The Promise of Teacher Coaching and Peril of Going to Scale

This, from Matt Barnum’s review of a recent meta-analysis on teacher coaching, by Kraft, Hogan, and Blazar.

First, what is coaching?

Teacher coaching involves “instructional experts work[ing] with teachers to discuss classroom practice in a way that is” individualized, intensive, sustained, context-specific, and focused.

What’s the finding?

“We find large positive effects of coaching on teachers’ instructional practice,” the authors write… Similarly, the 21 papers that looked at student achievement found notable positive results, on average.

But before you get too excited

When the research examines large-scale programs (with more than 100 teachers involved), the benefits, relative to small coaching initiatives, are cut roughly in half. 

Read the whole article or the meta-analysis itself.