productive instructional improvement goals. I conducted this first analysis in four phases.
Phase 1: Assessing Adequacy of Data. In the first phase of this analysis, I identified and retained those coaching cycles for which I could determine whether the coach had identified a productive or unproductive instructional improvement goal. As noted in the data collection section, making this determination required two types of data: 1) an interview with the coach following the classroom instruction phase of the coaching cycle in which the coach was asked about a possible instructional improvement goal for the teacher and 2) field notes from the classroom instruction phase of the coaching cycle that were detailed enough to enable me to determine whether the coach’s identified goal was productive. The data were adequate in 28 of 35 cycles.
Phase 2: Classifying Cases as Productive or Unproductive. Next, I analyzed each of the 28 retained cycles to determine whether the coach identified an instructional improvement goal that was a) feasible for the teacher to attain, and b) would improve students’ learning, if attained, thereby satisfying my criteria for productive instructional improvement goals. To make this determination, I compared the goals that coaches identified in the 28 retained coaching cycles with the field notes from those cycles.
I used two approaches to determine whether an instructional improvement goal was feasible for the teacher. In 22 of the 28 retained cycles, coaches proposed goals that focused on
teachers making specific improvements in particular aspects of instruction. For these cases, I determined that goals were feasible if there was evidence in the field notes that the teacher was already enacting the aspect of instruction associated with the coach’s proposed improvement goal, indicating the teacher could therefore improve the enactment of that aspect of instruction.
For example, sequencing students’ strategies during a whole class discussion would constitute a feasible goal for a specific teacher if there was evidence in the field notes that the teacher was already facilitating whole class discussions. I used a second approach for the remaining six cycles. In these cases, coaches proposed goals that involved teachers simply implementing a phase of a lesson, such as engaging students in a whole class discussion for the first time, or trying something new, such as counting to four following a question to increase students’ think time. In all six cases, I classified the goal as feasible, because, by definition, it is always possible to try something for the first time.
I determined whether the improvement goal the coach identified would enhance students’
learning, if attained, by comparing the coach’s proposed improvement goals with my own assessment of the field notes from the focal lesson. This involved two steps. First, I analyzed the field notes from the classroom lesson to make my own determination about which aspects of instruction, if improved, would enhance students’ learning opportunities. To do so, I reviewed the field notes by working backwards through the phases of inquiry-oriented lessons to identify when in the focal lesson students’ learning opportunities initially broke down, if they did at all.
This enabled me to determine whether the teacher’s implementation of prior phases of the lesson hindered students’ learning opportunities in subsequent phases of the lesson. In one case, for example, the field notes indicated that the teacher launched the task in ways that likely limited the range of students’ strategies to a single method posed by the teacher. This resulted in the vast
majority of students solving the task using the teacher’s strategy during work time. In the concluding discussion, the teacher called on a single student to share how he used the teacher’s strategy correctly. Based on the field notes, I concluded that students’ learning opportunities initially broke down during the launch of the task, as subsequent phases of the lesson depend on students solving tasks using a range of solution strategies. I therefore determined that students’
learning opportunities would be enhanced if the launch was the phase of the lesson that the teacher worked to improve. I engaged in a similar process for all 28 cases and recorded the aspect of instruction on which I would choose to focus together with my rationale.
I then compared the results of my analysis with the aspect of instruction associated with the coach’s improvement goal. If they matched, I took this as an indication that the coach’s proposed goal would, in all likelihood, enhance students’ learning, if attained. If my analysis of the field notes did not match the coach’s proposed improvement goal, then I took it as a
provisional indication that the coach’s proposed improvement goal would not enhance students’
learning, if attained. In conducting the aforementioned analysis, I identified 13 cases in which coaches’ proposed improvement goals matched my own, and 15 cases in which they did not.
As a further step, I then conducted a second review of the coach interview and field notes for each of the these latter 15 cases in order to compare the coach’s rationale for her proposed goal with the successive phases of the lesson, as documented by the field notes. My intent in doing so was to try and disprove my provisional assessment of the coach’s goal. Reviewing the field notes confirmed my assessment in all but one case. In this case, the coach’s proposed goal focused on the design and implementation of exit tickets, and thus the end of the lesson; whereas the goal I proposed focused on the whole class discussion. However, in reviewing the field notes alongside the coach’s explanation for her proposed goal, I saw that designing and implementing
exit tickets would enable the teacher to better understand what students learned in the lesson, and thus better understand whether or not the whole class discussion contributed to students’
learning. Exit tickets therefore had the potential to support the teacher in improving how she facilitated discussions. I therefore determined that the coach’s proposed goal would enhance students’ learning, if attained. In all, my analysis indicated that coaches identified productive instructional improvement goals that satisfied both criteria in 14 of the 28 coaching cycles.
Phase 3: Delineating Coaches’ Approaches to Identifying Goals. In the third phase of the analysis, I characterized how the coaches identified instructional improvement goals in each of the 28 coaching cycles, regardless of whether the improvement goal the coach identified was productive or unproductive. To accomplish this, I analyzed the coach interviews conducted after the classroom instruction phase and delineated episodes in each transcribed interview in which the coach answered direct or implied questions about how they identified goals for teachers’
improvement of their instructional practices. I then developed inductive codes to account for the different goal identification processes that the coaches described in these episodes (Corbin &
Strauss, 2015). I approached this process inductively because there is limited research on how coaches identify productive instructional improvement goals, and thus no available coding scheme that was adequate for my purposes. However, when appropriate, I adopted language from Gibbons and Cobb’s (2016) exploratory analysis of a single coach’s goal-setting process.
Next, I refined my initial coding scheme to develop more general codes that described the types of processes or approaches by which coaches identified goals. This refined coding scheme included codes related to: a) whether coaches determined if the focal lesson constituted an improvement; b) whether coaches analyzed the lesson in detail and, if they did, how they analyzed the lesson; and c) how coaches determined goals for their partner teachers’
improvement, if they did not analyze the lesson in detail. I have included my refined coding scheme in Appendix B. I then conducted a second analysis of the coach interviews in which I used this refined coding scheme to categorize the identification processes the coaches described.
Phase 4: Comparing Unproductive and Productive Approaches to Goal Identification.
In the fourth and final phase of the analysis, I compared the 14 cases in which coaches identified productive goals with the 14 cases in which they did not. I did so in order to identify distinctions in coaches’ approaches to goal identification that explained why the coaches identified
productive or unproductive goals. In making this comparison, I identified three approaches that distinguished between cases in which coaches identified productive goals and those in which they did not. These approaches included: 1) identifying goals based on the district’s priorities or the teacher’s priorities, as opposed to an analysis of the focal lesson; 2) identifying goals by analyzing only the teacher’s actions in the focal lesson; and 3) identifying goals by considering the connection between the teacher’s actions and students’ learning opportunities in the focal lesson. To conclude this analysis, I wrote a series of memos that summarized my findings.
Analysis 2: Negotiating Productive Instructional Improvement Goals. In this