What the Research Says

CHAPTER 1

Understanding the Instructional Coaching role

coaching is the Universal langUage of change and learning.

—BoB ProcTor

WHaT THE rESEarCH SaYS

In the United States, schools and districts spend $18 billion a year on teacher professional development (Education Next, 2018). Despite the investment, there is little impact on student outcomes or teacher improvement (Horn & Goldstein, 2018). Less than half of U.S. students are performing at or above proficiency in core subjects like reading and mathematics (Irwin et al., 2021). Furthermore, student achievement is on the decline in these core subjects in many other countries, including Canada (O’Grady et al., 2019) and Australia (Thomson, 2022). School and district leaders often choose the professional development programs and require teachers to participate, leaving teachers unable to influence their own programs or training (Horn & Goldstein, 2018). Training continues to be primarily lecture style; this style is more cost-effective and can accommodate a large number of educators in one session (Lekwa, Reddy, & Shernoff, 2017). This approach, however, is not easily customized to the individual teachers and their specific needs, and when teachers fail to apply new ideas from their professional development, it lacks benefit to students (Yoon, Duncan, Lee, Scarloss, & Shapley, 2007). The need for customizable professional development and implementation accountability has caused instructional coaching to emerge in schools (Lekwa et al., 2017).