“Summary of Webinar: The eCoaching Continuum for Educators: Using Technology to Enrich Professional Development and Improve Student Outcomes”

“Summary of Webinar: The eCoaching Continuum for Educators: Using Technology to Enrich Professional Development and Improve Student Outcomes”

Every teacher deserves to have a coach–early, mid, and late-career. But how do you carry out and scale up coaching to do just that? Budgets are tight, many coaches are overloaded, and many teachers are frustrated—but these factors shouldn't be obstacles to coaching.

In the webinar The eCoaching Continuum for Educators: Using Technology to Enrich Professional Development and Improve Student Outcomes, Marcia Rock, the author and the eCoaching pioneer, details a practical, digital-age approach for maximizing teacher and student growth.

She draws on best-practice research and decades of experience to offer a blueprint for professional development.

The eCoaching Continuum for Educators provides teachers, administrators, and other school professionals a step-by-step guide to the four connected, coordinated components of technology-enabled professional development:

(1) studying theory and practice to build knowledge of specific content and pedagogy

(2) observing theory and practice to aid in the transfer of new knowledge to classroom practice

(3) one-on-one coaching to give teachers the feedback they need to improve classroom practice

(4) group coaching to build capacity for identifying and solving problems of professional practice.

The eCoaching is not based on training the trainers, since by this it loses its fidelity, just like the telephone game. Instead, it involves coaching an individual, or even a whole class or school or community.

The eCoaching Continuum for Educators integrates best practice in coaching for professional development, with a detailed account of how teachers and other school professionals can use today’s technologies to improve their practice, and ensure their students are fully engaged and learning. Over decades, the major changes that occurred in learning were related to involving technology.

The major distinguishing characteristics of eCoaching continuum:

·        Based on a job embedded, technology enabled continuum

·        Aimed at strengthening teacher practice and enhancing student outcomes

·        Led by teachers and supported by coaches, consultants and administrators

·        Designed on the most up-to-date professional learning theory and research

The four, nimble, interconnected, dynamic components of eCoaching:

·        Study

·        Watch

·        Coach 1:1

·        Coach one another

Unfortunately, eCoaching doesn’t scale very well the following:

·        Fragmentation

·        Cost

·        Quantity

·        Quality

Since many of the students, even in one school, or belonging to the same class, they are being fragmented among different areas. Not only areas, but also they are being fragmented into different social and economic levels, where the cost of internet usage varies among a wide scale, between being a priority on one extreme, and being the last thing to think about on the other extreme.

In addition to the quality of people eCoaching is trying to deal with. Education level plays a major role over here.

So, the solution was covering these points:

·        Wholistic orientation

·        Cost effective

·        Capacity centered

·        Quality focused

eCoaching takes then the quality of individuals dealing with into consideration, and the capacity they have.

So, living and working in the digital age offers education professionals unprecedented access to technology options that are especially well suited for carrying out job-embedded, authentic professional learning through four connected, coordinated components that support the whole educator in reaching the whole child. As a conclusion, automation saves time. Yet, eCoaching without the study of theory, the observation of demonstrations, and opportunities for practice with feedback will, in fact, accomplish very little.

REFERENCES

• aartibellara. (2019, Sept. 18). Scott Marion from @NCIEA1 discussing how training the trainers is not an empirically grounded strategy to deliver teacher professional development. It’s just a game of telephone. #NCMEBoulder [Tweet]. https://twitter.com/aartibellara/status/1174438729324404736

• Carneiro, R. (2013) Living by learning, learning by living: the quest for meaning. International Review of Education, 59, pp. 353–372.

• Desimone, L. M. (2009). Improving impact studies of teachers’ professional development: Toward better conceptualizations and measures. Educational Researcher, 38, 181–200. doi:10.3102/0013189X08331140

• Joyce, B., & Showers, B. (1982). The coaching of teaching. Educational Leadership, 40(1), 4–10.

• Joyce, B., & Showers, B. (2002). Student achievement through staff development (3rd. ed.). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

• Kraft MA, Blazar D, Hogan D.  (2018) The Effect of Teacher Coaching on Instruction and Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of the Causal Evidence. Review of Educational Research [Internet], 88 (4), 547-588.

• Kennedy, M. (2016). How does professional development improve teaching? Review of Educational Research, 86 (4), 945-980.

• Rock, M. (2019) (with Holden, K., Jones, J., Walker, M., Cheek, A., Crawford, P., & Blanton, M. as chapter contributors). The eCoaching continuum: Using technology to enrich professional development and improve student outcomes. Alexandria, VA: ASCD

• Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 2(1), 3-10.

• Steffens, K. (2015). Competencies, learning theories, and MOOCs: Recent developments in lifelong learning. European Journal of Education, 50 (1). 41-59.