Relationships Between Coach Support and Teachers’ Adoption of New Instructional Practices: Findings from Nigeria

• In Event: Cultivating dynamic educators: case studies in teacher behavior change in Africa and Asia

Proposal

This presentation details the process and findings from secondary analysis of a dataset that was originally produced under the Nigeria Reading and Access Research Activity (RARA), funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), an initiative implemented by RTI International in northern Nigeria from 2014 to 2015. RARA introduced a Hausa language early grade literacy improvement intervention for grade 2 children in 60 public primary schools in the Bauchi and Sokoto states of Nigeria. Data was collected through classroom observations carried out by instructional coaches, and teacher interviews conducted as a regular part of program monitoring. The coaches were a core part of the intervention along with new reading materials and teacher training activities. After the intervention ended, the authors of the present study decided to examine the coach and teacher data together to see what, if anything, could be learned from them. In this presentation, they describe associations between the improvements in teachers’ instructional practices and characteristics of the coaching support they received. This research responds to important questions raised by, among others, Blazar and Kraft (2015) who explain that even in high-income countries, “little is known about particular skill sets that translate into being a bgood coach and the necessary conditions that make for a positive teacher– coach relationship” (p. 563). The presentation examines the use of a balanced model of coaching with inexperienced coaches and teachers in sub-Saharan Africa, and then analyzes the dataset in terms of the role of specific constructs of coach background and coaching quality, as well as the quantity of coach visits, by examining the association of those variables with changes in the teachers’ literacy instruction. Specifically, this study sought to answer four questions:
1. What is the relationship between coach background and coaching quality?
2. What is the relationship between coach background and teacher instructional practices?
3. What is the relationship between the quantity of coach visits and teacher instructional practices?
4. What is the relationship between coaching quality and teacher instructional practices?
Regression analysis showed that coaches with higher academic credentials performed better on our measures of coaching quality, but their credentials had no discernible association with their teachers’ changes in practice. They found positive associations between the coaches’ years of prior experience as a teacher but their prior experience in supervisory roles (as a head teacher and SSO) was negatively associated with our measures of coaching quality. Lastly, the more coach visits the teachers received, the more likely they were to adopt the new instructional practices, but they found no positive association between our measures of the quality of those visits and teacher change. While the study was limited by a small sample size and a short intervention period, the ndings suggest that, in both recruiting and training coaches, education planners need to consider how the candidates’ background could both contribute to and detract from their e ectiveness as a coach, and how to adjust the coach training and support accordingly. Second, the ndings suggest that coach visits may serve as a form of accountability to support delity of implementation of new practices. Consequently, education planners need to ensure that teachers receive adequate follow-up when they are learning new practices. Although our study did not reveal a positive association between our measures of quality coaching and teacher change, the literature base nonetheless suggests that it plays an important role in teacher development. More research is needed as to how education systems in similar contexts can maximize the e ectiveness of pedagogical coaching support with regard to quantity and quality within the resource constraints that they face.

Authors

• Alison Pflepsen, URC-CHS

• Simon King, RTI International

• Karon Harden, RTI International