The department head was an experienced English teacher, and his frustration was real: “The students in my class can’t infer. No matter what strategies I try, they just can’t do it!”
His class consisted of all male students, and it was scheduled after lunch. He had gone out of his way to find reading materials he thought would engage students, including graphic novels about war that he was sure would hook them. Despite these efforts, he had arrived at a firm conclusion: these students simply couldn’t make inferences.
His story felt true to him, but it was incomplete. And it was keeping both him and his students stuck.
The Stories That Keep Us Stuck
Human beings are storytelling creatures, but our stories are not neutral. Our brains fill gaps with assumptions (Bushe, 2009), remember negative experiences more vividly than positive ones (Baumeister et al., 2001), and seek evidence that confirms what we already believe (Grant, 2021). We do this reflexively. Our brains take incomplete information and construct coherent narratives, often before we realize it’s happening (Kahneman, 2011).
Inside schools, these narrating tendencies carry weight. Consider how commonly we hear stories like these:
- “There’s nothing more we can do to engage these students.”
- “With their home situations, we can’t expect much.”
- “Leadership doesn’t understand what it’s like in today’s classroom.”
These stories are often rooted in genuine challenges. But when left unexamined, they compound over time. A single student’s reluctance to participate becomes a sweeping narrative about an entire grade level’s lack of motivation. A rocky curriculum adoption spirals into a story about teachers’ voices never being heard.
Accumulated narratives don’t just influence individual interactions; they shape school culture and constrain what educators believe is possible. The words we use and the actions we take are driven by the stories we create, and negative stories become self-fulfilling prophecies.
This is where coaches come in.
Separating Fact from Fiction
One of the most powerful and underutilized roles an instructional coach can play is helping teachers to surface, examine, and reconstruct the stories driving their practice. This work sits at the intersection of two well-established bodies of research: instructional coaching and collective teacher efficacy.
Collective teacher efficacy, the shared belief among educators that together they can positively influence student learning (Bandura, 1997), is the most powerful influence on student achievement (Hattie, 2023). Building this belief demands more than new strategies; it requires a shift in how educators view their agency. Mastery experiences and vicarious experiences, sources of efficacy identified by psychologist Albert Bandura (1997), are particularly relevant to coaching work.
The story had shifted. Not because someone told the observing teachers to think differently, but because they had new evidence that made the old narrative impossible to hold onto.
Limiting narratives act as a filter. A teacher who believes their students cannot infer is unlikely to notice the small moments of inferential thinking that do occur. The story filters out the evidence that would challenge it.
Chris Argyris and Donald Schön (1974) introduced the concept of “theories of action”: the beliefs and assumptions, often unspoken and unrecognized, that drive what teachers actually do in their classrooms. Viviane Robinson (2018) argued that the target of change is not teachers’ actions but the theories of action that sustain those actions. Teachers act on these theories every day without recognizing them, which means they are rarely examined and even more rarely tested.
This is why coaching the narrator is not a soft add-on to coaching. When coaches help teachers examine the narrator inside their heads, they are surfacing the theories of action that sustain limiting narratives and creating conditions for those theories to be tested against evidence.
Narrative Coaching in Action
Let us return to the English department head and his “stuck” story. As coaches working with his team, we asked him to describe what he was observing in his students. His answers helped narrow the focus from a sweeping narrative about an entire class to something specific: Students were not demonstrating inferential thinking when working with texts, particularly during whole-class instruction after lunch.
With the focus grounded in a specific student concern, we listened as he described what he had been trying and why. We paraphrased what we were hearing and made his current theory of action explicit. Once articulated, his operating theory sounded like this: If I provide reading material that is explicitly violent for the boys in my class, then they will be more engaged. If I use a think-aloud to model how I make inferences, then the students will make better inferences.
Seeing the theory written down opened the door to examining its underlying assumptions. Together we identified four embedded beliefs: (1) that engagement required violent content, (2) that teacher modeling alone would transfer the skill, (3) that all students are auditory learners, and (4) that these particular students had a ceiling on their capability. We did not challenge these assumptions directly. Instead, we asked if there might be an alternative explanation. The department head paused. He had never questioned these beliefs because they had never been made visible enough to question.
With the assumptions now in the open, the teacher agreed to test a revised theory. Together we designed a lesson that included three high-leverage strategies: (1) chunking the text; (2) using a “know-wonder” chart to record how students revised their thinking as they progressed through the reading; and (3) posing the following question after each contribution: “What makes you say that?” We selected a short text that contained no violence, and one of us offered to model the lesson to the post-lunch, all-male class while other teachers in the English department observed.
Every student participated. Students shared insights and provided reasons and supporting details for their ideas. After the students were dismissed, the teacher reflected on what he witnessed. He asked, “Did you hear what Colin contributed? I have never heard him speak before.” And then he admitted with discomfort, “I feel ashamed that I didn’t think these kids were capable. They all contributed and had great insight.” Observing teachers expressed excitement about the strategies. In the discussion that followed, it was clear that other teachers were recognizing their own assumptions as they named which ones the evidence had challenged.
