Using Instructional Coaching as a Professional Development Model to Improve Instructional Practices and Assessment Scores

This study contributes to the current research that focuses on improving teacher effectiveness through professional development. This study is focused on instructional coaching as a professional development model. Instructional coaching was investigated to determine whether it could affect teachers' instructional practices and what, if any, correlation could be made to student assessment scores in reading. The scope of this study included eight teachers who received instructional coaching and approximately 750 state reading assessments administered over a five-year period to third through fifth grade students from a Title I elementary school in Colorado. A mixed-methods research design was used to determine if using instructional coaching as a professional development model could affect third through fifth grade teachers' instructional practices. In an overview of the significant findings, the 5 Step Instructional Coaching Process used with teachers during the 2012-2013 school year did, in fact, result in observable changes in teacher instructional practice for 100 percent of the teacher sample population. In an examination of other findings, there was not enough evidence to show that either frequency in instructional practice implementation or effectiveness of practice implementation caused students to score proficient or advanced on the reading assessment. Based on findings in historical trends using data from the five-year period, change shown in reading assessment scores in the fifth year following the implementation of instructional coaching could not be definitively proven to be caused by the instructional coaching process.