Jim Knight - The Impact Cycle: What Instructional Coaches Should Do to Foster Powerful Improvements in Teaching

Coaching done well may be the most effective intervention designed for human performance. Jim Knights work has helped me understand the details of how effective coaching can and should be done.

Dr. Atul Gawande, Surgeon, Public Health Researcher, and Author of The Checklist Manifesto
Brigham and Womens Hospital

I struggle to know the difference between a good coach and a good teacher. I have watched the coaching movement grow in education, with much of this impetus coming from the success of Jim Knight and his team. I have PhD students wanting to research coaching, I have read the books about John Wooden and Bob Knight, I have coached cricket for many decades, and my team is translating Visible Learning into action with some elite sports teams in Australia. It was only when I read this book that I started to understand that difference.

Good teaching for me means teachers who are to DIE forgreat Diagnosis, excellent Implementation, and superb Evaluation. Great coaching adds fidelity of implementation (and my colleagues will love this, as it removes the nasty DIE acronym). The core of implementation are the PEERS goals: powerful, easy, emotionally compelling, reachable, and student-focused. All are based on high levels of trust and a dogged attention to What are the next steps? based on excellent analyses of what is currently happening. The data are similar: video, student voice, and student work, although I am envious of the level of sophistication professional coaching teams have in apps and data interpretation. Their granularity is movement by movement, with many great higher-order analyses which surely could make a huge difference in classroomsif we only got over our fears about using data to help instruction.

This is a book by the master coach in practice and theory; it sums up the core notions of coaching, and it provides a richness for action and thought for all who want to bring the power of coaching into teaching. I am convinced.

John Hattie, Laureate Professor, Deputy Dean of MGSE,
and Director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute
Melbourne Graduate School of Education

Jim Knight is one of the wise men of coaching. His well is deep, and he draws from it the best tools from practitioners, the wisdom of experience, and research-based insights. And he never loses the bigger picture: the point of all this is to have more impact in this life were lucky enough to live.

Michael Bungay Stanier
Author of The Coaching Habit

There is no one more passionate about improving every students learning experience than Jim Knight, and in The Impact Cycle, Knight has done it again with another well-researched and immensely practical book. There are some great features herethe visual maps that introduce each chapter, the numerous checklists and templates, links to the companion website, helpful chapter summaries, and great recommended resources in the Going Deeper sections. This is a book which will be referred to often. Instructional coaches will be an even better resource for the teachers with whom they work as a result of reading and using this book.

John Campbell, Executive Director
Growth Coaching International

In this very helpful book, Jim Knight builds on knowledge gained from more than two decades of assisting coaches to inspire and guide teachers to improve their instruction. Following his own advice to stay curious, Knight continues to expand upon his coaching model to explicate new dimensions of the coaching relationship. Conversational and informative, this book will be a useful resource for any coach working in the field.

Dr. Megan Tschannen-Moran, Professor of Educational Leadership
College of William and Mary, School of Education

The Impact Cycle is an essential read for instructional coaches. It is organized to take the reader through each stage of an Impact Cycle, providing a vision for how to coach for a deeper impact. It is filled with stories from the field, allowing the reader to walk in the shoes of other coaches. In the end, all coaching is about creating meaning and supporting teachers to reach their goals; this book supports coaches to do just that.

Diane Sweeney, Consultant
Diane Sweeney Consulting

Continuous improvement is fueled by a focus on improving the quality of teaching and learning. The Impact Cycle provides educators with the strategies and the tools necessary to make that improvement a reality. I have had the opportunity to see how Jim Knights model works firsthand and can attest to its effectiveness. The emphasis on effective partnerships with shared responsibility and ownership, combined with a goal-oriented coaching cycle, results in lasting and meaningful changes for teachers and students. This book shares a clear vision for powerful instructional coaching along with the specific steps to make that vision a reality. Knights The Impact Cycle is essential reading for educators who are committed to real and lasting change.