Sharplin, E., Stahl, G., & Kehrwald, B. (2019, March 26). Real-Time Coaching for Pre-Service
Teachers. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Retrieved 28 Jun. 2019, from https://oxfordre.com/education/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.001.0001/acrefore-9780190264093-e-422
Table of Contents
Coaching for Education
The paper summarises existing research in the area of coaching, in the specific context of teacher preparation. Differentiating coaching from mentoring, the authors describe mentoring to be a structured process that supports learners through their career path; coaching on the other hand focuses
on developing knowledge in specific practices.
With reference to coaching models in pre-service teacher education, the authors document that while research on coaching for teachers began in the 1960s, it has gathered much interest in the last two decades.
What does research tell us?
Research in the area of coaching focuses on peer coaching, effectiveness of delayed and real time coaching, and feedback in the coaching process. Citing Scheeler and Lee’s (2002) study, the paper highlights that bug-in-ear technology for immediate corrective feedback was found to be helpful by pre-service teachers.
The coaching process typically involves a pre-observation conference, observations of teaching by pre-service teachers, and post observation conference for providing feedback. The paper specifies that pre
service teachers tend to value the feedback received from experts than from their own peers although studies continue to highlight peer to peer models.
Pros and Cons
Teachers feel unprepared in providing coaching, highlighting the need for training in peer-coaching techniques. There is also a shift from written feedback to more direct, visual based modes of feedback. Besides feedback, reflection was found to be an important component of coaching models. Recent research on coaching models also suggests using online reflective tools such as blogs, and bug-in-ear coaching.
While coaching has been found to be beneficial, it is also a time consuming and expensive process. Yet, there is greater involvement of technology, particularly in providing synchronous feedback in the coaching process. Synchronous feedback has been found to be more effective than deferred
feedback.
Conclusion
The paper ends by providing critical perspectives on real time coaching. While real time coaching provides the benefit of combining observation and post observation reflection, recent developments in teacher education that are informed by neo-liberal perspectives, there is a need to acknowledge the
possibility of using coaching for performance management rather than for teacher development.