Don't use praise - learn from success instead

If coaches recognise that their goal is, in large part, to support teachers to develop their mental models, so they do the right thing, at the right time, for the right reason, then we coach differently and coach better. I call this cognitive coaching.

First stop, ditch praise…

Why do a lot of coaching models start with praise?

• Motivation: praise motivates people (sometimes)

• For balance: so the conversation isn’t just about improvement.

• To reinforce: praising an action the teacher takes might mean they do it again.

In reality, I’m not convinced ‘praise’ achieves these things or that they are worth achieving. I see the problems of praise as threefold:

Problem 1: Praise isn’t very motivating unless I think I deserve it. Often it’s delivered quickly and non-specifically. I’m just waiting for the part where you tell me something needs improving so I can learn from it.

Problem 2: Receiving ‘praise’ feels uncomfortable for a lot of people.

Problem 3: Simple reinforcement of teacher behaviour is a surface-level pursuit. It can lead to teachers overgeneralising: “my coach said cold call was good - I’ll use that as much as possible.” Coaches actually want teachers to do the right things, at the right time, for the right reasons. You have to focus on mental models to achieve this.

So what should coaches do?

Observing something a teacher is doing that seems to support student learning is brilliant. What we want is for teachers to learn from that success: to develop their mental models driving the decision that underpinned that success.

Here’s a reminder of what we mean by mental models:

Mental models are a construct. They are useful for thinking about teachers’ judgement and how they make decisions. They are the lenses through which we see situations and contain cause-and-effect relationships. But they are tacit and need surfacing if we are to examine them and develop them.

Look at teacher 1 and teacher 2’s mental models of modelling processes to students. Which teacher is likely to make the better decisions?

Teacher 1:

Teacher 2:

Teacher 2 will make the better decisions because their mental model is more sensitive to the situation. It has more useful if-then branches. Teacher 2 sees the situation differently from Teacher 1 and can adapt better to the learning needs of students.

So, when we think about ‘praise’, we need to ask ourselves, is it surfacing teachers’ mental models? Is it developing them? I think the answer is no.

Here’s an example of praise:

“You did a great job of getting students to think hard during the discussion. Everyone wrote their explanation for their answer on the back of their mini whiteboards, and you cold called a few students using some questions to really dig deeper.”*

In this coach’s praise they make assumptions that their interpretation (their mental model) is the same as the teacher’s. In reality -

Is the teacher able to articulate why they used whiteboards or cold call in this way? The coach can’t be sure.

Will the teacher use this practice again at the right time, for the right reason in future? The coach doesn’t know.

The coach needs to surface the teacher’s mental model so they can both examine it and develop it. Compare the praise above with learning from success:

The coach here has surfaced the teacher’s mental model, checked the sensitivity and developed it too. Of course a teacher may show they don’t have a good mental model sitting behind what they did. This is great for a coach to know. They can then help the teacher to develop it!

So, give ‘learning from success’ a go in your coaching using these types of questions:

Surface mental models: what made you decide to do this?

Check the sensitivity of their mental model: what made you choose to do X and not Y? OR when would you not do X? ← this question is great to check the teacher isn’t overgeneralising/knows the boundaries of when a technique is useful.

Counterfactual ‘what if’ questions to extend mental models: what if [this] not [that]?

So, ditch praise and start getting teachers to learn from their success.

If you need more convincing, let’s return to the problems of praise and see how focusing on learning from success gets around them:

Problem 1: Praise isn’t very motivating unless I think I deserve it. Often it’s delivered quickly and non-specifically. I’m just waiting for the part where you tell me something needs improving so I can learn from it.

With ‘learn from success’ the teacher knows they deserve the recognition for the action because they’ve explained their decision-making and taken ownership for the success. Plus, the teacher isn’t just waiting for the part of the coaching conversation where they’ll learn something anymore: they are getting a mental workout from the coach during the learning from success stage too. Notice also how different it is to praise: learning from success sounds like the next part of the conversation now (where we examine the teacher’s problem). This is because, now, it’s all developmental.

Problem 2: Receiving ‘praise’ feels uncomfortable for a lot of people.

Learning from success isn’t about hollow niceties, and it isn’t personal. Learning from success is about examining our decision-making processes to figure out what worked and why.

Problem 3:  Simple reinforcement of teacher behaviour is a surface-level pursuit. It can lead to teachers overgeneralising: “my coach said cold call was good - I’ll use that as much as possible.” Coaches actually want teachers to do the right things, at the right time, for the right reasons.

Learning from success compared to praise is about surfacing mental models checking the branches and the reasoning for decisions. It is designed to ensure the teacher does the thing again but only if it’s the right thing to do. This prevents teachers from overgeneralising, which is more likely to happen if you just praise someone for doing something.

And one last thing: getting teachers to think in this way about what has gone well, mirrors the thought process we want them to use when they examine a problem. Coaches can therefore harness this thinking later.

Coach better. Be one of 10 leaders to join my online ‘Lead Effective Coaching’ programme Jan-July 2025 – email sarah_cottingham@live.co.uk for details.

* This is by no means bad praise. Sometimes praise is as scant as “I liked the way you used cold call. That was good to see as that’s the school focus.” At least the praise above is linking the action to student learning.