Development of the Pre-Kindergarten Classroom Observation Tool and Goal-Setting System: A Data-Based Coaching Approach

• In Event: Providing Preschool Teachers With Web-Mediated Professional Development in Early Language and Literacy: Promising Practices

Abstract

Perspective & Objective

Although coaching is a popular approach to teacher professional development, there is little research on what tools would most help coaches examine and support teacher practice over time. These questions are especially pressing in web-mediated professional development settings, which often require coaches to develop individualized plans for and partnerships with many different teachers with whom they meet infrequently.

This paper describes the development of a classroom observation tool for use in pre-kindergarten (pre-k) settings – the Classroom Observation Tool (COT) – and a related web-based goal setting system – the COT Report – to help teachers and coaches set and track individualized goals for professional development. We examined the psychometric characteristics of the COT and explored how coaches and teachers used the COT Report goal-setting system to establish clear expectations for teacher growth and guide coaching efforts.

Methods & Data Sources

In total, 193 coaches worked with 3,909 pre-k teachers in a statewide professional development program over one year, visiting classrooms several times. Classrooms served mostly at-risk 3- and 4-year-olds (n = 56,390) enrolled in public pre-k, Head Start, and childcare programs.

Coaches used the COT during a 2-hour observation at the beginning of the school year. Shortly thereafter, they prepared a COT Report using the web-based goal setting system. The Report linked the teacher’s strengths and weakness on the COT to helpful classroom activities and provided coaches with suggested strategies to aid that teacher. Throughout the year, at the conclusion of each coaching visit, the COT Report was updated to track goals that were met and to establish new goals as needed. Between visits, teachers used the COT Report to guide their practice of new skills, and coaches used the COT Report to determine which behaviors they would model or support during the next coaching visit.

Teachers in this project also used software to collect progress-monitoring data on children’s language, literacy, and math outcomes three times during the year.

Results

First, we explored the validity of the COT. Results indicated a theoretically supported eight factor structure of the COT across language, literacy, and math instructional domains. Overall inter-rater reliability among coaches was good. Although correlations with an established teacher observation measure were small to moderate, significant positive relations between COT scores and children’s literacy outcomes on the progress monitoring tool indicate promising predictive validity.

An examination of COT Reports showed that teachers and coaches set an average of 43.17 goals across various content areas (e.g., read aloud, math, oral language) during the year, and coaches reported that 80.62% of goals were met. Both coaches and teachers rated the COT and the COT Report helpful for identifying areas of need and enhancing the quality of instruction.

Significance

This study shows that an interconnected set of teacher observation and goal-setting tools has value for enhancing professional development, particularly in large-scale, web-based settings involving many coaches and teachers who are not necessarily in frequent face-to-face contact with each other.

Authors

• April Crawford, The University of Texas Health Science Center Houston- CLI

• Tricia A. Zucker, University of Virginia

• Jeffrey M Williams, University of Texas

• Vibhuti Bhavsar, University of Texas

• Susan Landry, The University of Texas