Qualitative Investigation of RtI Coaches Roles,Responsibilities, and Experiences Supporting Schools Participating in a State Level RtI Implementation Project

ABSTRACT

Systems coaching is a professional development approach focusing on the implementation fidelity of evidence-based practices and whole school reform efforts such as Response to Intervention (RtI). However, the roles, responsibilities, and supports required by systems coaches, and how the work of those tasked with facilitating capacity for RtI implementation manifests within complex and multifaceted school environments remains unclear. The purpose of the current exploratory study was to investigate coaches’ perspectives and experiences related to RtI implementation to illustrate systems coaching in context. Ten coaches providing job-embedded support for RtI implementation across 34 schools in one state participated in semi-structured interviews. A constant-comparative and matrix analysis approach was used to generate codes and themes. Results indicated systems coaches experience a number of systemic and contextually dependent facilitators and barriers to their work, providing implications for RtI coaches’ preparation, ongoing support, and current practices, as well as directions for future research.     

The contribution of extracurricular coaching on high school teachers’ job satisfaction

The purpose of the present study was to explore the contribution of extracurricular coaching on high school teachers’ job satisfaction. Specifically, the study looked at how perceptions of the coaching environment (athlete relationships, colleague relationships and opportunities through coaching) influenced teachers’ perceptions of stressors (athlete-related and workload-related) and coaching efficacy, and how this in-turn influenced teachers’ job satisfaction. The sample examined 2949 teachers from across Canada who volunteered as high school sport coaches, above and beyond their regular teaching load. The results supported that the data fit the model well (SBχ²₍₂₆₄₎ = 973.36, p < .001, SRMR = .08, CFI = .91, TLI = .90, RMSEA = .055 CI₉₅ [.052, .059]) and that teachers who reported a positive coaching environment had increased coaching efficacy and decreased perceptions of athlete-related and workload-related stressors. Increased coaching efficacy predicted higher job satisfaction, while increased perceptions of stressors predicted lower job satisfaction.     

Extending Opportunity to Learn for Students Placed At Risk

This article describes a viable alternative to hiring full-time certified teachers or to using lay volunteers to provide children at risk of failing in school with academic coaches (tutors). The Academic Coaching Program described herein recruited and trained students enrolled in a university's school of education programs to serve as academic coaches primarily for 7th and 8th graders in an inner-city school in which 96% of the students are placed at risk by the socioeconomic (SES) status of their families. The program extended the school's regular instructional programs in reading and mathematics. It provided the at-risk students with high-quality coaching by university students through a systematic process of training the university students in the school's reading and mathematics programs, monitoring them as they coached, and providing feedback to the coaches on a regular basis.     

What Happens During Language and Literacy Coaching? Coaches’ Reports of Their Interactions With Educators

Research Findings: This study investigated coaches’ interactions with educators in the context of a large-scale, state-implemented literacy professional development (PD). We examined log data and open-comment reports to understand what coaches found salient about their interactions with educators as well as how those reports aligned with the initial design of the PD. Coaches reported spending a large proportion of their interactions with educators completing administrative tasks. Our findings also indicate that coaches disproportionally targeted instructional content from the PD while also adding unrelated instructional content to their coaching. Although coaches reported focusing on relationship building, they reported using less efficacious coaching strategies (e.g., observation and discussion) more frequently than coaching strategies demonstrated to be more efficacious (e.g., modeling and coteaching). Practice or Policy: Our findings suggest an explanation for the mixed evidence around coaching, as coaches in the study seemed to move beyond the specifications of the PD in their coaching interactions. This work has implications for the design of PD for both improving coach training and allowing some flexibility to meet educators’ learning needs that may be secondary to the content of the PD. Findings also support the need for more nuanced mechanisms for investing in coaching and coaching outcomes.     

Implementation of Bug-in-Ear Coaching by Community-Based Professional Development Providers

Research Findings: Bug-in-ear coaching implemented under highly controlled situations has a promising research base. Yet few researchers have examined its effects when implemented within less controlled environments using authentic professional development conditions. The purpose of this study was to examine the implementation and effects of bug-in-ear coaching when staff from a community organization served as community coaches for early childhood educators. We found that community coaches implemented bug-in-ear methods, but additional supports may be necessary to increase the intensity and quality of feedback provided. Effects of the intervention were observed for 1 of the 6 targeted outcomes for educators. However, effects did not translate to children’s communication outcomes. Practice or Policy: Bug-in-ear coaching is 1 method of providing early childhood educators with performance-based feedback. One benefit is that while community coaches observe educators live, they provide feedback that educators can immediately use to improve practice. However, bug-in-ear coaching poses challenges with respect to reviewing goals and reflecting on one’s performance. Community coaches and educators should systematically plan for reflection so that educators can create new implementation goals to improve their practice. Changing educator practice is a complex endeavor, but bug-in-ear coaching is a promising tool for doing so in a supportive manner.     

