Arts , Humanities & Social Science

Abstract

As an improvement strategy in a high-poverty rural school district, an instructional coaching initiative was established to support instructional improvement. Skilled classroom teachers were identified to serve as literacy and math coaches, collaborating as a team and with district and building leaders. Researchers led the team of four newly appointed coaches in an extended learning series focused on principles of the Internal Coherence Framework (Forman et al., 2017). Opportunities for shared learning and collaboration with two building leaders and two district administrators were included in the learning series. Internal Coherence is defined by the authors as the “collective capability of the adults in a school…to connect and align resources to carry out an improvement strategy” (pp. 2-3). The IC framework is designed to increase efficacy for instructional leadership, collective teacher efficacy for high impact instructional practices, and increased student achievement and agency (Forman et al., 2017; Goddard et. al., 2020; Bandura, 1997). Researchers subsequently engaged in qualitative research to understand the meaning participants constructed from the experience. The researchers utilized design-based-implementation research as tools and instrument development were a primary focus of the project. In addition, phenomenological research methodology was applied to investigate participants’ lived experiences and sense-making of components of the learning series. One particularly salient outcome of the learning series was the enduring nature of a particular clinical tool developed as a part of the project. The sustained use of the tool outlining the district’s instructional vision in terms of the instructional core (Cohen & Ball, 1999) suggests the substantial impact the learning series had on individual and potentially collective efficacy of district and school instructional personnel. Implications for these findings provide evidence for the effectiveness of engaging in team’s shared learning and collaborative development of research-based clinical tools based on the IC framework (Forman et al., 2017). The paper discusses the project focus and implications for the usefulness of the Internal Coherence framework as a guide for continuous improvement, shared learning, and collective efficacy.