Teacher Coaching

Presentation delivered at CIES2017 (Atlanta). As part of the USAID-funded Nigeria Reading and Access Research Activity (RARA) (2014-2015), RTI International developed and evaluated, through a randomized control trial, an approach to improving early grade literacy instruction and reading outcomes in Hausa in Northern Nigeria. The intervention package included the provision of teaching and learning materials, teacher training, and periodic support to teachers by pedagogical coaches. This presentation will focus on the role of the coach support; 24 reading coaches were trained to support 72 teachers in 60 public primary schools in two states over a period of six months during the 2014-2015 school year. The coaches provided support in the form of recurring site visits, lesson observations, and a coach-teacher discussion after the lesson. The underpinning theoretical framework for this research assumes that ongoing engagement with a pedagogical mentor promotes positive changes in teachers’ instructional practices over time. The research activity collected data on the frequency, duration, content, and nature of the coach-teacher interactions during the intervention and tracked changes in the teachers’ instructional practices from baseline to endline. This presentation will share findings on the relationships between changes in teachers’ instructional practices and the degree and nature of support they received from their coaches. The objective of the presentation is to add to the body of knowledge about effective ways to use and improve pedagogical coaching to influence teacher instructional practices in similar low-resource contexts.

Presentation delivered at CIES 2017 (Atlanta). Instructional support is essential in the process of creating and supporting instructional change. Educational quality improvement is the elusive goal for many recent literacy improvement programs and strategies. Many programs focus on the inputs of improved textbook ratios, rapid and massive teacher professional development provision, and the provision of ICT support for this system. The Tusome Early Grade Reading Activity, implemented in Kenya from 2014 through 2019, is designed to fundamentally depend on the power and quality of the existing government personnel that were ostensibly assigned to provide instructional support to teachers. The Curriculum Support Officer function, in place in Kenya for decades, was structured to help teachers improve the quality of teaching by providing classroom based support, cluster based training, and ongoing instructional feedback. As is common in many countries in the region who suffer from limited human resources at the local level, these officers are often assigned administrative duties both at odds and distracting from their core instructional support function. Tusome’s work to support the Government of Kenya to revitalize this function and do so in a national manner was both ambitious and somewhat risky. This presentation share the results of Tusome’s efforts with the government to utilize the curriculum support officers as coaches within Tusome with a frank assessment of what process was most effective and which strategies were less effective. It also shares the experiences in Tusome of how a targeted ICT investment in tablets and a structured tool for the officers to use in classrooms created an environment where instructional support was both possible but also more exciting than it previously was. The Tusome National Tablet Program, utilized on a daily basis by these coaches, was designed over several years to integrate within government systems, to be easily implementable by coaches, but also to provide actionable real time data to the education system’s leadership on how teachers were implementing Tusome. The coaching system has provided each of Kenya’s more than 1200 coaches and curriculum support officers with tablets and training how to use them, to support classroom observation and feedback. The presentation shares the results of this over the 2015 and 2016 academic years. Not only have these officers supported up to 20,000 classrooms in a month, but they have also collected structured literacy assessment data from up to 60,000 students at a national level on a monthly basis. This data is collected on an interactive dashboard that Kenyan education leadership is able to use on a consistent basis to change behavior and support large scale instructional reform. The presentation focuses on the possibilities that this instructional support system has for Tusome, increased accountability within the system, and overall quality improvement at the national level for Kenya.

