Teacher Quality

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Kansas Coaching Project

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Changing how teachers teach is a significant challenge as educators move toward adopting research-based instructional methods and materials for classroom use. A multitude of factors can inhibit teachers’ ability to master new practices: limited amounts of time in teaching schedules, pressure to cover increasing amounts of content, and demands to prepare students for high-stakes tests, among others.

The Teacher Quality project studies the effectiveness of on-site professional development in the form of instructional coaching as a means of overcoming this challenge.

“I think people underestimate how hard it is to learn a new teaching practice in a workshop and then internalize it and put it into practice in a classroom without somebody helping you,” says Jim Knight, co-principal investigator.

Over the last 15 years, researchers at the Center have developed a coaching model in which coaches work one-on-one with teachers as they learn new ways of teaching. Coaches explain new methods, model them in the classroom, observe teachers, and provide feedback. The Teacher Quality project has helped us improve this widely accepted model and has allowed us to collect data to validate its effectiveness.

“We can have 30 years of research on instruction, but if it doesn’t get implemented by teachers, it’s not going to make a big difference,” says Knight. “What we want to know is what’s the most efficient way to translate those ideas into practice in the classroom.”

The Teacher Quality project, now in its third year, involves multiple studies using different research approaches to identify best coaching practices. In Year 1, in partnership with the State of Florida and its Just Read Florida program, the Teacher Quality team chose five outstanding coaches out of the 2,600 employed in Florida for in-depth study. The team interviewed colleagues, teachers, principals, and supervisors to better understand what makes coaches effective.

They found that the best coaches are good communicators, dedicated, hard working, and so committed to learning that their attitude rubbed off on the teachers with whom they worked.

The project shifted gears in its second year from describing the characteristics that make coaches successful to comparing different models of professional development. All of the teachers in the study—from districts in Greeley, Colo., and Beaverton, Ore.—attended a workshop on the Question Exploration Routine*. Two groups of teachers received follow-up support in the form of instructional coaching—one group using an “expert” model of coaching and the other using a “partnership” model. Another group received no coaching.

“Although we need to do a more careful analysis of the data, what we have heard from our on-site research assistants is that where there was coaching, there was better implementation than when there wasn’t coaching,” says Knight.

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