Middle Figures and Instructional Coaching Policy in Guatemala (Poster 26)

• In Event: AERA Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research
  In Invited Poster Session: AERA Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research Poster Session

Abstract

Aiming to provide teachers with job-embedded professional development, instructional coaching is implicated in global “best practices” discourses and projects. Yet, globally circulating policy ideas are rarely instantiated in local practice in predictable ways. This ethnographic study shows how Guatemala's recent adoption of coaching has been understood and appropriated by different educational actors. I center the perspectives of “middle figures,” or mid-level Ministry of Education representatives, including coaches and regional leaders. I highlight how middle figures are uniquely positioned to provide insight into policy as a social practice as they bridge national and district mandates in schools and how they have taken “ownership” of the coaching reform and pursued avenues for its sustainability; these are important dimensions of consequential educational policy reform.

Author

• Ariel Borns, University of Wisconsin - Madison