Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to provide an account of the coaching element that was included in an existing graduate literacy course and to describe the responses of experienced and less-experienced teachers as they began to add collaborative peer coaching to their teaching identities. Design/methodology/approach -Data collected included teachers' coaching logs and written reflections on the coaching experience, and field notes taken by a professor. Data were analysed qualitatively through open coding. Initially, the authors read data individually and coded them by what they perceived to be the teachers' coaching moves. Separately, they developed lists of codes and then reviewed coding lists to work through idiosyncratic data, collapse codes, align their language. Findings -The authors identified three overarching and multi-faceted moves that the coaching teachers made as they worked with partner teachers. They found that the teachers: used restraint; focused on partner teacher's needs; and provided opportunities for classroom observations and demonstrations. Practical implications -Due to budget cuts, district coaching initiatives are being down-sized. With fewer literacy coaches available, the authors believe that classroom teachers would benefit from learning about how to support each another as peer coaches. Social implications -Teachers' coaching moves, along with the curricular conversations engendered by them, created a culture of learning based on reflection and dialogue between coaching and partner teachers. Originality/value -Very few studies have been conducted on peer coaching or have addressed the process by which teachers enrolled in graduate programs learned how to engage in collaborative peer coaching.

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Recent research suggests that personal and institutional constraints often limit the degree to which professional development impacts teaching practice. Darling‐Hammond suggests that one of those constraints is time in schools for collaborative planning. She cites high performing schools in Europe and Asia that have three to four times more collaborative planning time for teachers than schools in the United States, and she suggests that teachers need to discover ways to collaborate to solve problems and improve practice. One way to create the kinds of collaborative teaching communities that Darling‐Hammond proposes is with peer coaching, and this article describes a group of teachers who found ways to work and learn together by adding collaborative peer coaching to their identities as teachers.

PurposeThis article presents a case study of Kelly, a third-grade teacher enrolled in a literacy leadership course within a Master of Reading program. In this course, practicing teachers completed an assignment in which they implemented a literacy coaching cycle with a colleague, video-recorded their interaction, and conducted critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the interaction. The authors explore how engaging in CDA influenced Kelly's enactment of professional identities as she prepared to be a literacy leader.Design/methodology/approachData presented in this article are taken from a larger study of four white, middle-class teachers enrolled in the course. Data sources included the students' final paper and semistructured interviews. The researchers used qualitative coding methods to analyze all data sources, identify prominent themes, and select Kelly as a focal participant for further analysis.FindingsFindings indicate that Kelly's confidence as a literacy leader grew after participating in the coaching cycle and conducting CDA. Through CDA, Kelly explored how prominent discourses of teaching and learning, particularly those relating to novice and expert status, influenced Kelly in-the-moment coaching interactions.Originality/valuePrevious literacy coaching research suggests that literacy coaches need professional learning opportunities that support a deep understanding of coaching stances and discursive moves to effectively support teachers. The current study suggests that CDA may be one promising method for engaging literacy coaches in such work because it allows coaches to gain understandings about how discourses of teaching and learning function within coaching interactions.

In this article, we contend that in media stories on the science of reading, journalists have relied on strategic metaphorical framing to present reading education as a public crisis with a narrow and settled solution. Drawing on data from a critical metaphor analysis of 37 media stories, we demonstrate how frames used in recent media reporting have intensified the reading wars, promoting conflict and hampering conversation among stakeholders and across research paradigms and methodologies. The media have asserted a direct connection between basic research and instructional practice that, without sufficient translational research that attends to a variety of instructional contexts and student populations, may perpetuate inequities. We end with an example of collaboration and a challenge to reframe reading education in ways that center collaboration and conversation rather than conflict.