Literacy Teachers’ Learning through a Recursive Coaching Cycle

This study investigates teachers’ self identification of their literacy professional development needs, the relationship of those needs to their specific classroom contexts, and their insights into their learning at the end of a recursive coaching cycle. The work is grounded in studies of effective professional development and coaching practices that increase teacher knowledge and self-efficacy. Participants were 44 teachers in a graduate literacy practicum course as part of their Masters in Literacy Education Program. Most of these teachers worked in the public schools of a large urban school system. An inductive analysis of data revealed three themes in teachers’ self-identified professional development needs. Further micro and macro analysis, and double coding led to the discovery of varying degrees to which teachers describe their changed practice and learning during the coaching cycle. The study demonstrates that contextualized thinking is at the heart of instructional change and professional growth. From a sociocultural perspective, effective teacher learning must be contextualized. Improved instruction hinges upon not only attention to curriculum content and practices, but more importantly, an understanding of the learners and contexts involved in the knowledge construction. A review of studies focused on the learning experiences of teachers and how these experiences led to better understanding and more frequent implementation of effective practices (Hall, 2005) suggests that it is through guided practices that teachers gain new ways of thinking. Based on sociocultural learning theory, our Literacy Practicum course is designed for teachers to take action, including taking ownership of their learning, receiving feedback after observations of teaching and video analysis, and reflecting. We hypothesize that using a recursive model of mentoring: setting intention—observation—feedback--video practice—feedback--reflection, can lead to strengthened teacher self-efficacy and growth in literacy education. In this study we investigated the following a priori questions. 1. How do teachers initially describe their professional development (PD) needs in literacy education? 2. What factors contribute to the way in which teachers describe their PD needs in literacy education? 3. In what ways do teachers describe their learning and growth at the end of a coaching cycle? Review of Related Research The course that is the context for this study is grounded in research in effective practices in PD that increases teacher knowledge and skills as well as studies of coaching and its relationship to teacher growth and self-efficacy. Effective Models of Literacy Professional Development Over the last 20 years there has been a growing shift from PD models that are imposed upon teachers to ones that are inclusive and collaborative (Webster-Wright, 2009). Putman and Borko (2000) argue that teacher learning takes place in authentic contexts, meaningful to themselves and their current practice. This learning is distributed across the multiple contexts of their work that includes their classroom, community of peers, and school contexts. Other researchers look at the importance of embedded PD within teachers’ practice (Borko, 2004; Heller, Daehler, Wong, Shinohara, & Miratrix, 2012; Henry, Tryjankowski, DiCamillo, & Bailey 2010; Kuijpers, Houtveen, & Wubbels, 2010; Mushayikwa & Lubben, 2009) to support the shift to school and classroom based PD. For effective and sustained teacher change, PD needs to focus on specific outcomes for students, embed the learning experience in teachers’ own daily practice, be sustained over time, provide time for teachers to work together on issues important for them and their students, and provide specific content knowledge that is coherent with other activities (Dillon, O’Brien, Sato, & Kelly 2010). Emergent research demonstrates the impact PD has on student achievement. School-wide PD cycles have been shown to influence students’ literacy performance (Fisher, Frey & Nelson, 2012; Kennedy & Shiel, 2010; Porche, Pallante, & Snow, 2012). Research also suggests that PD impacts student achievement when it is focused on increasing content knowledge and on supporting students thinking (Boyle, While, & Boyle, 2004; McCutchen et al., 2003; Neuman & Cunningham, 2009). Timperley and AltonLee (2008) argue for an inquiry model of PD that identifies student learning needs aligned with teacher learning needs to support identifying effective actions or practices to support learning outcomes. Kraft and Papay (2014) investigated the role of a school’s professional environment on teachers’ growth and found that professional context of a school supported or hindered teachers’ growth. One element of PD is coaching. Vanderburg and Stephens (2010) found that teachers valued how coaches supported the creation of space for discussion and collaboration, sustained support, and concrete, researchbased instructional strategies. As a result of the coaching cycles, teachers were willing to try new practices, explored a wider range of assessments, changed practices as a result of deepening their content knowledge, and shifted to more student-centered practices and curriculum. Other work (Hoffman et al., 2014; McAndrews and Msengi, 2013) addressed the role of coaching in supporting teachers to develop different kinds of reflection. Coaching to Support Self-Efficacy Self-efficacy, ones’ sense of confidence and belief that one can exert control over situations (Bandura, 2001) plays an important role in teacher professional 1 Hu and Tuten: Literacy Teachers’ Learning through a Recursive Coaching Cycle Published by St. John's Scholar, 2017 The Reading Professor Vol. 40 No. 2, Winter 2017/Spring, 2018 Page 7 development. Abernathy-Dyer, Ortlieb, & Cheek (2013) describe the interconnections among teachers’ beliefs, skills, and self-efficacy about literacy instruction. Cantrell and Hughes (2008) found that teachers with a high level of self-efficacy at the beginning of a yearlong coaching experience were more successful in implementing effective changes in their instruction. Tschannen-Moran and Johnson (2011) examined the possible contributing factors for teachers’ self-efficacy in literacy instruction and concluded that strong pre-service experiences, PD, and resources were correlated to strong self-efficacy. Guo, Piasta, Justic, & Kaderavek (2010) examined preschool teachers’ assessments of their self-efficacy in literacy instruction. They asserted, Taken together, the findings presented in this study established the importance of preschool teachers’ self-efficacy and classroom quality in understanding children’s language and literacy gains in the context of preschool, which are consistent with findings obtained from the studies in elementary and secondary schools. (p.1101) Tschannen‐Moran & McMaster (2009) examined the impact of different types of PD and the relative impact on teachers’ self-efficacy and implementation of new teaching and found that PD that focused on understanding content and followed up with coaching had the strongest effect on teachers’ ability to enact new practices with confidence. In a different vein, Timperley and Phillips (2003) investigated the need for teachers to be pushed out of their comfort zone to develop greater knowledge and self-efficacy. In PD sessions, teachers were shown a video of students similar to their own making progress with a different instructional model. This provided a catalyst to new thinking and willingness to adapt a different approach to teaching.