Reading Coaches and the Relationship Between Policy and Practice

Abstract

Many educational policy initiatives use instructional coaching to accomplish their goals. Yet we know little about the role of reading coaches in mediating the relationship between policy and teachers’ classroom practice. In this article, we investigate the role of reading coaches in mediating the relationship between Reading First policy and teachers’ classroom practice. We conducted an in‐depth, longitudinal case study of one urban elementary school in Massachusetts, starting the year before the onset of Reading First and continuing through the first year of its implementation. In our analysis, we focus on seven first‐ and second‐grade teachers, two coaches, and two school administrators. We argue that, although reading coaches were only one of multiple sources from which teachers learned about Reading First policy, teachers were much more likely to make substantial changes in their classroom practice when they learned about the policy message from a coach than from other sources. Coaches influenced teachers by helping them to learn new approaches and to integrate them into their classroom. But, they also did so by pressuring teachers, shaping how they saw and understood Reading First, and by counseling them on which aspects of the policy to focus on and which aspects to ignore. Thus, we present a vision of coaching that goes much beyond its educational roles, to highlight the political roles of the coach as well. We close by drawing implications for research on coaching, policy implementation, and practice.

Locating data use in the microprocesses of district-level deliberations

“…Framing is used to characterise a problem in a particular way, persuade others to one's opinion, or to counter others' claims. Scholars have previously used frame theory and similar approaches to investigate school board deliberations (Asen et al, 2011;Tracy & Dimock, 2004), local negotiations of policy implementation (Coburn, 2006;Coburn & Woulfin, 2012), andmost relevant to our work -data use in decision making (Coburn et al, 2009;Park et al, 2013).…”

Teacher implementation of an adolescent reading intervention

“…Some existing studies analyze the effects of coaching on student outcomes without considering the mediating factor of changing 15 instructional practices (e.g., Biancarosa et al, 2010;Elish-Piper & L'Allier, 2011;Lovett et al, 2008;Marsh et al, 2008), while others consider associations between coaching and instructional practices with no direct evidence that these changes to instruction have a positive effect on student achievement (e.g., Brown et al, 2007;Cantrell & Callaway, 2008;Coburn & Woulfin, 2012). The present study attempts to isolate, albeit in a nonexperimental way, the specific role of coaching in relation to instruction and student outcomes.…”

“…Wendy's words, "I feel like I'm cheating by just sitting there talking with them," reflect what a fundamental restructuring of beliefs this was for her. As in Coburn and Woulfin's (2012) research, which found that teachers were more likely to respond with accommodation when a policy message came from a coach, Wendy's work with her STARI coach caused her to change her approach to reading instruction.…”

Building Productive Relationships: District Leaders’ Advice to Researchers

“…Evidence from a recent national survey, in fact, indicates that school and district leaders are hungry for timely, relevant research to fuel their ongoing work (Penuel et al, 2016). Researchers who aim to meet this demand and ensure the relevance of their work will likely need to alter their practices in ways that bring them into tighter alignment with leaders and practitioners closer to the ground (Coburn & Stein, 2010).…”