Best questions for teacher survey about instructional coaching

Here are some of the best questions for a teacher survey about instructional coaching, as well as simple tips to help you craft high-impact surveys. Specific lets you instantly generate custom teacher surveys about instructional coaching in seconds—making feedback collection fast and meaningful.

Best open-ended questions for teacher surveys on instructional coaching

Open-ended survey questions can help us unlock deeper insights into teachers’ real experiences, motivations, and recommendations. They’re best when you want teachers to share stories or highlight details you didn’t anticipate. When used thoughtfully, they spark real conversations and give you undiscovered knowledge. Just keep in mind: open-ended questions can sometimes result in higher nonresponse rates—Pew Research Center found they average an 18% nonresponse rate—which is why clear, concise wording and effective follow-ups are essential for maximizing valuable feedback. [1]

1. What aspects of instructional coaching have had the biggest impact on your classroom practice?

2. Can you describe a specific moment when coaching changed your approach to teaching?

3. What challenges have you experienced while working with your instructional coach?

4. How has coaching supported your professional development goals?

5. Are there areas where you feel instructional coaching could be more effective?

6. What do you value most in a coaching relationship?

7. How has your instructional coach helped you address student learning needs?

8. What would you change or improve in the current coaching process?

9. What types of support or feedback do you find most useful from your coach?

10. Can you share an example of how coaching helped you solve a specific classroom problem?

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for teacher surveys on instructional coaching

Single-select multiple-choice questions are ideal when you want to quantify responses and compare overall trends, or when you’re sparking conversation by giving teachers a quick way to start. Sometimes it's simply easier for respondents to pick from a few clear options before diving into deeper reflection. From there, you can naturally follow up to uncover more detail.

Question: How frequently do you meet with your instructional coach?

• Weekly

• Bi-weekly

• Monthly

• As needed

Question: Which area has coaching helped you improve most?

• Classroom management

• Instructional strategies

• Assessment and feedback

• Student engagement

• Other

Question: How satisfied are you with the instructional coaching you have received?

• Very satisfied

• Somewhat satisfied

• Neutral

• Somewhat dissatisfied

• Very dissatisfied

When to follow up with "why?" Adding a "why?" follow-up makes sense whenever you want clarity behind a choice—like if a teacher feels dissatisfied, they can share concrete reasons, fueling targeted improvements.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Always offer "Other" when current choices might not cover all perspectives. If a respondent selects "Other," follow up to invite them to describe their unique situation. These insights can surface improvement areas you haven’t considered and make your survey truly inclusive of all teacher voices.

NPS question for teacher surveys about instructional coaching

Adding a Net Promoter Score (NPS) style question helps gauge overall sentiment and loyalty. NPS asks, “On a scale from 0–10, how likely are you to recommend instructional coaching to a fellow teacher?” This metric is especially valuable because it captures both satisfaction and advocacy—you can benchmark results and segment follow-up questions to better understand promoters, passives, and detractors. Try creating your own NPS teacher survey with instructional coaching focus using this template.

The power of follow-up questions

Follow-up questions are a survey superpower. The research backs this up: in a field study, AI-driven conversational surveys not only improved engagement but also gathered more specific and clear responses than traditional forms. [3] Modern survey platforms like Specific leverage smart AI-generated follow-up questions—automatically adapting to each answer in real time, just like a skilled researcher would.

This saves hours you might otherwise spend emailing teachers for more info. With targeted follow-ups, the conversation feels personal and teachers share richer context without extra effort.

• Teacher: "It was helpful at first, but now I don’t get much from it."

• AI follow-up: "Can you tell me more about what changed or what you feel is missing from coaching lately?"

How many follow-ups to ask? The sweet spot for depth is usually 2–3 follow-up questions per topic. Too many can feel overwhelming; too few and you may miss real depth. Specific’s settings let you define the right balance and even allow respondents to skip once they’ve covered what matters to them.

This makes it a conversational survey, which helps teachers feel genuinely heard and encourages more thoughtful, complete answers.

AI response analysis: Large amounts of unstructured feedback might seem daunting, but with tools like AI survey response analysis, you can quickly summarize, categorize, and explore all survey results without sifting through every comment manually.

Automated, conversational follow-up questions are a new approach—give it a try by generating your own teacher survey and seeing the difference.

Better prompts for ChatGPT and other AI survey builders

If you want to use ChatGPT or another AI to co-create questions for teacher surveys about instructional coaching, start with a direct prompt:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for teacher survey about instructional coaching.

You’ll get even better results when you provide extra context about your school, your goals, or survey audience. For example:

I'm designing a teacher survey to understand how instructional coaching impacts new elementary school teachers in our district. Suggest 10 open-ended questions that focus on coaching support, implementation challenges, and outcomes observed.

Break down your question list with a follow-up prompt:

Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.

Then, choose categories that matter most for your needs and go deeper:

Generate 10 questions for categories "Professional Development Outcomes" and "Implementation Barriers".

What is a conversational survey?

Conversational surveys engage respondents in a natural, chat-like interaction—where the survey adapts in real time, asks follow-up questions, and feels like a friendly interview rather than a rigid form. This increases engagement, yields higher-quality answers, and reduces survey fatigue. Compared to building surveys manually, an AI survey generator like Specific lets you create, update, and personalize surveys in minutes—while the AI does the heavy lifting by handling complex branching and analysis automatically.

Why use AI for teacher surveys? With AI, you get conversational surveys that adapt to every response, maximize participation, and enable you to analyze feedback effortlessly. For a practical AI survey example, check out demo interviews and templates from Specific, built for teacher feedback and coaching use cases. The experience is simply smoother—both for survey creators and for teachers taking the survey.

For step-by-step instructions on building your own teacher survey, see our how-to guide on creating teacher surveys about instructional coaching.

See this instructional coaching survey example now

Start collecting actionable teacher feedback on instructional coaching—using smart, conversational surveys that adapt in real time and surface truly rich insights. Transform the way you understand teacher needs and experiences with Specific’s leading survey builder.