic/area of focus became specific indicators within our state teaching standards. This shift in specificity allowed for more focused coaching conversations and increased exposure to the standards for our residents. Without our collaborative professional learning space and the feedback from members of our coaching community, the alignment among the noticings and wonderings, state teaching standards, and coaching conversations may have been missing.

In addition to the topic/area of focus modifications, coaching teachers and university supervisors also changed the Noticing and Wondering Coaching Protocol to ensure an action-oriented approach to their coaching conversations. The initial “next steps/takeaways” section became two different sections: (1) takeaways, and (2) goals and next steps (which were based on the takeaways). The changes reflected not only the iterative process of refining the protocol but also the dynamic nature of how coaching conversations were evolving. An additional modification came when the coaching teachers considered how this protocol could be used not only when they were observing residents teaching, but also when residents were observing them teaching. Thus, an “observed strategies” area was added, where residents could practice naming the specific strategies they captured in their noticings. See Appendix A for the co-created Noticing and Wondering Coaching Protocol.

As one can see, the co-creation and co-editing of the Noticing and Wondering Coaching Protocol spanned a period of time. Revisions occurred based on the use of the protocol, and as our community grew in their comfort and confidence to notice and wonder during coaching conversations and coaching cycles. Without the goal of having a professional learning space wherein all participants were engaged in reciprocal dialogue and actions related to collectively enhancing our coaching knowledge, skills, and practices, we may have missed several opportunities to learn from and with one another. The opportunities to refine our protocol, establish a common coaching practice, and build our coaching capacity to fully support our residents evolved out of our collective goal to create an action-oriented learning community that honors the voices of all participants.

As a coaching community committed to collaboratively growing our coaching capacity through reflective iterative processes, we have sought to learn from the ongoing feedback received from our coaching teachers and university supervisors. Feedback of this nature allowed us to not only learn from their theory to practice applications, but more importantly, we learned from practice to inform the development of new theories and strategies. Theory informing practice and practice informing theory in an ongoing recursive manner.

Below, we elaborate on the lessons learned from this experience and the influence of our coaching community on teacher education practices. We share these insights through the voices of our coaches to express their thoughts and our collective learning on the development of collaborative partnerships, the application of coaching practices, and the influence of this process beyond residency coaching. These insights were gathered from learning session anecdotal notes and end-of-the-year interviews and have provided initial insight into the URP coaches’ perspectives on the influence of our professional learning space. These lessons helped us continue to refine our practices and informed the iterative design of our professional learning.

First and foremost, our community of coaches shared how our professional learning became a space for us to learn from one another and build meaningful relationships. Coaches appreciated the opportunity to learn from URP faculty, yet more so, they enjoyed coming together as a community of learners to collectively make sense of complex topics and concepts related to their roles as coaching teachers and university supervisors. Coaches enjoyed the opportunity to collaborate across schools and school districts. Specifically, one coaching teacher mentioned how she appreciated the open-mindedness of our community and that the chance to “not just get at my understanding but hearing from others” enabled her to realize potential biases and view other perspectives.

Coaching teachers and supervisors perceived the relationships cultivated within our community to represent a partnership, not a hierarchy. As one coaching teacher shared when describing the collaborative nature of our community, “it is not a we/you, but a we.” When asked to explain how this experience differed from other professional learning experiences, URP coaches shared that they did not feel micromanaged and felt safe engaging in honest and open conversations. Of note is that coaching teachers and supervisors recognized the intentional inclusion of their input in programmatic decision-making. When describing the open dialogue we engaged in during learning community sessions related to the co-creation of the Noticing and Wondering Coaching Protocol, one coach shared, “Honestly, that experience made me feel heard. It made me feel like we’re not just running a program and getting people through…we’re trying to really develop it to help develop the best teachers we can.” Similarly, others shared they felt heard in our community and added they were “given a say and provided voice” and expressed that “we really developed the program together.”

Professional learning literature (Desimone & Garet, 2015; Kennedy, 2016) posits that providing opportunities to practice and apply knowledge gained during learning experiences is a fundamental component of productive professional learning. With this in mind, our professional learning design included multiple opportunities for enactment. From using the Noticing and Wondering Coaching Protocol to enacting mini-inquiry cycles to “try-out” new coaching moves, each coaching community session was designed with an action orientation to support the application of coaching content. As a coaching community, participants valued the “mini tryouts that allowed for targeted focus” and felt the bite-sized chunks were just right to integrate into their busy day-to-day schedules.

Additionally, coaching teachers and university-based supervisors shared that the opportunities to engage in planning as coaching teams during learning sessions allowed them to consider co-teaching models, explore the types of questions they might want to ask residents, and understand contexts in which to “listen more, not make assumptions.” When discussing the content within our book club sessions, coaches explained how the introduction of question stems was beneficial to think through future coaching conversations and supported them when they needed to engage in difficult conversations.

