Does Cooperating Teacher Professional Development Impact the Frequency or Quality of Coaching?

• In Event: Using Experimental Designs to Study Innovations in Teacher Preparation

Abstract

Recent studies from Chicago and Tennessee suggest that preservice teachers (PSTs) feel more prepared to teach when their cooperating teachers (CTs) model more effective instruction and provide more frequent and better coaching. Despite this, few CTs receive professional development on how best to coach PSTs. Whether due to a lack of time or resources, teacher education programs (TEPs) often feel that they cannot provide adequate professional development to the CTs with whom they partner. Hoping to support TEPs across their state, a state department of education in the southeast of the United States developed a professional development program for CTs. This program specifically focused on training CTs to notice, assess, model, and provide feedback to novices, particularly during debriefs, about questioning practices, as this is among the lowest rated indicators on the statewide evaluation rubric; the professional development also emphasized the use of data during debriefs. In this paper, we evaluate the results of this initiative by investigating whether (1) candidates report receiving more frequent coaching around both general instructional skills and questioning skills, and whether (2) candidates feel more prepared to teach after working with a CT who received professional development.

The state department of education recruited four TEPs as partners across a 2-year pilot implementation of the initiative. PSTs were randomized within their TEP; the CTs of those in the treatment group were invited to attend the professional development. CTs of control group PSTs received any business-as-usual professional development from the TEP, perhaps in the form of a handbook or visit from a university supervisor. Instructional coaches and employees of the state department of education facilitated the professional development, which included online webinars, two face-to-face sessions, and interim assignments. We sent all PSTs a survey asking about their feelings of preparedness and perceptions of their CTs at the beginning of the student teaching semester and then again at the end. We asked them about the kinds and frequency of coaching they received, including coaching specifically targeting questioning skills; we also asked them about how prepared to teach they felt in different instructional areas.

We find that PSTs paired with CTs who attended the professional development reported receiving more frequent coaching from their CTs. Compared to their peers with CTs who did not participate in the initiative, the treated group described more frequent observations and actionable feedback, as well as more feedback that used classroom and evaluation data, more co-planning, co-teaching, and co-analyses of student work, and more modeling from their CTs. PSTs from both conditions were statistically similar in terms of how prepared to teach they felt and how much autonomy and support that they felt their CTs provided. In future work, we will also examine treatment effects on inservice, workforce outcomes, including employment rates and the instructional performance of PSTs during their first, full-time year of teaching.

Authors

• Hannah Mullman, University of Michigan

• Matthew Ronfeldt, University of Michigan

• Emanuele Bardelli, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Matthew Truwit, University of Michigan

• Kevin Schaaf, Tennessee Department of Education