The Effect of Teacher Coaching on Instruction and Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of the Causal Evidence

Abstract

Teacher coaching has emerged as a promising alternative to traditional models of professional development. We review the empirical literature on teacher coaching and conduct meta-analyses to estimate the mean effect of coaching programs on teachers' instructional practice and students' academic achievement. Combining results across 60 studies that employ causal research designs, we find pooled effect sizes of 0.49 standard deviations (SD) on instruction and 0.18 SD on achievement. Much of this evidence comes from literacy coaching programs for prekindergarten and elementary school teachers in the United States. Although these findings affirm the potential of coaching as a development tool, further analyses illustrate the challenges of taking coaching programs to scale while maintaining effectiveness. Average effects from effectiveness trials of larger programs are only a fraction of the effects found in efficacy trials of smaller programs. We conclude by discussing ways to address scale-up implementation challenges and providing guidance for future causal studies.

Incorporating evidence‐based behavioral teacher training into Head Start mental health consultation: Description and initial outcomes of a large‐scale program

“…Conceptually, and based on research examining the uptake of evidence‐based practices in school settings, it was believed that the professional development trainings would be beneficial for increasing teacher's knowledge and awareness of skills for building positive relationships with children and the behavioral principles that underlie TCIT (Coles, Owens, Serrano, Slavec, & Evans, 2015, Joyce & Showers, 2002). It was assumed that the next steps, observations with feedback reports and in‐classroom coaching, would be necessary for teachers' translation of skills from the training to the classroom and for promoting flexible use of the skills in a variety of situations and with a variety of children (Fixsen et al, 2005; Kraft et al, 2018; Schultz, Arora, & Mautone, 2015).…”

“…First, the analysis of initial outcomes explores the impact of the implementation of the program on teachers’ skills for improving relationships with children and managing classroom behavior. Further, as outlined in the program description below, the developed consultation program recognized the need to provide ongoing coaching for teachers on use of TCIT skills after introducing these skills via trainings at the beginning of the school year (Fixsen, Naoom, Blasé, Friedman, & Wallace, 2005; Kraft, Blazar, & Hogan, 2018). The second aim of the analyses presented in this manuscript was to examine the relative effectiveness of two coaching methods used by consultants (i.e., modeling and performance feedback) to improve teacher use of TCIT skills.…”

School education in Colombia

“…However, more needs to be done to develop schools as learning organisations (Banerjee et al, 2017 [122] ; Kools and Stoll, 2016 [123] ; Vescio, Ross and Adams, 2008 [124] ). Investments in stronger leadership in schools, as analysed in Chapter 3, and sufficient attention to teachers' working conditions, such as teacher assignment, time, space, materials and access to colleagues, as discussed above, would all help strengthen schoolbased professional learning (Little, 2006 [125] ).…”

“…They should also inspire initiatives at other levels of school education to establish job-embedded forms of teacher learning in Colombian schools. Considering the risk that the effects of teacher coaching may fade over time (Kraft, Blazar and Hogan, 2018 [45] ) or that teacher coaching may benefit some teachers more than others (Albornoz et al, 2017 [121] ), these programmes should be subject to further evaluations to inform adjustments in the future.…”

Supporting Mathematics Coaches’ Learning of Probability through Professional Development Tasks

“…Currently, coaching has emerged as a viable substitute to traditional professional development for teachers (Kraft, Blazar, Hogan, 2018;Mudzimiri, Burroughs, Luebeck, Sutton, & Yopp, 2014). Grant (2012) suggests that the purpose of coaching is to make determined change within a specific environment, such as improving mathematics teaching for improved learning in classrooms (Brosnan & Erchick, 2010;Campbell & Malkus, 2013).…”