Across coaches, an influential space for application was the integration of the Noticing and Wondering Coaching Protocol. Coaches appreciated a common tool and recognized the value it brought to conversations across coaching teams. As one coach shared, “The Noticing and Wondering Coaching Protocol–loved it. It provided a common coaching language across stakeholders.” For our coaching teachers, the Noticing and Wondering Coaching Protocol became a tool they could incorporate into daily coaching, and several shared that they used the protocol regularly. Specifically, one coaching teacher explained her consistent use of the tool when sharing how she “implemented the noticing and wondering everyday; whenever the resident taught. I noticed and I wondered–every day,” and then elaborated on how she adapted the protocol to engage in reflective, daily conversations, sharing one key noticing and one key wondering with her resident.

In addition to sharing how their participation in our coaching community supported their development as coaching teachers and university-based supervisors, participants perceived that their involvement also impacted them in other aspects of teaching. From working with colleagues in their school settings to engaging in discussions with their elementary learners, coaching teachers recognized the ability to transfer their coaching knowledge to other contexts. Coaching teachers shared how they applied the conversation techniques they learned within our community to conversations with the students in their classrooms. In particular, one coaching teacher shared how she applied book study knowledge to better coach her elementary students, “The book. It had great chapters in it on the directive, coaching stems. I felt like that was helpful in having them [the stems] there. I was able to kind of use those stems even with my children.”

Specifically, coaching teachers shared that the practice of noticing and wondering, as well as the protocols themselves, were influential tools that “spilled over into other aspects” of their jobs. Coaching teachers shared that they found themselves encouraging their students to notice and wonder during lessons, with one teacher sharing how she “had elementary students noticing and wondering in math,” and another shared how the language of noticing and wondering became a part of her regular thinking patterns.

Through the description of our intentionally designed professional learning experiences, we have showcased how the development of a coaching community served as a curricular initiative to enhance teacher education practices across our partnership. Creating a space to cultivate the coaching capacity of both school- and university-based clinical educators provided the opportunity to engage in iterative cycles of creating, enacting, and refining a noticing and wondering stance, resulting in a co-created coaching protocol. Additionally, the co-creation of a coaching protocol (i.e. Noticing and Wondering Coaching Protocol) helped us elevate our coaching practices to better support our teacher residents.

As a consideration from our work, we believe that providing a space for professional learning centered on school- and university-based clinical educators to study their practice as coaches and mentors for teacher candidates is critical within teacher preparation models. However, as illuminated by the voices of our coaches, the intentional design of these spaces is essential. It is imperative to focus on cultivating the professional learning environment in a manner that ensures it is a space where participants feel welcomed and safe to engage in try-its. Setting aside time to establish a common mission and goals, while also authentically honoring the development of relationships, are vital aspects when designing a learning community committed to developing shared expertise.

Additionally, when designing professional learning of this nature, it is crucial to consider how to establish a learning space where collective dialogue centers the work, a space where all voices and ideas are valued. Examining the role of flattening the traditional power hierarchies to honor insight from all participants may assist in developing spaces for co-learning. In our space, we consistently reflected on strategies to flatten power hierarchies, and the Noticing and Wondering Coaching Protocol became a boundary-spanning object (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011) that negotiated dialogic discourse to support conversations where all participants were positioned as co-learners.

Finally, rather than adopting a “sit and get” approach to professional learning for school-based teacher educators, we believe in developing an action-oriented and inquiry-based space where collaboration is evident in both design and implementation. When designing professional learning, explicitly plan for opportunities not only to apply learned content but also to engage in subsequent follow-up experiences that allow individuals to debrief alongside supportive colleagues.

With these considerations in mind, we share some of the questions that guided our team in designing initiatives that support clinical educators (see Figure 2). We pose these as a space to reflectively interrogate the professional learning design and coaching supports currently in place in your contexts. These questions guided the URP as we sought to better support and prepare our school and university-based clinical educators in a manner that not only honored the practices of coaching and mentoring but also the knowledge and experiences of our partners in teacher education.

The cultivation of a collaborative coaching community and the co-creation of the Noticing and Wondering Coaching Protocol exemplifies the power of intentionally designed professional learning spaces that honor the voices and expertise of both school- and university-based clinical educators. Grounded in reciprocal dialogue and iterative practice, our learning community fostered shared language, enhanced coaching capacity, and positioned all participants as co-learners committed to supporting teacher residents. As teacher education continues to evolve, such boundary-spanning models offer promising pathways for deepening partnerships and sustaining high-quality clinical practice across contexts.

The supplementary material for this article can be found online.