What happened in that room was more than a successful lesson. For the observing educators, it was a powerful vicarious experience providing direct evidence that challenged a limiting narrative. The observing teachers watched students succeed and began to think, I could do that in my classroom. The story had shifted. Not because someone told them to think differently, but because they had new evidence that made the old narrative impossible to hold onto. As that story was shared beyond the department, it became a touchstone that other teachers could draw on when their own internal narrator said, These students can’t.
Six Phases of Narrative Coaching
This example illustrates a process that coaches can adapt across contexts. Narrative coaching unfolds through six interconnected phases where the coach facilitates genuine inquiry into the beliefs driving practice:
1. Begin with Students
Ground the coaching relationship in a shared focus on students’ needs. This starting point is strategic. When coaches open with, “What are you noticing about your students?” rather than, “Tell me about your teaching,” teachers are far more likely to engage openly. The narrator inside the teacher’s head is less likely to feel threatened when the conversation centers on learners rather than on the teacher’s own practice.
Collaborate with teachers to identify a genuine concern and then narrow it. A teacher who says, “My students just aren’t motivated” is offering a broad narrative, not a focused starting point. The coach’s role here is to help move from sweeping story to specific focus: which students, in what contexts, and around what kind of learning? This begins the process of questioning the narrative before the teacher even realizes it.
2. Surface and Articulate Current Theories
Listen actively and without judgment as teachers describe their experiences, frustrations, strategies, and the beliefs shaping their current practice. Identify and help them articulate the if/then logic operating beneath the surface.
As themes emerge, paraphrase what you’re hearing and check for understanding: “So it sounds like you’re thinking, ‘If I do X, then Y will happen. Is that right?’” When the teacher confirms or refines the statement, write it down together. Seeing the theory of action on paper transforms it from a feeling into something concrete that can be examined, questioned, and revised.
The narrator inside the teacher’s head is less likely to feel threatened when the conversation centers on learners rather than on the teacher’s own practice.
3. Examine Underlying Assumptions
Help the teacher look beneath the if/then statement and ask: What am I assuming here? Dennis Sparks (2007) has long argued that surfacing and examining assumptions is foundational to meaningful professional growth, yet it remains one of the most frequently bypassed steps in improvement efforts. Coaches must resist the pull to skip past this phase toward action.
The purpose of this step is not to prove the teacher wrong but to strengthen the theory by testing its foundations. Questions like, What evidence supports this belief? What alternative explanations might exist? What would an impartial observer notice? invite teachers to hold their assumptions up to the light.
This step requires care. Teachers have often held these beliefs for a long time, and the assumptions may be intertwined with their professional identity. Coaches who rush this phase or push too hard risk shutting down the very openness the process depends on. The goal is cultivating curiosity and creating conditions where the teacher begins to wonder if their story is complete or accurate.
4. Agree to Test a Revised Theory
With assumptions now visible, work with the teacher to construct an alternative theory of action connected to evidence-based practices. The coach reframes the revised theory not as the right answer but as a genuine experiment. What would we expect to see if this new theory holds? What evidence would challenge it? Select specific, manageable strategies with high potential impact and plan together how that evidence will be collected.
The key here is collaboration. The teacher must feel ownership of the experiment, not that they are subjected to it, so they’ll remain open to whatever the evidence reveals.
5. Reflect in Light of Evidence
After testing the revised theory in practice, create space for honest reflection. This is often the most emotionally charged moment in the coaching process. This is the phase where the teacher’s original narrative meets the evidence, and those two things may not align. Ask open-ended questions that keep the focus on students rather than teacher performance: What did you notice about how students responded? What surprised you? What did you expect to see that didn’t happen and what happened that you didn’t expect? These questions matter because they direct the teacher’s attention toward evidence rather than self-evaluation.
This kind of vulnerability of revising a belief in real time, alongside a colleague, requires psychological safety. Coaches set the conditions for this by normalizing revision as a sign of professional growth. When a teacher can say, “I assumed they couldn’t do it, and the evidence showed me otherwise,” the old narrative loses its grip. Not because someone argued against it, but because the teacher’s own experience contradicted it.
6. Revise the Theory and Share the Story
Support teachers in articulating a refined theory of action using a new if/then statement grounded in what the evidence revealed. This phase has a second purpose that is equally important: helping the teacher construct a narrative about their learning journey that can be shared with colleagues. This is where individual growth becomes collective. The difference between a teacher who says, “The lesson went well” and one who tells the story of how they moved from, “These students can’t infer” to watching every student contribute is what turns a private experience into a source of vicarious efficacy for others.
Coaches can support this by helping teachers build their story around four moments: what they believed before, what they tried, what surprised them, and how their thinking changed. When colleagues hear that arc, especially when it includes struggle and uncertainty, not just triumph, they begin to see their own situations as open to change.
The Privilege of Coaching the Narrator
Every day, coaches sit with educators during their most vulnerable professional moments. In these moments, the temptation is to offer solutions. The greater gift is to help teachers hear the narrator inside their heads, question the story being told, and imagine a more empowering one.
The stories we tell in schools have power. They can constrain or expand what educators believe is possible. They can isolate teachers in their own assumptions or unite them around a shared belief in their students’ potential. When one teacher’s narrative shifts, the story does not stay contained. It ripples outward, helping educators move from, What can’t I control? to What can we do together to make a difference? And that mindset, the research tells us, is among the most powerful influences in education.
