A Community-University Partnership to Develop and Implement an Enhanced Model of Coaching for Prekindergarten

Abstract

The effects of high-quality pre-kindergarten programs are well documented, including improvements in cognitive, literacy, math, and social-emotional skills. Evidence shows that low-income and minority students tend to benefit most from these programs, potentially helping to reduce academic performance disparities. A commonly employed intervention to improve pre-k classroom quality is coaching; however, there is little consensus regarding what coaching should "look like" in early childhood education and a great deal of variability in coaching quality. This paper describes a community-university partnership to develop a coaching model for a publicly funded prekindergarten program, using a participatory research approach and seeking input from stakeholders at multiple levels to address the particular needs of the school district. This paper describes the origin of the partnership, the development and implementation of the coaching model, and the benefits of using this type of collaborative approach to pre-k coaching. Taking a collaborative approach to the development and implementation of a pre-k coaching model resulted in an intervention that met program needs, achieved buy-in from multiple levels of administrators and staff, and helped build the school district's capacity to use data to guide decision-making. Challenges encountered throughout the project, how those challenges were addressed, and steps taken to ensure the sustainability of the coaching model are also discussed.

Coaching for Performance and Development Organization

“…Study of (Simmons et al, 2021) states in its research that low-income and minority students tend to benefit the most from these programs, potentially helping to reduce inequalities in academic performance. One intervention commonly used to improve the quality of pre-kindergarten classrooms is coaching; however, there is not yet a strong consensus on how coaching "should be done" in early childhood education, and there is considerable variation in the quality of coaching, the development and implementation of coaching models, and the benefits of this collaborative approach to pre-kindergarten coaching.…”

Examining the relationships between data‐guided innovations and pre‐k students' social‐emotional development

“…The current study builds on existing early childhood education research by examining the development of preschoolers’ social‐emotional (SE) functioning in relation to a new model of “enhanced coaching (EC).” The EC Model (see Simmons et al, 2021, for details regarding its development and core components) was developed as a data‐guided approach to better support the implementation of a prekindergarten (pre‐k) program's curriculum and the utilization of early childhood evidence‐based practices (broadly defined as practices shown by research to be effective in improving children's skills and/or outcomes; Buysse et al, 2006; Farley et al, 2018). The study also extends work reported by Gadaire and colleagues (2021), which examined the effectiveness of using students’ scores on SE assessments to guide instruction and improve students’ SE skills.…”

“…During the latter portion of the first year, the partners jointly developed a model for “EC,” that, through a participatory, partnership‐based approach (see Simmons et al, 2021; Kilmer et al, 2020), identified the specific behaviors that the program viewed as critical for effectively implementing the curriculum and enacting evidence‐based practices for pre‐k classroom instruction and behavior management. These key behaviors were identified via meetings of a group of pre‐k program coaches, school administrators, and university researchers, which led to the development of an observation measure that enabled coaches to provide performance‐based feedback about teachers’ implementation and suggestions for improvement.…”