Issues in Lesson Design

Lucy West presents the complexity of lesson design in her chapter on Content Coaching. She shares her exploration of her own successful coaching practice, and her work with colleagues, university researchers and a visiting scholar from Switzerland, Fritz Staub, in creating a “Guide to Core Issues in Lesson Design” (Knight, 2008, p. 133). The guide is not prescriptive but rather presents questions about content, student response, and teacher planning that can help map the variables that affect instructional practices. The guide is meant to help teachers and coaches define the “what, why, how, and who” (Knight, 2008, p. 136) of instructional design and lesson enactment. There are 29 questions in the guide, which would make it difficult to use all the questions in each pre-conference. The coach has to select the appropriate questions to ask at various occasions of working with the teacher.

This mind map of the ideas shows the complexity of lesson design by the sheer number of factors/issues to consider.

West & Staub, 2003 as cited in Knight, 2008, p. 135.

This model is new to me, and I’m curious about the relationship between the theory and practice. Have you use this model or a similar one in content coaching? What was your experience of using the model? I’d love to hear your ideas/reflections.

This post is part of a larger series based on the book Coaching Approaches & Perspectives edited by Jim Knight. This post is based on sections of Chapter 6: Content Coaching. Visit the Coaching category for other related posts.

Book Citation: Knight, J. (Ed.). (2008). Coaching: Approaches and perspectives. Corwin Press.