A Multidisciplinary Framework of Instructional Coaching

Across a wide variety of disciplines, coaching has become the universal practice for improving the professional performance of individuals and, consequently, the effectiveness of their organizations. Despite these shared outcomes, the coaching of individuals such as executives, athletes, and teachers features a variety of approaches, each with its own set of unique coaching elements. The literature in the respective fields has struggled to keep pace investigating the efficacy of these approaches and the relative impact of their elements. Programmatic research on coaching is further challenged by a paucity of conceptual frameworks. To address this challenge, we examined the coaching literature in the fields of education, sports, and business, highlighting a complimentary array of coaching purposes, elements, and processes. Based on this literature, we propose a new framework to specifically advance instructional coaching in the field of education. The content-neutral framework identifies 3 key dimensions of instructional coaching that can situate task- and subject-specific coaching models. Directions for the development of conceptual models and programmatic research are discussed.