Examining Teachers’ Attitudes and Experiences with Coaching to Inform Research-Based Practice: An Iterative Developmental Design Study

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine teachers’ attitudes and experiences with coaching. This study was conducted in advance of a planned randomized controlled trial of a coaching intervention to better align the model with teachers’ needs and goals. Thirty-four K–5 general (n = 26), special education (n = 6), and educational support staff (n = 2) working in two high-poverty schools participated in focus groups. Interrater reliability between independent coders was high (К = 0.92; range: 0.76–1.0). Thematic analyses identified facilitators and barriers to teacher participation in the planned intervention and were used to improve upon the existing coaching model. Themes focused on advantages and disadvantages to coaching and characteristics of effective coaches and coaching models. Implications of findings for research and practice are discussed.     

A Case for Coach Garfinkel: Decision Making and What We Already Know

The purpose of this article is to deconstruct the decision-making processes of sports coaches through the writings of the sociologist Harold Garfinkel. Specifically, the authors draw upon Garfinkel’s (1967) writings on jurors’ decision making to challenge current cognitivist bound conceptualization to better interpret coaches’ sense-making–why and how they make their decisions. The significance of the work lies in further deciphering the meaningful structures of daily coaching lives; within whose limits coaching decisions unfold. Following a brief review of literature related to coaches’ decision making, the principal tenets of Garfinkel’s work are outlined. This gives way to an examination of Erving Goffman’s (1974) work of “frames of reference” in terms of how coaches’ decision making can be developed and improved before a reflective conclusion summarizes the main points made and their implications for future coach education.     

The Coaching of Teachers: Results of Five Training Studies

In this study, the results of five training studies evaluating the effects of a coaching program for use in Dutch primary and secondary schools are described. The coaches involved in these studies were: (1) school counsellors, (2) school principals, (3) mentors of beginning teachers, (4) mentors of teachers-in-training and (5) secondary school teachers. Coaching is a form of in-class support to provide (novice) teachers with feedback on their functioning and thereby stimulate the self-reflection and self-analysis needed to improve instructional effectiveness. Based on the pre- and post-training ratings of coaching conferences, a significant treatment effect was found for the coaching skills concerned with the development of autonomy (empowerment), feedback and business-like attitude. The pre- and post-training ratings from the coached teachers themselves showed a significant treatment effect for the coaching skills concerned with the planning of observational data collection. In addition, the teachers coached by trained coaches valued the coaching skills demonstrated significantly more than those teachers coached by untrained coaches. Inspection of the interactions for the adjusted post-test scores revealed different training effects for the five studies.     

学生心理问题早期干预的实施策略

早期干预是预防学生心理问题迈向心理疾病的重要手段。早期干预应成为学校心理健康教育的中心工作。早期干预的基础是早期发现。早期干预包括分类性团体辅导、心理导师制、心理日记、根源性预防等多种实施策略。     

Leadership coaching: a multiple-case study of urban public charter school principals’ experiences

The purpose of our multi-case study was to understand the experiences of non-novice New York City and Washington, DC public charter school principals who had participated in leadership coaching as a component of their leadership development. Eight New York City and Washington DC public charter school principal cases were selected through purposeful sampling. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, documents, and artifacts, which were analyzed, coded and grouped into three broader themes: the coaching process, the impact of coaching, and principal leader identity construction. The findings supported the following conclusions: (a) Participants’ experiences of coaching were inconsistent with the coaching literature; (b) The impact of coaching was shaped by perceived competencies of the coach and the structure of the coaching session; and (c) Participants’ leader identity construction was supported through the process of coaching.     

Effects of professional support in school improvement

At a time when much attention is being paid to teachers’ effectiveness, there is little regard for the effectiveness of their professional support. Although professional development facilitators are frequently involved in school improvement projects, little is known about the interventions they should carry out and the effectiveness of these interventions. In this study, five facilitators’ interventions are operationalised. Multilevel regression analyses show, that the intervention “guiding the process” explains a significant part of variance in teachers’ knowledge, attitude and concerns with respect to an innovation and the degree of implementation. The interventions “team training and coaching”, “creating conditions for innovation at school level” and “individual coaching” explain a significant part of variance in teachers’ knowledge with respect to an innovation. In general, it appears that professional development facilitators have considerable influence on teachers’ knowledge and concerns and reasonable influence on teachers’ attitude and the degree of implementation.     

Informal math coaching by instant messaging: Two case studies of how university students coach K-12 students

The aim of this study is to describe and explore how instant messaging (IM) can be used to support informal math coaching. We have studied two projects where university students use IM to coach K-12 students in mathematics. The coaches were interviewed with a focus on how informal coaching works by examining coaching challenges, how coaching can be organized, whether coaching should be anonymous or personal, which tools can be used and how informal math coaching supports learning. Research shows that generating and answering questions are important in the process of understanding and learning, which means that both the students and the coaches can learn math through this type of project. The coaches perceive informal math coaching as complementing online math forums. For students to learn effectively, the coaches need to be able to interpret the students' competence level in order to coach on a level that is within their development zone. It seems particularly challenging to coach at the right level when using IM and, therefore, it is important to establish a personal relationship with the students.     

