Early results from an ongoing research project in South Africa suggest that virtual coaching can be just as effective as on-site coaching. Lead researcher Janeli Kotze and colleagues say that technology could be a potential way to allow wider rollout of coaching programs without sacrificing quality.
The researchers introduced two different variations of coaching programs into schools in the Mpumalanga province to "evaluate new ways to assist and support teachers to teach early grade reading more effectively," according to their paper. Fifty schools were randomly assigned to the first program, which used on-site coaching with three expert reading coaches, and another 50 schools were assigned to the second program, which used a virtual coaching platform with one coach. An additional group of 80 schools acted as the control group and received no coaching interventions.
Preliminary results after one year of the three-year study show that the students in the two coaching program groups were significantly ahead of their control group counterparts on the core instructional outcomes for their grade level, and their teachers showed improvement in lesson planning and execution. In addition, the virtual coaching program appeared to be equally effective in improving students' achievement, suggesting that it could be a more sustainable method of scaling coaching programs to include more teachers.
The researchers did not find any significant differences in cost between the two programs for the first year, suggesting more research is needed to determine whether effective virtual coaching can also be cost-effective compared with on-site coaching programs.
—Tara Laskowski
