Sustaining coaching practices: Successes and challenges of developing a school-based coaching model

• In Event: Coaching’s role in improving literacy at scale: Findings from multi-country studies examining the effectiveness of instructional support

Proposal

Teachers are among the most important determinants of both students’ immediate learning and students’ long-term outcomes (Popova et al, 2018), and teaching is one of the most complex jobs on earth. Not surprisingly then, much attention has been given to the needs of teachers and the best ways to support them in their work with children. Coaches can be instrumental in providing job-embedded support to teachers by helping to bridge the gap between new methods that are learned in trainings and actually implementing them in practice. Follow-up visits to schools by trained professionals have led to higher learning gains in children (World Bank, 2018) and increased self-efficacy of teachers (Sailors et al, 2014). When quality coaching practices are embedded within the existing public education system, they are particularly effective for their potential to offer sustained, regular support to teachers.

In South Africa, schools in the public education system have a position called the Head of Department (HoD) assigned to a lead teacher who has mentoring and supervisory responsibilities with the other teachers at the school. This existing, school-based teacher support structure provides an opportunity to embed coaching practices that are targeted to improve literacy learning of children. By adopting a gradual release model over the course of three years, literacy program staff will model coaching practices for HoDs, then conduct coaching jointly with HoDs before handing over coaching responsibilities to the HoDs entirely with the coach providing occasional support. In this approach, there are two layers of coaching: program staff coaching HoDs and HoD’s coaching teachers. The goal of the program is to leave HoDs with the skills to support teachers at their schools in literacy instruction through 1) class observations and feedback, 2) developing professional learning communities at their schools, and 3) providing ongoing trainings to the teachers.

Coaching is an interaction between coaches and teachers, and the success of these interactions depends on the nature of the relationship between them. In a case study approach that included interviews of program staff, HoDs in the program, and teachers, as well as conducting classroom observations, across multiple provinces in South Africa, this study had the following research objectives:
1. What are the characteristics of the interaction between coaches and teachers during a coaching session?
2. How do coaches (at the program staff and HoD level) understand their role, and what successes and challenges are coaches experiencing as they strive to meet their coaching goals?
3. What type of feedback do teachers receive, how do they experience that feedback, and what actions have teachers taken as a result of coaching advice/interactions?

This presentation will draw on examples from the study’s data to share insights on developing strong coaching programs for teachers of literacy in the early grades, highlighting successes, challenges and suggestions for mitigating these challenges. In addition, the study reveals the inherent tensions faced by international education practitioners trying to develop sustainable, scalable coaching solutions between various opposing forces: evaluative vs collegial coaching approaches; coaching for fidelity of implementation vs competency-based coaching; and the depth of coaching interactions vs the frequency of them given the inevitable constraints of time and resources.

Author

• Christabel Pinto, Room to Read