Barkley’s Hot Topics in Education
Steve Barkley explores timely and enduring topics in education through blogs, podcasts, videos, and other professional learning resources. These hot topics reflect common challenges and opportunities facing educators and school leaders and are grounded in Steve’s decades of work supporting instructional improvement and professional growth.
Instructional Coaching
Instructional coaching roles have become an integral part of many school leadership teams, with the goal of supporting teacher growth to improve student learning. How coaches interact with school leaders and teachers directly influences their effectiveness and their impact on student success.
Steve’s work on instructional coaching focuses on clarifying roles, strengthening partnerships, and using coaching as a lever for sustained instructional improvement.
Professional Learning Communities (PLCs)
A Professional Learning Community (PLC) is commonly defined as an ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively through cycles of inquiry and action research to improve results for students. At its core, a PLC is grounded in the belief that continuous, job-embedded learning for educators is essential to improved student learning.
In many schools, however, activities labeled as PLCs function more like professional working communities (PWCs). Much of Steve’s writing, presentations, and facilitation challenge educators to ask a critical question:
“What do students need us to learn?”
Teacher Professional Growth
Continuous teacher growth is a driving force behind continuous student achievement. In his blog post There Is No Mountaintop, Steve illustrates how each year of learning builds on the last—advancing teaching practice while opening the door to new questions and possibilities.
Professional growth is not a destination, but an ongoing process that expands what educators know and can do in service of student learning.
Peer Coaching
Peer coaching occurs when educators learn from one another through observation, feedback, and reflection. When implemented effectively, peer coaching builds a culture of collaboration and shared responsibility for learning.
Unlike evaluation, supervision, or mentoring, peer coaching places the teacher being coached in control of the process—including who is involved, when observations occur, and the purpose of the learning—creating trust and meaningful professional growth.
