Presentation 1: Just in Time and Just Enough: Bridging the Implementation Gap with Technology-Mediated Coaching

• In Event: The Present and Future of Technology-Supported Teacher Coaching

Proposal

Arguably the most vexing challenge in capacity building is the “implementation gap”—the failure to transfer learning from the “training room” to the classroom. Research suggests that this implementation gap can be closed with skilled and effective in-class support such as coaching, mentoring and follow-up (Fixsen et al., 2005). However, for many teachers in poor and remote locations of the globe, where access to expertise and support is often lacking, such access to expertise is often unavailable.

How then can we provide these teachers with the kind of “just-in-time” and “just-enough” coaching to transfer learning from the “training room” to the classroom (Burns, 2010)? This panel presentation focuses on two uses of technology in a USAID-funded teacher education program to provide personalized and differentiated coaching support. The first is the use of virtual “bug in the ear” technologies providing teachers with real-time coaching at a distance. The second is the use of two-way Skype to provide live instructional coaching, in the form of co-teaching, to teachers in remote and mountainous regions of Indonesia. Both of these approaches were nested within a third technology based approach—the use of online learning and Web 2.0 technologies to train, support and monitor a cadre of skilled instructional coaches.

This presentation will explain the overall technology-based coaching interventions (designed by the presenter) and share comparative data on the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, contrasting these approaches with face-to-face and blended modes of coaching support.

Author

• Mary Burns, Education Development Center (EDC)