Building Teachers’ Data-Use Capacity: Insights From Strong and Struggling Coaches

• In Event: Achieving Professional Competence: Beyond Knowledge and Skill

Abstract

Amidst a national press toward the use of data to drive instruction, coaching has become a central strategy in district and school efforts to build teacher capacity. While research suggests that coaches have great potential to impact teacher practice, existing studies fail to examine actions that make a coach effective in building teachers’ data-use capacity.

We intend to fill this gap by answering the questions, what coaching practices develop a teacher’s capacity to use data and what conditions best support this process? To do so, we apply a sociocultural learning theory framework to case studies of four data and instructional coaches. We identify practices associated with “strong” data use coaching, which have implications for both practice and policy.

Authors

• Alice Huguet, University of Southern California

• Julie A. Marsh, University of Southern California

• Caitlin Farrell, University of California - Berkeley