Motivational interviewing as a framework to guide school-based coaching

Abstract

In school-based settings, coaching is described as a professional development practice in which a person with specialized knowledge works with a teacher to change current practices to better student outcomes. Coaching has emerged as a strategy to support the successful deployment of evidence-based interventions. Still, little is known about the coaching process itself, and the literature does not yet clearly define the activities and skills that comprise the coaching process. In this article, we explore theoretical support for motivational interviewing (MI) [Miller, W. R., & Rollnick, S. (2012). Motivational interviewing: Helping people change. New York, NY: Guilford Press] as a behavior change theory to guide coaching practice and research. In addition, we propose activities to conceptualize the coaching process, identify skills that are likely to contribute to successful coaching, highlight specific interventions or models that have used an MI approach to increase implementation fidelity within the context of a coaching relationship, and discuss implications for future research and practice.

Keywords::

• school-based coaching
• motivational interviewing
• teachers
• behavior change
• implementation fidelity

Disclaimer

The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the US Department of Education.

Additional information

Funding

Two Institute of Education Sciences, US Department of Education grants [grant number R324A090237], [grant number R305A130375] were utilized as partial support for the development of this manuscript. National Institute of Health [grant number P30MH08643] also funded this research.