Professional development, coaching, and consultancy

The Compass

  • From Buzzword to Best Practice: The Case for Instructional Coaching

    Supporting schools, educators, and organisations to lead with clarity, teach with impact, and grow with purpose

    José Picardo

    Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a session with Professor Haili Hughes on instructional coaching at the Bryanston Education Summit. Hughes struck an illuminating balance between scholarship and grounded wisdom, reminding us that coaching, when done well, is not just another professional development fad, but a powerful, evidence-informed lever for meaningful change in schools.

    Her session echoed the work of Jim Knight, the American educationalist who frames coaching as a deeply respectful, collaborative act. Knight resists hierarchical metaphors of ‘fixing’ teachers and instead promotes coaching as a dialogue rooted in equality, choice, and mutual learning. In this sense, coaching is not a programme to be implemented but a mindset to be adopted.

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  • Fear is a Poor Strategy: On AI, Change, and Trusting Teachers

    Supporting schools, educators, and organisations to lead with clarity, teach with impact, and grow with purpose

    José Picardo

    I’ve been noticing a pattern lately in the shape of a meme, a powerpoint slide, or a throw-away line in a workshop: “AI won’t replace you , but you’ll be replaced by someone using AI”.

    It’s catchy, yes. And I’m sure it’s well-meaning and tries to covey a sense of urgency. But I’ve come to believe that messages like these do more harm than good. They don’t encourage curiosity or build confidence; rather they instil anxiety and undermine professional judgement. And perhaps worst of all, they frame teachers as a problems or obstacles, rather than professionals. I have a problem with that.

    Twenty years ago, when the term Web 2.0 was coined, they used to say: “Technology won’t replace you, but you’ll be replaced by someone using technology”. And here we are two decades later. Plus ça change.

    I don’t pretend to know everything about AI, or about technology, or about the future of education for that matter. But I do know a thing or two about what helps teachers grow, and what gets in the way: fear, whether of obsolescence, inadequacy, or being ‘left behind’, is rarely a helpful driver of sustainable change.

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  • It’s Not Magic: How the SCARF Model Helps Us In The Classroom

    Supporting schools, educators, and organisations to lead with clarity, teach with impact, and grow with purpose

    José Picardo

    We’ve all experienced how when we walk past certain classrooms something immediately feels different. There’s no raised voices, no attention-seeking antics, just a calm, purposeful energy and direction. Students lean in, not opt out, and learning is a habit, not a chore. And it all feels as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

    We often attribute this to charisma or being a natural , as if the skills required to run a classroom well were somehow innate and therefore unattainable to the rest of us. But this does a disservice both to the craft of teaching and to the science that can help explain it. What looks like instinct is often just insight applied deliberately and consistently.

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  • Generative Thinking: How Better Questions Lead to Deeper Thought

    Supporting schools, educators, and organisations to lead with clarity, teach with impact, and grow with purpose

    José Picardo

    Thinking is the Work

    In an age where information is instantaneous and answers are automated, the question is no longer whether pupils can find knowledge, but what they do with it once they have it.

    As AI tools increasingly offer the illusion of thinking without the effort, we must remain vigilant against the creeping erosion of human cognitive work. Cognitive offloading, a helpful strategy for freeing up mental bandwidth, can, when overused or uncritical, become a kind of intellectual leasehold. Students access knowledge only temporarily and superficially. Without the effort of generative thinking (retrieving, connecting, questioning…) they never truly come to own it. Knowledge remains the asset of others, and they remain the tenants, rather than the landlords of understanding.

    The classroom, then, must remain a place where thinking is not outsourced, but exercised. A space where knowledge is not merely acquired but applied, questioned, and woven into webs of meaning. This resource explores how teachers can structure learning so that pupils think more, not less. It champions thinking that produces, secures, explores, and connects; that builds both understanding and the mental architecture to retain it.

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  • From Exercise Book to Operating System: Rethinking Teaching and Learning Strategy in the Age of AI

    Supporting schools, educators, and organisations to lead with clarity, teach with impact, and grow with purpose

    José Picardo

    Walk into any classroom and you’ll find three things in play: content, activity, and communication. Teachers teach; students learn (we hope); materials are shared, discussed, and acted upon. Whether the medium is pen and paper or tablet and app, the essential task remains the same: to help students acquire knowledge, make sense of it, and use it meaningfully.

    The main strategies have not changed significantly, and for good reason, at least in my 20 years plus of teaching experience. What has changed is how our strategic thinking has evolved to accommodate new tools and new expectations.

    Originally devised as a thought experiment to help me better understand the impact of AI’s irruption into this space, this article explores that evolution, using a series of diagrams as a heuristic to help trace how schools are adapting their teaching and learning strategies to a digital and now AI-infused world.

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