Game Planning: How Reading Coaches Generate District-Level Instructional Policy

• In Event: Roundtable Session 32
  In Roundtable Session: Instructional Interventions: Designs, Enactment, and Challenges

Abstract

Reading coaches engage with policy that has moved in and through the education system. This study draws on observation and interview data from a yearlong case study of coaching in one urban district which was in its first year of implementing an ambitious reading reform. Data collection and analysis targeted coaches’ collaborative work to understand their political role. This study uses lenses from neo-institutional theory to explain coaches’ encounters with the accountability first and just read logics, which proffered ideas about reading instruction. This paper depicts how coaches adapted, specified, and generated reading policy in response to local conditions and issues. The findings highlight how actors manipulate and generate policy, thereby steering the course of implementation.

Author

• Sarah L. Woulfin, University of Connecticut