Date of Award

Fall 12-9-2020

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Department

School of Education

First Advisor

Dr. Peggy Hickman

Second Advisor

Dr. Tanya Santangelo

Third Advisor

Dr. Bruce Campbell

Abstract

Instructional Coaching (IC) is a strand of Professional Development (PD) during which an instructional coach provides individualized support and feedback to teachers, focused on instruction, generally within the context of the teacher’s classroom (Kraft et al., 2018). This fully integrated mixed method case study examined teacher experience with IC in order to understand which operational and emotional components of IC had the greatest perceived impact, in order to inform program improvement. Adult learning theory served as the conceptual framework for this study; the process of teaching adults is known as andragogy (Knowles, 1980). Andragogy indicates that teaching adults in a reflective and responsive manner may enable them to become self-directed and independent learners (Knowles, 1980). Therefore, this study was conducted based upon IC reflecting adult learning theory. I assessed teacher experience through both quantitative and qualitative methods, drawing from the population of teachers who had participated in IC at an urban high school in the Mid-Atlantic. Survey methodology was used to ascertain teacher experience broadly, and interviews were conducted with a nested sample of participants to understand teacher perceptions in greater depth. Dialectical pluralism served as the paradigm for this mixed method study, with the goal of encouraging a diversity of perspectives, connection between the researcher and participant, and understanding varying perceptions of reality (Creamer, 2018). Quantitative and qualitative results were analyzed together in order to create meta-inferences about teacher experience with IC.

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