Building Networks for Change: The Role of Ed-Tech Coaches in Supporting System-Wide Instructional Reform

• In Event: Conditions for Advancing Coaching as a Reform Lever for Systemic Instructional Change

Abstract

In response to federal and state policies and philanthropic funding, thousands of districts have rolled out one-to-one computing initiatives that provide students with digital devices for learning. As part of these initiatives, districts have invested in “ed-tech coaching” as a critical process for instructional change. Ed-tech coaches fulfill many roles, from providing instructional support teachers to coordinating system-wide instructional improvement. This system-level work, although understudied in the extant literature, is crucial since district leaders do not have prescribed approach for how teachers should be using technology and instead must facilitate school experimentation with instruction, disseminate best practices, and adjust district procedures according to school needs to promote instructional change across schools.

This paper uses social network theory to study how ed-tech coaches work as reform agents at the system-level. Social network theory suggests that individuals and their relationships are nested in structures or networks that shape access to social capital (Scott, 2000). Structural holes or absent communication between groups restrict information exchange. Because actors on either side of these holes circulate in different information flows, brokering information between these groups can provide access to new social capital that improves organizational capacity (Burt, 2000). In the coaching literature, brokering is described as a top-down process in which coaches inform teachers about central office reform goals to align instruction with these goals (Coburn & Woulfin, 2012). Social network theory (Gould & Fernandez, 1989) provides properties for observing this top-down communication along with other pertinent brokering practices, including: coordinating information on reform goals and procedures within the central office, coordinating best practices for instruction within and among schools, and bottom-up communication from schools to the central office to provide feedback on reform implementation and craft district procedures around school needs (Honig & Hatch, 2004).

I use the above properties to describe how ed-tech coaches broker information on instructional change in a mid-sized urban district – Lexington Unified School District – that distributed iPads in schools for teaching the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). I ask: How are ed-tech coaches brokering information on integrating technology with instruction, and what are early implications of these brokering practices for instructional change? I analyze social network data collected from central office administrators, principals, ed-tech coaches, and classroom teachers in 2014-15, and interviews with administrators, ed-tech coaches, and principals, and teachers from six case schools.

I find that ed-tech coaches privileged communication with other ed-tech coaches and the teachers whom they were formally assigned to train at the neglect of brokering information to/from central office staff overseeing other CCSS programs and other educators in schools. These incomplete brokering practices coincided with limited teacher understanding on how to use technology for the CCSS, strained relations among teachers for innovating with instruction, and lack of open communication between schools and the central office on school needs for instructional change. These findings shed light on the complexities of ed-tech coaching and why education technology reforms struggle to achieve systemic improvements in teaching.


 

Author

• Ayesha Hashim, University of Southern California