Public Education Partners: Literacy Coaching

The United Way of Greenville County’s (UWGC) OnTrack Greenville initiative is a collective impact dropout prevention program for middle grades students. Literacy Coaching is a model that combines two evidence-based approaches to coaching teachers in order to improve student performance. UWGC’s subgrantee, Public Education Partners (PEP), implemented Literacy Coaching between 2015 and 2018.

Study Goals:

The PEP Literacy Coaching evaluation included both an implementation and impact study. The implementation study aimed to:

1. assess the level of fidelity to the specific literacy coaching model that was proposed, and
2. provide implementation recommendations to strengthen model fidelity and maximize the impact of services provided to students.

The impact study explored the effect of Literacy Coaching on teacher knowledge, advocacy, and use of literacy strategies and improvements in classroom culture.

Research Questions:

The research questions included both implementation and impact questions. The research questions were:

• Implementation Questions:
  • What professional development events occurred for participating teachers?
    • What were the objectives and activities?
    • How did these events conceptualize the literacy frameworks?
    • What were the experiences of participating teachers?
  • How often, how long, and with whom did the coaching of literacy strategies occur?
  • What events occurred during coaching cycles and sessions?
  • What were the experiences of teachers and coaches involved in coaching sessions?
  • What supported or impeded valuable coaching sessions?
• Impact Questions:
  • After participating in literacy coaching, did ELA and math teachers:
    • demonstrate a high awareness of literacy strategies?
    • advocate for literacy strategies?
    • regularly use literacy strategies in classroom practice?
  • After participating in literacy coaching, was there an improvement in:
    • student communicative interactions?
    • student-teacher relationships?

Findings:

The evaluation found the following:

• There was not sufficient evidence to indicate that the Literacy Coaching model was implemented with fidelity.
• Analysis of PEP coaching logs, interviews, and observations suggested an inconsistency in:
  1. which teachers participated in coaching in academic years 2016-17 and 2017-18;
  2. how often a PEP coach collaborated with participating teachers;
  3. the activities occurring in coaching cycles; and
  4. the duration of a collaboration with a teacher.
• Most teachers (81%) reported incorporating literacy strategies in their instruction, and 76% advocated for more teachers at their school to participate in coaching.
• Almost all teachers interviewed (86%) reported using at least one PEP literacy practice on a weekly basis. The literacy practices used most regularly in classrooms involved discussion, both among students and between student(s) and teacher.
• A majority of teachers interviewed (71%) perceived an improvement in student communicative interactions attributed to the use of literacy strategies. Teachers described using more appropriate vocabulary with students, having a stronger overall framework for communicating with students, and using a more positive tone to communicate with students.
• Similarly, 71% of teachers interviewed perceived an improvement in student-teacher relationships attributed to their use of literacy strategies.

For more information, download the full report and report brief.