Conflicting Discourses: Navigating the Tensions of Becoming a Literacy Coach

During recent years, literacy coaching has become a widespread model of professional development for teachers in schools across the United States. However, there is a shortage of research and policy to inform the preparation and ongoing work of literacy coaches. In this article, the researchers use a modified version of Gee’s identity framework to examine teachers’ reflective writing as they learned about and practiced coaching in one school district. Findings show that teachers invoked multiple conflicting discourses of coaching that contributed to tensions in their work. The researchers argue that such tensions can stand in the way of educators constructing coaching identities that allow them to support and sustain meaningful professional development for teachers.     

Progress in Literacy Coaching Success—A Dozen Years on

Literacy coaches are most successful when they: develop strong, trusting relationships; provide clarity about their roles; communicate well; spend much of their time in coaching conversations; and monitor their perspectives about their work and those with whom they work. However, challenges still persist for literacy coaches, particularly in relation to administrators' understanding of literacy coaching, training for literacy coaches, and the amount of time allocated for literacy coaching. This article describes each of these successful practices and each of these challenges, based upon the author's experience over more than 12 years as an international consultant on literacy coaching and supported by research from the literature on coaching, with the goals of summarizing current knowledge, providing practical suggestions for improvement, and encouraging forward movement in the field of coaching.     

‘The one that got away’: how angling as a culture of practice manifests in the teaching and learning relationship within angling-based intervention programmes

In recent years a professional sector has emerged within the UK delivering angling-based intervention programmes targeted at young people ‘disengaged’ with education. These coaches bring with them an angling cultural background, which influences their interactions with young people as ‘novices’, emerging in ‘angler talk’ that accompanies waterside coaching. We argue that young people's exposure to ‘angler talk’ amounts to a cultural apprenticeship, socialising young people into an experience-based learning community. Through angler anecdotes and waterside banter young people are encouraged to be active participants in an egalitarian system of knowledge exchange that is particularly appealing for working with disaffected young people. By identifying how angling as a community of practice manifests in the teaching and learning relationship, we demonstrate the benefit of ethnographic approaches for appreciating the subtle cultural influences at work in skill-based intervention programmes.     

Five Essential Practices for Communication: The Work of Instructional Coaches

The work of instructional coaches, both general and discipline-specific, has become increasingly important as more schools rely on their leadership for improvements in teaching and learning. Much of their work hinges upon their effective communication with teachers and school administrators. This article outlines five practices for instructional coaches to use in order to achieve and maintain effective communication; these five practices draw upon the author's prior work as an instructional coach and upon her own research. The practices are presented by sharing the voices of three mathematics instructional coaches, their teacher colleagues, and their school administrators.     

The Targeted Reading Intervention: Face‐to‐Face vs. Webcam Literacy Coaching of Classroom Teachers

The targeted reading intervention (TRI) is a professional development program for rural kindergarten and first grade classroom teachers to help them provide effective reading strategies with struggling readers. In two randomized controlled trials, the TRI was delivered two ways: (1) literacy coaches provided support for classroom teachers through face‐to‐face classroom meetings or (2) coaches provided support to classroom teachers through live webcam technology. The purpose this study was to examine how face‐to‐face versus webcam coaching was related to teacher and struggling reader outcomes. Regression results suggested greater benefits with webcam literacy coaching for teacher fidelity and efficacy. Both struggling reader groups made equivalent gains across literacy measures, although there were greater gains on one child literacy measure in the webcam group.     

Debunking the Fear of Peer Review: Combining Supervision and Evaluation and Living to Tell About It

Scholars have argued that combining supervision and evaluation is a conflict of interest that will damage the coaching process. Peer assistance and review (PAR) is an approach to the supervision and evaluation of teachers that runs counter to this argument, as the coach charged with providing professional support to a new or struggling veteran teacher also plays a formal role in that teacher’s summative personnel evaluation. This article presents data from a study of one urban school district in California as it implemented a PAR program, asking: (1) To what degree do PAR mentees trust their coaches, who conduct both formative and summative assessments? (2) How do PAR mentees who do not trust their coaches differ from those who do? Mentees’ trust in their coaches was a point and a half higher than their lack of trust in their coaches, as self-reported on a 4-point Likert scale. Those mentees who did not report a high degree of trust in their coaches were low-performing mentees.     

浅谈中学校园暴力事件的心理危机干预

文章结合国外的相关研究,根据心理危机干预的原则、模式、技术等,立足于国内中学校的实际情况,提出一套实用于中学的整合连续的心理危机干预方案,涉及校园暴力事件的学校预警系统、应急处置、及时心理干预,以及事后干预四个阶段,依赖于学校、家庭、社会等多个方面的支持,重点突出“心理干预”的特点。以期能对校园暴力事件进行良好的心理危机干预,预防校园暴力事件的频繁发生,构建和谐校园。