Coaching and other on-site, individualized professional development strategies (consultation, mentoring, and technical assistance) have emerged as promising strategies to support the application of new teaching strategies and overall quality improvement among practitioners in early care and education settings. The purpose of this report is to synthesize findings from a review of the literature and a multi-case study of coaching in Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) to understand more about the practice of coaching and whether features of coaching can be identified that are linked to positive outcomes for practitioners and children. Conclusions drawn from the synthesis can be used to generate recommendations for further specification of coaching models in theory and in practice. Contains appendices.