Many questions keep coming across in interviews, mainly because they are relevant to many professions, businesses, and people. You must be able to provide well-researched and well-thought-out answers.
If you take the time and effort beforehand, you will come up with a valuable list of questions you are likely to be asked. And be prepared for a question is a thousand times better than finding an answer on the spot. So, these are the top 25 instructional coach interview questions with answers.
1. Why Are You Interested In This Role?
I see the role of an instructional coach as someone imparting practical knowledge and specific guidelines for education workers. All instructional coaches are active in the areas they teach and allow their experience to flow into practice. In the coaching process, great importance is attached to the collegial exchange between the educators. And the students are the focus.
2. What Are The Roles Of An Instructional Coach? (List Out In Bullet Points, At Least 4 Items)
Instructional coaching refers to the set of actions carried out by an individual whose objective is to accompany other people to achieve their goals, enhancing their skills and providing resources to overcome their limitations in the field of education. In this way, we can say that instructional coaching does not only consist of teaching, but of putting all the possible facilities so that the oriented person can learn at their own pace. An instructional coach has three aspects in mind:
- Center management: Its mission is to offer educators teaching tools.
- Teachers and faculty: It aims to ensure that they improve the teaching process, teamwork, and acquire communication skills.
- Students: Its objective is that they become aware of the learning process and face it in one direction and work as a team, know how to manage conflicts and emotions, etc.
Some of the roles taken are:
- Support others in brain-friendly learning
- Establish an (additional) professional mainstay
- Implement findings from brain research and learning psychology
- Remove learning barriers and develop suitable learning strategies
- Develop learning programs and courses and adapts materials to students and objectives
3. What Are The Qualities That An Instructional Coach Needs To Be Successful?
Coaching is a term used to refer to a methodology that seeks to achieve the maximum personal development of the individual, through a profound transformation, based on a change of perspective, increasing commitment and responsibility. Coaching tries to achieve better results. Instructional coaching consists of applying this methodology and philosophy to education. Through instructional coaching, it is not about teaching, but about creating the necessary conditions for the subject to learn, grow and develop. An instructional coach should love working with teachers and students and have a passion for knowledge. At the same time, they should be detail-oriented, high-achievers, and multitask.
4. What Major Challenges Did You Face During Your Last Role? How Did You Manage Them?
I learned that instructional coaching is more focused on performance improvement than on the simple transmission of information. The coach removes the word “obligation” from the student’s vocabulary and changes it to “involvement”, “commitment” and “personal responsibility”. In instructional coaching, it is important to listen to the student and be attentive to the feedback they give us. The student himself will be the one who gives us the keys to where we have to influence more and will establish where our orientations and advice have to go.
5. Describe Your Daily Routine As An Instructional Coach? (Pls Include Routine At The Workplace Only)
As an instructional coach, I work with groups, e.g. in school classes, student groups, at professor boards, in open learning courses, or even in company teams. I teach seminars, workshops, and courses on how to learn more easily and successfully. I monitor both educators’ and students’ progress and provide advice and assistance. Constant feedback is a valuable tool, both positive and negative. I would evaluate teaching materials, methods, and practices, and follow education trends.
6. Describe Briefly About Your Experience?
I have worked as an instructional coach for seven years. A few years ago I revised the teaching tools such as the teaching plan and adapted it to the new challenges. Today the school has state-of-the-art management structures and a team that fully supports them. I provided continuous educational counseling and held projects and seminars. One of them is “Further education coaching for ‘educationally distant'” and beyond. It also encouraged exchange between the education providers in the city region.
7. What Kind Of Strategies And Mindset Is Required For This Role?
We need to learn that in our knowledge society, the design of learning processes for young people is a central challenge. An instructional coach should support and supervise young people in their learning processes. We should not forget disadvantaged young people with language deficits or learning disabilities. They must also be allowed to complete school or professional qualifications to find a place in society. Teachers and professionals working in this area need a lot of background knowledge to give young people the appropriate help. This knowledge should be supported and guided by an instructional coach. It is not just the knowledge possessed by educators, but how it is transmitted.
