Brazil: low-cost virtual coaching to improve classroom practice

• In Event: Quality support for quality outcomes: building the evidence-base for teacher and coach professional development models

Proposal

Ceara Teacher Feedback Program. In 2015, the state of Ceara, Brazil launched an innovative program to improve teachers’ classroom effectiveness (Programa de Gestao de Sala de Aula). The content of the program, designed with help from Brazil’s Lemann Foundation, focused on core classroom management skills: teachers’ efficient use of class time and strategies to make instruction more interactive and keep students engaged. The program had three elements:
i) an “information shock” – an infographic bulletin with data from baseline classroom observations (using the Stallings classroom snapshot) on how the teachers in their school compared with other schools and other countries on use of time, use of materials, type of instruction, and student engagement;
ii) self-help materials – a copy of the Portuguese translation of Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion for each teacher; and
iii) access to coaching from national experts via Skype. The national coaches worked with school-level pedagogical coordinators through three (one day) face to face meetings and bi-monthly Skype conferences to improve coordinators’ ability to observe teachers in their school and provide practical feedback on effective instruction, delivered in positive and constructive one-on-one coaching sessions with individual teachers.

Impact. State secondary schools were randomly assigned to the program to evaluate its
impact, with 156 treatment and 136 control schools. Take-up of coaching was high
(100% of pedagogical coordinators participated to some degree in the program) and
implementation of the virtual Skype sessions, supplemented by 3 face-to-face meetings,
was also high. After one year, an endline round of classroom observations showed
teachers in treatment schools significantly increased their time on instruction (from 70-77% of class time, and ability to keep students engaged, with the largest gains in the weakest schools. Improved classroom practice translated into learning gains in both math and Portuguese on both an annual state level assessment and the annual national high school leaving exam. Skype interactions kept the costs of the program low, $2.40 per student.

In conclusion, by focusing on improving the effectiveness of an existing school system resource (school-level pedagogical coordinators), by capitalizing on the possibility for virtual coaching interactions in a middle income country with good internet access, and by motivating schools to change through comparative feedback from classroom observations, this program produced significant impacts on teacher practice and measurable increases in student learning at low costs over a single school year.

Authors

• Barbara Bruns, Georgetown University, Center for Global Development

• Nina Cunha, FHI 360