Teachers' Perceptions of Instructional Coaching

Abstract

Too many students across the United States have been instructed by teachers who have delivered below grade level instruction and assigned below grade level tasks (The New Teacher Project, 2018). Due to these teacher practices, there has been a lack of student academic achievement and academic growth. Instructional coaching has been a strategy that schools have utilized to support teachers with improving practices with the goal of providing all students with grade level instruction. This study attempted to identify beneficial components of an instructional coaching program and instructional coach. The purpose of this study was to explore teachers’ perceptions of instructional coaching conducted by a school-based teacher leader (SBTL) within a large urban school district in the Eastern part of the United States. This was an explanatory mixed methods study which included three phases of data collection. The first phase was an analysis of school demographics and performance data for the twelve high schools included in this study. Phase two was a survey distributed to all teachers who taught in the twelve high schools during the 2020 – 2021 and 2021 – 2022 school years. Eighty-nine teachers completed the survey. The third and final phase was a series of one-on-one semi-structured interviews conducted with eight teachers who indicated on their survey that they had experienced instructional coaching. The survey data provided the breadth, and the interview provided the depth to arrive at answers to the research questions posed. Of the survey respondents, quantitative results indicated that white teachers who experienced coaching discussed pedagogy and received written materials more often than black, ingenious, and people of color. (BIPOC) teachers who experienced coaching. Additionally, it was found through quantitative data that teachers with three to ten years of fulltime teaching experience assigned less rigorous tasks, yet experienced instructional coaching less frequently than teachers with more than ten years of fulltime teaching experience. Most interestingly, it was found through regression results that experience with instructional coaching increased job satisfaction. Qualitative results indicated most beneficial and least beneficial components of an instructional coaching program and coach. The interviews elaborated upon and supported the quantitative findings. The findings from this study provided insight into beneficial components of an instructional coaching program. It is intended that the implications from this study will used to inform policy and practices to implement instructional coaching to support teachers with providing grade level instructional to all students. Additional research is needed to further examine instructional coaching through the coaches’ perspectives.