8. What Is The Biggest Challenge You Foresee In This Job?
Motivation and emotions have a decisive influence on learning success and must be considered in the learning process. How do you generate motivation and interest? How to reduce stress and anxiety? Another aspect of instructional coaching is the question of how professionals can intervene when problems arise in the learning process of the learning biography and how learning disorders can be recognized and treated. Behavioral problems and developmental disorders can also disrupt the teaching and learning process and must be considered and treated. At the end of most learning processes, there is an exam. How can you optimize exam preparation to ensure success? The topic here is also dealing with blockages and test anxiety.
9. How Do You Stay Motivated At Work?
The best thing about working as an instructional coach is seeing the successes the kids or students usually have after a short time, but also in the long term. The joy of the learners when they realize during the lessons in your training that they can do more than they thought they could. And the pride when they get better grades. This is positive feedback that encourages you in your work.
If, after several years of instructional coaching, you get the message that your former colleague has success in his professional life and that you were significantly involved. Then that is just a wonderful feeling!
10. Describe A Time You Failed In This Role And The Lesson You Learned?
There was a teacher who was reluctant to integrate new technologies as an art of their program. I strongly advised using e-courses, with obvious evidence of other teachers who used the platform. We had our issues that lasted for a few months. He tried the platform after a while, making the learning process easier for him as well as for students.
I do not feel that I failed, we turned the situation into a win. However, I should have insisted more on him trying the platform sooner. We lost valuable time in discussing the pros and cons.
11. Why Do You Feel You Are Qualified For This Role?
The coaching revolution is a necessity in educational processes. Education does not consist in teaching the other, in telling him what to do or think in each situation. Education seeks to promote the maximum development of the person and must be linked to coaching, in what we know as instructional coaching. I have experience in leading and guiding educators and teachers. Some of the qualities I bring to the table are:
- Knowledge of which methods you can use to support children and young people in brain-friendly learning.
- How you can practically implement findings from modern brain research and learning psychology to solve classic learning difficulties.
- How to break down learning barriers and build up resources.
- How to recognize different types of learners and develop suitable learning strategies.
- How to successfully design learning training units and carry them out in a targeted manner.
12. Share With Us Your Greatest Achievement
It is one of the courses I developed. Its purpose is to provide you with the skills and knowledge to use technology as a tool for innovation in the classroom. To do this, it works on the technological possibilities in teaching from two key perspectives: the development of digital teaching competence and work in the classroom with active methodologies, and deals with topics such as the development of digital content, the management of digital identity, the verification of the veracity and quality of the content found on the internet, or the influence of technology on educational innovation, among others.
13. What Are Some Of The Principles Of Your Instructional Coaching?
- Focus on the process and not the results. Coaching is a method that pursues objectives but that focuses on the process and through the process, the objectives are achieved.
- To apply to coach we must maintain impartiality in the classroom and at home, and treat all boys and girls equally.
- Support. Coaching is based on supporting the student, but not on indoctrinating them. Support involves believing in them and helping them discover their strengths to further their development.
- Active listening. It consists of listening to what they say to us with words and what they want to tell us, making the other realize that we listen to them.
- Personalization. Coaching starts from the idea of the individuality of each person and therefore it is a unique and personal process for each one.
- Attention to needs. Coaching must be especially aware of the needs of each of the students to be able to attend to them.
- Overall development of the person. Coaching seeks to improve performance and for that, it attends to the entire development of the person, not only those aspects related to the more purely academic performance.
14. Name Some Activities To Work Emotions In High School
Emotional intelligence is essential for the well-being and healthy development of people. Especially children and adolescents. It is essential to pay attention to the emotional education of children. For this, we can use a series of cards to work on emotional intelligence in high school.
- Identify your own emotions – What am I feeling?
- Know the thought that triggers the emotion – What am I thinking?
- Being aware of our behaviors – What am I doing?
- Learn emotional strategies and resources that help children manage their emotional states.
15. What Are Some Of The Benefits Of Instructional Coaching?
The main benefit that instructional coaching offers teachers is to provide them with the necessary professional training to transmit to students the motivation and support they require to achieve their goals throughout their educational path.
