Abstracts - Earli

Developing the organizational capacity necessary to support effective coaching: Results from year1 of a longitudinal study of the influence of Content-Focused CoachingSM on readingcomprehensionDonna D.D. Bickel, University of Pittsburgh, USALindsay Clare Matsumura, University of Pittsburgh, USALauren B. Resnick, University of Pittsburgh, USABrian W. Junker, Carnegie Mellon University, USAKathleen Young, University of Pittsburgh, USAThis paper will present findings from the first year of a four-year experimental study funded by theUS Institute for Educational Studies to examine the influence of Content-Focused CoachingSM(CFC) (Staub, West, & Bickel, 2003) on reading comprehension instruction and student learningin grades 4 and 5. While the ultimate goal of the study is to investigate the effectiveness of thisparticular model of coaching for improving instruction and student learning, we do not expect tosee significant effects on teaching and learning at this early stage of the project. Instead our goalsfor this first year are to collect baseline measures of instruction and learning, introduce CFCconceptual tools and ways of working to multiple role groups (teachers, coaches, principals,district administrators) and begin to develop the organizational capacity needed at the school anddistrict level to support the work of the CFC coaches. Specifically, the aim of this presentation isto describe the methods used to influence how coaching is perceived and to what extent it ispositioned as a powerful component of a coherent professional development system within adistrict. How coaching is perceived and positioned in the early stages of the work are criticalfactors in its potential to effect ongoing learning and improvement.Re-configuring pre-service teacher education: Developmental Work Research as a methodologyfor teacher educators’ expansive learningViv Ellis, University of Oxford, United KingdomAnne Edwards, University of Oxford, United KingdomThis paper reports on the methodological framing of a research and development project withteacher mentors in pre-service teacher education at Oxford University. The project (‘DETAIL’)aims to re-configure the partnership between the university and schools at a more collective leveland to develop ‘collaborative professional inquiry’ as a systemic tool in the professional learningof participants (intern teachers, their mentors, the secondary school subject department, and theuniversity-based lecturer). The paper argues that the methodological framework for researchingthis development with the school- and university-based teacher educators – Developmental WorkResearch and the concept of ‘change laboratories’ (Engestrßm 1991) – offers a powerful means ofboth working on and understanding the processes of change. It can achieve this by re-focusinganalysis culturally and historically at the systemic rather than the individual level and by using thetools of Activity Theory to support the learning of the ‘change agents’. Further, the paper arguesthat this methodology has the potential to produce more ‘socially robust’ scientific knowledge(Gibbons 1999) by bringing together in a dialectic the practice-driven redesign of teachereducation processes and the ideas-driven construction of visions for the future.– 523 –