Understanding Professional Feedback: Measuring Quality in Instructional Coaching Interactions

• In Event: 14.044 - Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: 14.044-2 - Coaching for Excellence: Policies and Challenges

Abstract

In this paper, we focus on feedback interactions between instructional coaches and teachers. This study is embedded in a large, three-year project which aims to understand, refine, and improve coaching systems in Tennessee, ultimately leading to a scalable state-level mathematics coaching model that helps coaches support teachers’ use of high-level mathematics tasks, a practice that has been shown to improve student outcomes in mathematics (e.g. Stein & Lane, 1996). Here we focus on the evidence-based feedback coaches offer to teachers. We unpack the nature of quality professional feedback, and the interactions in which this is embedded, to develop a robust understanding of teacher learning, instructional coaching, and the function of feedback as a mechanism for leadership and school improvement.

Authors

• Margaret Quinn Hannan, University of Pittsburgh

• Jennifer L. Russell, University of Pittsburgh