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This study investigated how a high school literacy coach provided coaching to support teachers’ understanding and implementation of disciplinary literacy instruction. With a focus on collaborations between the literacy coach and teachers in the disciplines of social studies, math, and English, this article presents three case studies that illustrat...
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... she would question enough that you're gonna figure it out. You're gonna figure out if it's you or this activity or, you know?" (Haneda et al., 2019, p. 169) Horizontal flow was especially evident in studies in which the coach had specialized literacy knowledge and the teachers were content-area specialists (DiDomenico et al., 2018;Skinner et al., 2014;Wilder, 2014;Wilder & Herro, 2016). In these contexts, it seemed, coach and teacher perceived each other to have unique knowledge, necessitating reciprocity of knowledge sharing and skill exchange. ...
... Affirmative vulnerability. We found cases of affirmative vulnerability, especially in the findings of Wilder (2014), Wilder andHerro (2016), andDiDomenico et al. (2018), in which literacy coaches and disciplinary teachers navigated the disequilibrium of their differing areas of expertise and co-constructed knowledge that integrated literacy practices and disciplinary content. Wilder and Herro (2016) Such instances of co-construction hinged on both conversational participants framing the relationship as reciprocal. ...
This metasynthesis presents the collective findings based on a small corpus of studies ( n = 28) that examined literacy coaching in elementary and secondary settings from a relational perspective. We frame our analysis using Lysaker’s notions of relational teaching and theorize that, like classroom teaching, powerful literacy coaching is grounded in dialogic, co-constructive interactions in which the coach and teacher jointly develop new knowledge and skills. Our analysis indicates that the realization of co-construction may be influenced by differential patterns related to positioning and dispositions toward coaching: (a) knowledge flow, (b) distributed expertise, and (c) vulnerability. To explicate these patterns, we present evidence of opportunities that enhanced co-construction and obstacles that reduced co-construction. We conclude by discussing how coaches and teachers can develop reciprocity in coach–teacher relationships and move toward more relational coaching approaches. Finally, we provide directions for future research.
School requests for professional learning on adolescent literacy often stem
from low or stagnant reading scores on state standardized assessments and
legislative policies that require educators to complete literacy coursework.
These decisions are often made without teachers’ voices, requiring teachers to take coursework they may not need or learn in ways that may not
align with their content. To address this issue, we used our researchercreated and validated survey to ask middle and high school teachers about
their self-efficacy toward adolescent literacy based on various professional
characteristics, such as years of experience, teaching grade levels, content
area, and taking the state-required literacy courses. Findings note that
certain disciplines are more efficacious toward specific literacy practices,
and taking state-required literacy courses is insignificant. Our implications
are written for literacy scholars and teacher educators to revisit the premise and promise of the 2017 ILA Standards for K-12 literacy professionals,
emphasizing the importance of being cognizant of our strengths and highlighting the need for collaborating and learning with and from teachers of
all disciplines.
Implementation support through coaching-such as with embedded fidelity assessment, performance feedback, modeling, and alliance building-has been empirically supported as a way to increase and sustain interventionists' fidelity levels. However, education research consistently shows that practitioners struggle to monitor and improve interventionists' fidelity using implementation support strategies. One explanation for this type of implementation research-to-practice gap is that evidence-based coaching strategies have significant limitations with respect to their usability, feasibility, and adaptability. This study is the first to experimentally evaluate an evidence-based set of adaptable materials and procedures designed to assess and support the intervention fidelity of school-based interventions. Using a randomized multiple-baseline-across-participants design, we examined the extent to which these materials and procedures would influence intervention adherence and quality of an evidence-based reading intervention. Across all nine interventionist participants, data revealed that the implementation strategies meaningfully improved intervention adherence and quality, and high levels of intervention fidelity maintained 1 month after removing the support procedures. Findings are discussed with respect to how these materials and procedures address a critical need within school-based research and practice as well as how they may help to inform and address the implementation research-to-practice gap in education.
