The Reflection Guide to the Impact Cycle: What Instructional Coaches Should Do to Foster Powerful Improvements in Teaching

"Jim Knight is one of the wise men of coaching. His well is deep; he draws from it the best tools from practitioners, the wisdom of experience, and research-based insights. And he never loses sight of the bigger picture: the point of all this is to have more impact in this life we're lucky enough to live."

—MICHAEL BUNGAY STANIER, Author of The Coaching Habit

Every decade or so a book comes along that has such a profound impact on professional practice that it launches a movement. Such was the case ten years ago with Jim Knight’s Instructional Coaching.

Now, it’s about to happen again with The Impact Cycle and this The Reflection Guide to The Impact Cycle, in which Jim shares his latest thinking, and advances an all-new instructional coaching cycle to help teachers and, in turn, their students improve in clear, measurable ways.

What makes this Reflection Guide the perfect companion to The Impact Cycle? Because it functions almost like a daily planner for reaching, even exceeding, your coaching goals. Jam-packed with key concepts, prompts, and exercises, this guide will prove indispensable to

• Coaches who wish to accelerate progress toward goals and move their practices forward 
• Leaders of coaches looking for a simple, effective model to get all stakeholders on the same page

Join the hundreds of thousands of educators who already have benefited from Jim’s ground-breaking work. Read The Impact Cycle, build upon your expertise with this companion Reflection Guide, and soon enough you, too, will experience the next “Jim Knight phenomenon.”

Dr. Jim Knight, Founder and Senior Partner of Instructional Coaching Group (ICG), is also a research associate at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning. He has spent more than two decades studying professional learning and instructional coaching. Jim earned his PhD in Education from the University of Kansas and has won several university teaching, innovation, and service awards.

The pioneering work Jim and his colleagues have conducted has led to many innovations that are now central to professional development in schools. Jim wrote the first major article about instructional coaching for the Journal of Staff Development, and his book Instructional Coaching (2007) offered the first extended description of instructional coaching. Jim’s book Focus on Teaching (2014) was the first extended description of how video should be used for professional learning. Recently, writing with Ann Hoffman, Michelle Harris, and Sharon Thomas, Jim introduced the idea of instructional playbooks with their book on that topic.

Jim has written several books in addition to those described above, including Unmistakable Impact (2011), High-Impact Instruction (2013), Better Conversations (2015), The Impact Cycle (2018), and The Definitive Guide to Instructional Coaching (2021). Knight has also authored articles on instructional coaching and professional learning in publications such as Educational Leadership, The Journal of Staff Development, Principal Leadership, The School Administrator, and Kappan. Jim is also a columnist for Educational Leadership and.

Through ICG, Knight conducts coaching workshops, hosts the Facebook Live Program, “Coaching Conversations,” and provides consulting for coaching programs around the world.