Literacy coaching is a subject of intense attention nowadays—the hot trend in professional development, the place where the money is going. Just about everyone agrees on that.
There is evidently much less agreement, however, on exactly what the role of a literacy coach is, and there is a particular disparity in their qualifications from state to state. In some places, all literacy coaches (or reading coaches; the terms are often used interchangeably) are certified reading specialists. In others, teachers who have never taught reading are given one seminar and dubbed coaches.
But many in the literacy community have been acting to bring some consistency to the qualifications and responsibilities of literacy coaches. A number of IRA efforts are addressing this question, some currently available as resources, others in development.
Much of the current excitement is driven by the belief that coaching can, if done well, broadly raise the skill levels of teachers and widely raise students’ reading skills as a result. “A number of exemplary practices could be on the horizon,” said Susan M. Poglinco and Amy J. Bach at the conclusion of their article “The Heart of the Matter: Coaching as a Vehicle for Professional Development” which appeared in the January 2004 issue of Phi Delta Kappan.
But, they warned, “adopting a coaching model without considering its complexities may not yield the results schools and districts are seeking.” Those complexities, and the confusion that surrounds them, are a prominent factor in the current drive to implement the coaching model of professional development.
Part of the confusion has arisen because the term literacy coach is sometimes applied to volunteers who read with children and have little or no educational training or experience. It has also been applied to paraprofessionals.
But when most people talk about literacy coaches, they are understood to mean educators who spend at least part of their time providing professional development to other teachers in a school or district setting. The coaches are colleagues who help their fellow teachers develop their skills over time.
This makes coaching the opposite of the one-day seminars conducted by outsiders—a type of professional development widely considered relatively ineffective nowadays. So coaching fits the mood of the times, but a little inquiry shows that it is hardly new.
In 1981, IRA published Effecting Change in School Reading Programs: The Resource Role by Rita M. Bean and Robert M. Wilson. The book’s first chapter described a continuum, with reading specialists who worked exclusively with children at one end and specialists who function mostly as professional development resource people at the other.
“Between these extremes,” Bean and Wilson wrote on page 1, “one may find many different arrangements, with specialists assuming resource roles as well as instructional ones.”
Although 23 years have passed, the idea is still the same, and Bean is still a proponent of it. The terminology has changed, Bean thinks, because the coaching concept was part of the professional development research literature in the 1980s, and it gradually was adopted to a literacy context. Other observers think it may have sounded friendlier to some ears than the term mentor.
Bean and others point out that there are still “many different arrangements” for coaches. They can be peers—classroom teachers like everyone else, but more sophisticated about reading and skilled at sharing that knowledge. Or they can combine the roles, stepping outside the classroom at times to do professional development activities. They can also be full-time coaches.
The common element is the feedback and networking that goes on over time among the teachers involved. This arrangement, Bean says, enables them to transfer new skills into their own practice.
Bean believes the literacy coaches boom is in part an effort to treat education as a profession, in which highly skilled practitioners choose from a wide array of strategies based on the particular circumstances and context affecting each learner. Coaching can help teachers think and reflect on their practice—“that’s where I see the power in it,” Bean says.
But, like many others, Bean is concerned about the qualifications of those hired as coaches and is currently working with a number of other IRA Board members on a position paper that will lay out the Association’s views on the question.
One important factor driving the coaching boom is the Reading First legislation, which provides grant money for professional development. The law specifically discourages the one-time seminar type of training in favor of ongoing models.
States have eagerly applied for the grants and just as eagerly plowed the money into hiring coaches. Research shows that coaching can improve teacher practice over the long run more effectively than one-time seminars, assuming that the coach is an expert teacher and is also effective at working with adults.
But coaching has become controversial because of the varying qualifications of the coaches hired. Teachers qualified as reading specialists typically command higher salaries. Thus, in some cases, cash-strapped administrators have succumbed to the temptation to use the grant money to hire teachers who have no particular training or expertise in reading.
Where coaching was once seen as one role of the certified reading specialist, today there is ample anecdotal evidence that people are being dubbed coaches who range from specialists to librarians to biology teachers—virtually anyone, including people who have never taught reading in any way.
In some cases the only training required of new coaches is that they attend a one-time seminar—exactly the kind of professional development, of course, that the law specifically discourages.
Obviously, having a strong background in reading is essential for coaches. But the range and subtlety of the skills necessary for effective coaching mean that merely having a specific sort of credential, like a master’s degree or specialist certificate, does not necessarily guarantee success in the field, and the lack of such credentials does not necessarily mean the requisite skills are not there.
Currently a number of teacher education programs are working with school districts, providing workshops and coursework to coaches and potential coaches, sometimes as part of a program that leads towards a master’s degree or specialist’s certificate.
Allison Swan Dagen is an evaluator and consultant for the coaching program in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The state does not require coaches to be specialists, but the ones she knows are capable. “These are darn good teachers, with or without the certification,” she says. “They know what they’re talking about when it comes to reading.”
Certainly many expert observers have said coaches must be highly qualified in a variety of ways. At a recent conference, Elizabeth Sturtevant of George Mason University gave a presentation on reading coaches in which she said that teachers, in addition to preservice training, need mentoring and professional development opportunities throughout their careers, with a professional environment that supports teaching excellence and change.
Effective coaches, Sturtevant said, must be expert, knowledgeable teachers, with a strong and current knowledge base about literacy theory and practice. They should have broad teaching experience, preferably at the grade level they will be coaching.
They must also be accessible and effective at working collaboratively with teachers. Coaches must know how to teach adults as well as children—two very different skill sets—and they must be effective team leaders as well. They also need to work with administrators. “We’re asking a lot of these people. We really are,” Sturtevant says.
Sturtevant listed challenges that coaches must be able to overcome if they are to help teachers improve their practice. Many teachers, she said, are open to change in general, but their particular beliefs can get in the way. Class size and curriculum can limit their ability to change and grow, as well as high-stakes assessments that limit curriculum flexibility and require much fact-based learning.
Teachers also need adequate professional development time if they are to benefit from coaching. And they need, Sturtevant said, to be able to see the coach as an advisor and mentor who understands teachers’ and administrators’ goals, frustrations, and visions—not evaluators, but trusted guides.
IRA’s Publications Division is actively adding resources for those interested in the subject. Sturtevant says IRA’s Standards for Reading Professionals (revised 2003) has information that can support effective practice. There are IRA book projects in development that address coaching. An article by Janice A. Dole in the February 2004 issue of The Reading Teacher titled “The Changing Role of the Reading Specialist in School Reform” directly addressed coaching as well.
A number of sessions at the upcoming Annual Convention [concluded May 2004] will also deal with coaching. Other IRA conferences have already featured in-depth sessions on the subject. Currently the Association’s Research and Policy Division is conducting a survey of the requirements for coaches in the 50 states. And of course, the work on the position statement continues.
The literacy community will undoubtedly continue to talk about—and debate—the question of coaching for the foreseeable future. And IRA is already moving, in many different ways, to build consensus, reduce confusion, and realize the large potential benefits of this powerful but demanding approach to professional development.
Coaches, controvery, consensus. (2004, April/May). Reading Today, 21(5), 1, 18.
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