Making the Case for Applying Athletic Coaching to Support and Propagate Instructional Practices in Engineering Education

Leading scholars have indicated a lack of knowledge on how to propagate and sustain evidence-based instructional practices, such as active learning. However, they have identified social interactions as key for dissemination. Interestingly, the instructional coaching literature has drawn a direct connection between propagation of research-based practices and effective coaching of teachers. The authors have worked to propagate active learning and educational scholarship among instructors in their school of engineering. Their support model for this was informed by the change framework of Henderson and colleagues and consists of learning-community events, instructional coaching, classroom observation, student feedback, and instructor follow-up. Interestingly, the social focus of their model, including one-on-one coaching, was identified as a strength by the participating instructors. Preliminary results from this support program have been promising with respect to instructor participation, propagation of active learning and educational scholarship, and valuation by instructors. In this article however, the authors make a new argument for the infusion of athletic coaching to their support model for potential transformative outcomes. Despite the shared mission of athletic coaches and academic instructors to educate young adults, there is often little-to-no collaboration between them. However, given the origin of coaching in athletics, shouldn't instructional coaching be looking to athletic coaching for transformative insights and support? Along with making an argument for this unique paradigm, the authors suggest an exploratory case study approach for assessing the impact of athletic coaching within an engineering instructional support and propagation program. Our ultimate objective is to inspire and support other educators in adopting this potentially transformative model.