Adding Collaborative Peer Coaching to Our Teaching Identities

Abstract Recent research suggests that personal and institutional constraints often limit the degree to which professional development impacts teaching practice. Darling‐Hammond suggests that one of those constraints is time in schools for collaborative planning. She cites high performing schools in Europe and Asia that have three to four times more collaborative planning time for teachers than schools in the United States, and she suggests that teachers need to discover ways to collaborate to solve problems and improve practice. One way to create the kinds of collaborative teaching communities that Darling‐Hammond proposes is with peer coaching, and this article describes a group of teachers who found ways to work and learn together by adding collaborative peer coaching to their identities as teachers.