A school is much more than a collection of individual classrooms. Fostering a collaborative and learning-oriented culture can improve teachers' and students' success. In model classrooms, teachers who have participated in professional learning open their classroom doors and agree to have others observe as they work to integrate the targeted new…

A qualitative self-study was employed to describe the experiences of three literacy coaches during the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study is to understand how these three literacy coaches coped with challenges inherent in their transition to remote or hybrid teaching as well as used such understanding to inform literacy instructional…

Caregiver coaching is a recommended practice in early intervention; however, many barriers exist that can prevent early interventionists (EIs) from implementing it. This mixed method study was designed to understand if EIs' perceived use of caregiver coaching changed after Illinois' COVID-19 pandemic stay-at-home order. Questionnaire data and…

Many U.S. school districts now rely on instructional coaching to promote reform. Yet facets of coaching policy remain vague, and there is considerable variation in the structures and practices of coaching. We use longitudinal, qualitative data to analyze changes in instructional coaching, as a capacity building policy instrument, in one mid-sized…

This chapter highlights the role of institutional coaches in supporting community college transformational reform efforts, such as guided pathways. The history of coaching support for student success is explored along with a description of a national network of state intermediaries supporting the work of coaches focused on campus-level change.…

Efforts to tackle educator stress should balance self-care with demands for changes to the unjust systems that cause the stress. To illustrate how coaching can ensure that the steps educators take are equitable and include perspectives and voices of educators who have been historically marginalized, the author has created a composite story about…

Districts and schools often count on coaching to promote student learning and organizational change. Across the United States, a wide variety of coaches engage in various types of work with teachers as well as school leaders. But coaching is often loosely defined, weakly supported, and ultimately underutilized, and as a consequence, its promise…

School leadership and school development are tightly connected and significant to improve students' learning. The latter requires leaders with knowledge about leading change and school development, and in such, coaching can contribute to enhance leadership capacity. This study focuses on school leadership groups taking part in an action research…

Coaching is a form of professional learning that can contextualize learning and personalize the development of knowledge and skills to improve professional practice and the student experience. Coaching for equity-oriented continuous improvement needs be defined differently than instructional coaching since the schools are focused on changing…

This article captures lessons learned while coaching a team of writing teachers across a poetry writing unit of study. Because of the heightened pressure of successful implementation of curricular programs, coaching can become focused solely on implementation of resources with fidelity, which can neglect the art of teaching. This article captures…

Coach and ASCD author Cathy Toll knows that principals can face resistance and competing priorities when trying to make changes in schools. "Whole-staff coaching" is one tool to get all educators on the same page by putting teachers in control of planning, implementing, and evaluating change--and principals in charge of facilitating it.

Literacy coaching is a professional learning model designed to provide teachers with supportive partnerships as they enhance their literacy instruction (L'Allier et al., 2010). However, the enhancement of instruction requires teachers to make changes to long-standing instructional practices. To prepare for change, teachers must have the…

Literacy coaches serve in a multitude of roles and play a critical role in bridging district and school priorities (Walpole and Blamey, 2008; Steckel, 2009). Currently, coaches and teachers are navigating a national policy shift to Science of Reading (SoR) aligned instruction, and educators want more than a new curriculum (Schwartz, 2022). This…

Purpose: Across K-12 settings, instructional coaching continues to flourish as an approach to teacher professional development intended to address long-standing inequities in student achievement. Yet, coaching models differ in how to conceptualize change or transformation as a result of coaching efforts. Design/methodology/approach: This case…

Purpose: Instructional coaches are pivotal to articulating the agenda of system-wide reform, yet their role remains largely unexamined. Their approach with educators is contextually situated within the schooling system in which they work to reflect the historical and sociocultural system influences. Given the downward trend in New Zealand's…