THE EFFECTS OF LITERACY COACHING ON TEACHER STRATEGY USE AND STUDENT READING COMPREHENSION
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Authors
Mitchell, Jennifer
Issue Date
2008-05-01T00:00:00-07:00
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Abstract
<p>The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of literacy coaching on teacher strategy use and student reading comprehension. A convenience sample of 20 third-grade teachers and their students (n=330) participated in this study. Literacy coaches were identified as experts in the area of literacy, reading, and teaching methodologies. They provided job-embedded staff development to teachers with the intent of improving teacher effectiveness and student learning. The coaching consisted of three levels (in-class coaching, consultant coaching, and no coaching). Before treatment, the researcher provided an initial 3-hour presentation on summarization, the instructional focus of the study. Then, seven literacy coaches in seven schools administered the coaching treatment during an 8-week coaching cycle. The two treatment groups (in-class and consultant) received different numbers and/or combinations of follow-up coaching training. This study utilized a pre-post test, quasi-experimental design. Parametric and nonparametric statistics were used to analyze the data.</p>
<p>In order to measure whether the type of coaching (in-class coaching, consultant coaching, or no coaching) impacted teacher strategy use, the Concern Based Adoption Model’s (CBAM) <em>Levels of Use </em>(LoU<em>) </em>structured interview was administered pre and post treatment to investigate gains achieved by the teachers in the implementation of summarization. The Kruskal-Wallis test indicated a significant difference in teachers’ use of summarization among teachers in the different coaching conditions. The in-class coaching group attained significantly more growth than the no coaching group. However, no significant differences were found between the consultant coaching group and the in-class coaching group or between the consultant coaching group and the no coaching group.</p>
<p>The second research question examined how literacy coaching (in-class coaching, consultant coaching, and no coaching) affected students’ reading comprehension. A one-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to analyze this question. Reading comprehension was measured pre- and post-treatment using an instrument developed by the researcher, the <em>Assessment for Reading Comprehension </em>(ARC-A and ARC-B). Students’ pre reading comprehension (ARC-A) and overall reading achievement (<em>Degrees of Reading Power</em>) served as covariates to produce adjusted means to equate post-treatment reading achievement scores based on initial reading ability. ANCOVA results indicated a significant difference among the three coaching groups. Results of the Bonferroni procedure indicated that the in-class coaching group’s ARC-B scores were significantly higher than those of both the consultant coaching group and the no coaching group.</p>