We're ending Season 3 with a room full of people we've wanted on the show for ages. Sarah Cottinghatt, Haili Hughes and Adam Kohlbeck join Shane and Jim to talk about their new book, Coaching for Adaptive Expertise: Developing Teachers Who Make Better Decisions, and the conversation goes exactly where we'd hoped.

We open with a question Jim borrowed from Michael Bungay Stanier: what do you now believe to be true? From there the three of them make a case that's been building over years of practice. Coaching done well isn't about polishing teacher behaviours or checking whether a technique showed up in a lesson. It's about developing teacher judgment. Haili calls out the hollowed out version of coaching that looks busy and measurable but leaves a teacher's thinking untouched. Sarah unpacks why decision making sits at the centre of professionalism. And Adam gives us three things he now holds to be true: purpose, honouring expertise, and agency.

We dig into mental models and why two teachers can watch the same classroom moment and notice completely different things. We sit with the hardest part of any coaching conversation, the moment it turns to what didn't go well, and Sarah and Adam reframe it beautifully as building a shared version of reality rather than delivering a verdict. And Haili closes the trailer round with a Jaws homage you'll want to hear twice.

If you've ever carried a bit of feedback trauma from early in your career, this one's for you. So is the bigger argument running underneath it all: stop dumbing things down for teachers. Aim for clarity over the complexity instead.

A huge thank you to Sarah, Haili and Adam, and to everyone who joined us live. What a way to close the season.

Connect with our guests
Sarah Cottinghatt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-cottinghatt-08a80533
Haili Hughes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-haili-hughes-178479186
Adam Kohlbeck: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-kohlbeck-fcct-b31786102

Get the book
Coaching for Adaptive Expertise: Developing Teachers Who Make Better Decisions (Routledge): https://www.routledge.com/Coaching-for-Adaptive-Expertise-Developing-Teachers-Who-Make-Better-Decisions/Cottinghatt-Hughes-Kohlbeck/p/book/9781032739793