Coaching as a districtwide reform strategy

This study examines implementation of the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative's (BASRC) coaching strategy, which was designed both to improve teacher practice and strengthen connections between the district central office and its schools. According to BASRC's theory of action, coaches coordinate and lead district change in a range of areas and across hierarchical levels. Their primary objective is building systemwide capacity for continuous improvement.; It is a study of both internal coaches, who have a history of working in the district, and external coaches, who serve as support providers from outside of the district system. The primary question of the research is: How do coaches promote communication and knowledge sharing within and across different units in the district system? The research followed eight coaches in two districts and combined shadowing, interviews, observations and surveys as the research methods.; Although roles for reform coaches exist in several locations nationally, the role tends to suffer from weak role definition, and this was the case with the BASRC coaches. This research contributes a typology of the domains of knowledge and skill coaches can use in their work and presents analysis based on the domains of the typology.; Conclusions are limited because implementation of BASRC's design for coaching was incomplete in both case study districts by the study's conclusion. Internal coaches as well as external coaches in each location served more of a coordinator function than a coach function, leaving lingering questions about what, exactly, reform coaching should and could entail.; The coach role evolved over time and several notable observations emerged from this evolution. First, rather than working across levels, internal coaches came to focus on the school level and external coaches on the central office. Second, the most successful coaches were those who possessed strategic knowledge that was otherwise lacking in the system and those who had previously built legitimacy as reform leaders in the system. Coaches with data analysis and literacy skills were particularly valuable. Finally, coaches needed different types of knowledge, skills and social ties to be effective at building teacher capacity, building leadership capacity, and building system capacity.