For the past forty years, United States school districts have increasingly hired mathematics specialists to support the teaching and learning of mathematics. Despite the prevalence of this professional development structure, this is a relatively new research topic for the mathematics education field. In this paper, we report findings from an exploration of literature between 1981 and 2018 to examine the role of mathematics specialists (MSs). In particular, we examine: (a) MS positioning across research; (b) historical trends of school-based MS research; and (c) orientations of school-based MSs within research. Using the McGatha and Rigelman framework as an analytic lens, we found that beyond the positions identified in their framework (coach, intervention specialist, teacher), there were four additional MS positionings within the research (learner, other p-12 stakeholder, university stakeholder, unknown). Ultimately, we forward an expansion to the McGatha and Rigelman framework to include these new categories, as well as contextual descriptions and working definitions to support future research in more accurately and robustly capturing the ways in which MSs are investigated and reported on in research.
This study aims to augment the current understanding of how practicing teachers perceive and implement disciplinary literacy and in what ways they collaborate with researchers in a disciplinary literacy project. To do this, we collected and analyzed transcripts of the meetings from a disciplinary literacy project that was a university-school partnership between history teachers, literacy education researchers, and social studies education researchers. To analyze our data, we applied a constant comparative method and identified three salient themes: collaboration, text use, and instructional practice. Specifically, the teachers cited that the triangular structure of the collaborative expertise of teachers, literacy, and social studies education researchers was useful in constructing professional and instructional knowledge. In terms of text use, teachers expressed that the intentional selection and teaching of multiple and multimodal texts provided diverse perspectives and supported the various ways in which students read and learn. Finally, concerning instructional practice, the teachers revealed that disciplinary literacy and thinking skills should be intentionally taught and that methods for enhancing discipline-specific motivation should be considered. Based on these findings, key issues and implications are discussed.
As literacy coaching grows in popularity and schools grow in diversity, it is important to explore approaches to support sustainable and transformative teacher learning in complex settings. This seven‐month case study of the author’s coaching with two teachers of English learners (ELs) in an urban high school illustrates the use of a reflective framework with video to support agentive, sustainable, transformative literacy coaching. The reflective framework, developed by the author, begins with teachers’ own perplexity about literacy teaching and learning. Dialogue from coaching sessions shows how the framework capitalized on differing expertise of the EL teacher and literacy coach, providing key entry points for both professionals into the reflective conversation. Although one teacher chose to explore a perceived strength and the other teacher chose to explore a perceived weakness, coaching with the framework led to agency, sustainability, and transformation in both teachers, including thinking and practices that empowered ELs to take ownership of their literacy learning.
Literacy coaching, an effective professional development strategy for early childhood teachers, is a respected component in educational reform initiatives. This qualitative case study explored and described interactive processes between literacy coaches (n = 5) and Kindergarten teachers (n = 6). This study focused on how established kindergarten teachers in four, diverse, rural impoverished schools in the southeastern United States exhibited initial resistance to literacy coaching. The data suggested that although relationship-focused strategies were important for all teachers, these strategies were essential for low-implementing, initially resistant teachers. Additionally, teachers who were low-implementing, initially resistant required intensive strategies to address cross-cultural challenges and to leverage principal’s support in positive ways. Although building relationships required trust, improving teaching skills required navigating resistance and bridging differences between the coach and teacher.
This study compared the effect of two notetaking strategies (Cornell Notes vs. REAP) on EFL secondary school students’ critical reading skills. The Alternative Treatment Design with Pretest was used where three intact classes of first-year EFL secondary school students were randomly assigned as a control group and two experimental groups. All participants were administered to a critical reading skills test both before and after the treatment. For 12 weeks, participants in the control group received their regular instruction while those in the first experimental group used Cornell Notes and those in the second experimental group used REAP. Using one-way analysis of variance did not reveal any significant differences among the means of scores of the three groups on the pretest of critical reading skills (f=0.36, p>0.05). However, the one-way analysis of variance indicated that significant differences existed among the means of scores of the three groups on the posttest of critical reading skills (f=14.45, p
Discipline‐specific literacy instruction is key to supporting adolescents’ overall literacy development. Job‐embedded professional development that supports teachers’ discipline‐specific literacy instruction via instructional coaching is a promising approach to enacting disciplinary literacy instruction in English language arts (ELA) classrooms. Findings from a multiyear study of instructional coaching yielded three priorities that coaches can use as a guide when collaborating with ELA teachers: ensuring that collaboration is sustained over time, considering teachers’ knowledge to create a coaching plan, and adopting a distributed expertise approach to create a collaboration in which both coach and teacher have ownership in the process. Examples from the multiyear study and suggestions for coaches’ practice when working with ELA teachers are shared.
