At one year mark, IRA, NCTE look to “keep people in the conversation” about an important topic
In the late 18th century, banks established a central agency called a “clearinghouse” to settle mutual claims and accounts. The notion of what a clearinghouse is and does has morphed over the years and no longer necessarily refers to a physical entity but can be a “channel for distributing information or assistance.”
And that is exactly how the International Reading Association (IRA) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), founders of the Literacy Coaching Clearinghouse (LCC), hope users will see www.literacycoachingonline.org—as an ever-changing, expanding, and evolving channel of resources to increase the knowledge base, research, and practice of literacy coaching. The clearinghouse encompasses the ideal of a broad-based conversation on a vastly important topic, according to Nancy L. Shanklin, director of the clearinghouse and an associate professor at the University of Colorado at Denver & Health Sciences Center.
“We want to keep people in the conversation, to have them return again and again because they find something worthwhile,” Shanklin said, noting that the resources gathered and presented come from a wide, professional, nonprofit perspective, free to the end user.
A joint undertaking of IRA and NCTE, LCC went online a little more than a year ago. Its stated mission is to help districts, schools, and coaches develop excellent coaching programs based upon findings from research and coaches’ collective experiences. Other features of LCC include professional standards for literacy/instructional coaches, a library, a blog, and forums moderated by national experts. The two organizations decided to pool ideas, resources, and funding to form a joint venture to focus attention on literacy coaching.
As half-time director of the LCC, Shanklin said she is pleased with what has been accomplished to date: selecting an advisory board that helped oversee the creation of the website; proposing a tentative research agenda on literacy coaching; posting a series of briefs on literacy coaching topics; and getting the word out about the clearinghouse at a variety of professional meetings, forums, and conferences.
IRA and NCTE see literacy coaching as a growing area in the education field, and both organizations would like to be in on the “ground floor of the discourse” helping to shape the developing role of the literacy coach. Shanklin said people often ask her, “What is the impetus for the literacy coach? Why now?”
Certainly part of the reason is the No Child Left Behind Act, she said. It established Reading First, a program that aimed to enable all children to become successful early readers, with the focus on kindergarten through third grade. A major part of the program involved providing professional development for teachers using scientifically based reading programs, then holding schools and states accountable for progress using a variety of assessment tools.
For too many teachers, however, professional development has been spotty, offsite, not always on point, and a poor fit with their busy days. “Job-embedded” professional development was seen as a means of addressing these concerns, and under Reading First a “first wave” of reading coaches was sent into schools. Now, research is beginning to surface on how coaching has or has not helped, and how it can be improved. But there is so much more to be done in terms of doing and disseminating research, as well as sharing results, experiences, and tips on best practices in the classroom. LCC aims to facilitate that exchange.
As an example, Shanklin points to a new document on LCC—a self-assessment tool for middle and high school literacy coaches. It asks for reflection in several areas: foundations of literacy; knowledge of assessments; content area instruction in reading and writing; knowledge of differentiated instruction; working one-on-one with teachers in the classroom; facilitating adult learning; acting as a catalyst for change within a school; and working within a broader school reform context. Shanklin said she hoped the assessment will help middle and high school coaches and those who want to be coaches realize where they are now in terms of professional development and where they might want to go. Another new brief on the LCC site addresses issues related to coaching in classrooms with English-language learners, a timely topic.
Literacy coaching itself may be evolving, Shanklin said, moving beyond the notion that literacy coaches limit their instruction to the basics of reading, writing, speaking, and listening to a broader concept of literacy across content areas and within disciplines. That is why it is so important to have a clearinghouse where such concepts can be discussed professionally in an accessible format for all audiences—coaches themselves, teachers, principals, parents, school boards, policymakers, and state departments of education.
The moderated forums also offer a chance for dialogue and have ranged over topics from building relationships between coaches and principals to designing and teaching courses on literacy coaching. A current forum involves how coaches can facilitate being willingly invited into classrooms so they can lend their expertise to improving the quality of reading instruction.
In the coming year, Shanklin said LCC plans to collect more briefs, dissertations, studies, etc. as they become available to broaden and deepen the range of offerings on coaching; to continue to promote high standards for literacy coaches; to be a presence at conferences and conventions; and to reach out to administrators at the local, district, and state levels to help them see the importance of literacy coaching and providing professional development for coaches. LCC also would like more collaborators at the grass-roots level to help maintain momentum. Longer range plans include development of technology-based and hard-copy literacy coaching modules by IRA and NCTE.
Ultimately, Shanklin said, the long-term payoff will be demonstrating with evidence-based research that quality teachers who take advantage of quality professional development through literacy coaching can improve students’ literacy learning—and not just test scores.
Literacy coaching clearinghouse a continually evolving resource. (December 2007). Reading Today, 25(3), 12.
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