16. What Difficulties Do Educators Come To You With?
It is not easy to answer that – the difficulties or issues that need to be worked on are about as different as the individuals themselves. In summary, I can say that young people often push out the material they have to learn. This is a major problem, along with the practical application of learning strategies, which requires a high degree of discipline and self-organization if it is to lead to success. Fear of exams is also an area that I work on regularly. In the case of younger children, the educators tell me in advance where they see the difficulties. The areas are diverse – a lack of motivation and concentration, dependent learning and doing homework, which constantly leads to conflicts, the wrong learning strategies, and so on.
17. Individual Or Group Coaching Session?
I am not a big fan of routine. That is why I do not have a “typical coaching routine”. On the one hand, I offer individual coaching to work in a targeted and in-depth manner on the respective difficulties of the educators. I also offer group coaching on topics such as “learning strategies”, “motivation” or “exam fears”.
A comparatively new area is the one-day training for teachers. I enjoy doing this. At first, I had to think twice about whether I felt ready for it. But just accepting some challenges, for which I had to push myself a bit at the beginning, has helped me the most.
18. Which Experience In Your Work Particularly Touched You?
There is this fifth-grader who has a hard time with math. I planned to do a gap analysis to find out where to start. However, this was impossible to carry out, because as soon as there was a task that he could not solve, he crossed his arms on the table and hid his head in them. And from this position, he was no longer to get away. Once he stayed like that until his mother came to pick him up – no matter what I did, it was all in vain. I realized that if I was ever going to have a chance with him, I would have to work almost exclusively on the relationship level in the hours that followed. Fortunately, his mother was aware of this, which of course made things easier. Gradually, I gained his trust until he realized that I did not mean anything “bad” or embarrass him. In one coaching session, he worked with particular concentration, and when I said that the session was over and he could go home, he replied in astonishment: “Time up already? Have I practiced math for so long now…?”
This boy is also a “teacher” to me. He teaches me to practice patience and to be happy about even the smallest progress and successes.
19. What Is Your Secret To Successful Instructional Coaching?
Positive psychology had appealed to me for a long time and in 2020I attended an extensive training course again after a long time. The content inspires me to this day. The study results are fascinating and the content goes far beyond resource orientation. The focus is on well-being and personal growth (flourishing) on a mental and psychological level.
In the foreground of every PP coaching is the awakening of strengthening (positive) feelings. I have found that a good balance between empowering and debilitating (negative) emotions promotes our well-being and many other abilities, as well as protecting our physical and mental health.
20. Can You Motivate Another Person?
The level of motivation from which someone acts influences their creative thought processes (cognitive flexibility) and performance.
The result, therefore, depends on the level of motivation from which someone acts. That is why some students thrive on their training or studies and receive a boost in motivation, provided they have made their own choice of training or study.
It seems to me that adults in many places forget that external conditions have a massive impact on student motivation. And that we learning companions can do a lot for motivating learning conditions so that the inherent motivation of the learners can kick in. After all, children are born with the willingness to learn and discover their surroundings and themselves.
21. What Are Your Strengths And Weaknesses?
I see my biggest weakness as one of my biggest strengths. I am very direct and honest. So, it can be difficult when I give critical feedback. But it is also a strength because teams often need someone who has both feet on the ground to spot potential problems and difficulties.
22. How Would Your Former Boss And Co-Workers Describe You?
My boss says I am very reliable and hardworking. This is mentioned in all of my references. I had trouble with some of my former colleagues at first, but the relationship improved over time after I proposed that we meet weekly to discuss joint projects.
23. What Are You Looking For In Your Next Job?
In my next job, I want to be able to have a positive impact on my colleagues and help them lead a more productive and positive work-life. Your institution offers students a comprehensive program. And I feel that my experience, education, and specialization would suit me.
24. How Would You Describe Your Working Style?
I am reliable. I have rarely missed a day of work and have been known to come early and stay late to get work done and get results. This reliability also extends to my collaboration. I always meet deadlines and help.
25. Are You Good At Working With Other People?
I can communicate effectively with others which has been critical to my success as an instructional coach. For example, my willingness to listen to my colleagues has helped me motivate them and improve performance. When the quality of a teacher’s work begins to falter, I meet with them to discuss the issue. I listen to their concerns about work, and we discuss ways to solve the problems while improving performance. I firmly believe that open communication and active listening are vital to improving performance.
Conclusion
As they say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. That is why it is important to come prepared for the job interview. With the help of these 25 instructional coach questions and answers, you can get the job you are looking for!
