Study of the Impact of Instructional Coaches on Middle School Teachers and Student Achievement
In 2002, the El Paso Collaborative for Academic Excellence at the University of Texas - El Paso was awarded an MSP Comprehensive Grant. As part of that grant, El Paso MSP worked with nine local school districts serving the El Paso region and the Region 19 Service Center to improve teaching and learning in middle grades and high school mathematics and science. One of the central strategies of the project was the provision of on-the-job assistance to teachers by instructional coaches, or staff developers.
Many reform support organizations and districts are using instructional coaches or on-site coaches to help teachers improve their practice and raise the performance levels of their students. For example, New York City has made sizable investments to support school-based math and literacy coaches and Boston has supported a cadre of coaches sponsored by a local education fund to stimulate reflective conversations about classroom practice. Most often, teachers with reputations for good teaching are recruited to work as coaches. And many simply pass on their personal craft knowledge to those with whom they work. In the last decade, new models have emerged that emphasize different aspects of the teacher-coach exchange, such as content knowledge, reflective inquiry, or teacher collaboration, each promoting different strategies for supporting individual or groups of teachers (Costa and Garmston, 2002; West and Staub, 2003). Although instructional coaching programs vary greatly in their purposes, workplace conditions, and goals, these instructional support staff share a common charge to stimulate and support improvements in instruction. Typically "coaches" help teachers build their knowledge and skill by sharing and promoting discussion about good practices, and by engaging in observation, feedback, co-teaching, data analysis, and other collaborative efforts. Coaches may also help teachers use district-supported curriculum or implement packaged reforms.
There is a growing descriptive and empirical literature on the work of coaches that discusses some effective practices and the challenges coaches encounter as they work to change teachers' practice (Burney, Corcoran, and Lesnick, in press; Marsh, et al., 2008; Neufeld and Roper, 2003; Niedzwiecki, 2007; Schen, Sanjiv, and Dobles, 2005). As instructional coaching has become a major component of large-scale improvement initiatives that aim to influence classroom practice, increasing attention has focused on understanding the different contexts of coaching and how those contexts shape what coaches are able to do and accomplish in their work with teachers.
The MSP-Knowledge Management and Dissemination project conducted an extensive review of a set of studies on teacher leadership. In their synthesis, they noted that the work of teacher leaders "particularly when engaged in practices focused on classroom instruction, makes a difference in teachers' practice and suggests an impact on student outcomes" (MSP-KMD, 2008) Across the studies that examined the impact of teacher leaders' practice on teachers' practice, they found that "the amount and duration of teacher leader practices varied, suggesting that a larger context of conditions influences teachers' practices, beyond just what teacher leaders do." Finally, they noted that only "a few studies examined the relationship between teacher leaders' practice and student outcomes; findings from these studies suggest that a positive relationship exists."
The El Paso MSP work was designed in part to deepen understanding about similar issues related to the impact of instructional coaches. El Paso MSP contracted with the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) to design and carry out a study of the impact of the work of the coaches on classroom practice and student performance in the middle grades. The study also addressed some critical issues about the provision of instructional support such as what general strategies were most effective, what kinds of professional development were useful to the staff developers, and how school conditions affected the work. This presentation shares findings from the study.