From the CGD Website on the event: "Please join the Center for Global Development (CGD) and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) to take stock of the evidence and impact evaluation movement and its promise for improving social policy in developing countries. In 2006, CGD released a working group report titled “When Will We Ever Learn? Improving Lives Through Impact Evaluation.” It described an evaluation gap and proposed an international effort to systematically build evidence on “what works” in development with the aim of improving the effectiveness of social programs. Ten years later, we will reflect on progress toward these goals. Despite a host of challenges, hundreds of millions of people across the world have benefited from programs that have been rigorously evaluated and scaled up. Impact evaluation has generated knowledge about poverty and public policy leading to better programs. At the event, policymakers and evaluators will discuss examples of how evaluation has helped enhance effectiveness, and a panel of evaluation funders will reflect on lessons learned and the way forward. In a time of political transition, we seek to re-energize the movement for increased evidence and value for money in public and aid spending. Among others, the event will feature: Abhijit Banerjee (MIT), Amanda Glassman (CGD), Rachel Glennerster (J-PAL), Markus Goldstein (World Bank), Amber Gove (RTI International), Rema Hanna (Harvard), Emannuel Jimenez (3ie), Michael Kremer (Harvard), Darius Mogaka (Government of Kenya), Santhosh Mathew (Government of India), William Savedoff (CGD), and Bambang Widianto (Government of Indonesia)." Download the presentation slides from the Kenya case study using the "Download" link, or click on the external website link for more information on the event.

Motivation is key to behavior change in teaching and learning processes. Motivated teachers are thought to be more likely to be willing to experiment with different instructional approaches in the classroom. Motivated students are hypothesized to put forth extra effort during learning activities. These assumptions posit that incentives, or rewards based on evidence of behavior change, may have a role to play in enhancing the motivation of teachers and students. This report presents findings from a short-term incentive pilot program conducted in one governorate in Jordan. During this pilot, students in treatment schools were offered a symbolic (non-monetary) incentive if they read at least 24 books at home over the 8-week implementation period. Teachers were offered a symbolic incentive if they received high scores from coaches during most (at least 50%) of their observed classroom lessons. This report presents findings from this pilot program.

Article published in Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness. Published abstract: We evaluated a program to improve literacy instruction on the Kenyan coast using training workshops, semiscripted lesson plans, and weekly text-message support for teachers to understand its impact on students’ literacy outcomes and on the classroom practices leading to those outcomes. The evaluation ran from the beginning of Grade 1 to the end of Grade 2 in 51 government primary schools chosen at random, with 50 schools acting as controls. The intervention had an impact on classroom practices with effect sizes from 0.57 to 1.15. There was more instruction with written text and more focus on letters and sounds. There was a positive impact on three of four primary measures of children’s literacy after two years, with effect sizes up to 0.64, and school dropout reduced from 5.3% to 2.1%. This approach to literacy instruction is sustainable, and affordable and a similar approach has subsequently been adopted nationally in Kenya.

This report summarizes the findings from a baseline assessment that was conducted in February and March, 2014 to determine the current status of reading achievement in the “Cluster 2” schools in which the Program will be working, as well as achievement in control1 schools that will be used as a basis for comparison in assessing the effectiveness of the interventions.

This brief discusses Cluster 3 schools where Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) data were collected from 112 randomly selected program and control schools without the program in 9 districts in Uganda1 in October, 2015 from 1,504 program learners and 1,432 control learners at the end of P1 and the findings compared to baseline data collected at the beginning of P1 in February, 2015 from 1,599 program and 1,574 control learners.

This report summarizes the findings from a baseline assessment that was conducted in February and March, 2015 to determine the current status of reading achievement in the “Cluster 3” schools in which the Program is currently working, as well as achievement in control1 schools that will be used as a basis for comparison in assessing the effectiveness of the interventions going forward.

This brief discusses the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) data collected for Cluster 2 shows that Leb Acӧli, Lugbarati, and Runyoro-Rutooro schools receiving the SHRP intervention are continuing to make small but significant progress towards reading proficiency.

This brief looks at whether or not reading achievement increased as a result of the USAID/Uganda School Health and Reading Program interventions. Using the Early Grade Reading Assessment, data collected for 4 Cluster 1 languages local languages Lebacoli, Lugbarati, Lumasaba, and Runyoro-Rutoro) and English at baseline, beginning of P1 compared to data collected at the end of P1 show increases in foundational pre-reading and emergent reading skills, significantly higher than increases found in control schools.