High school instructional coaches and their cultural impact on teacher development
Instructional coaching is a model that continues to grow as a form of support for teachers. Instructional coaches provide job-embedded professional learning through one-on-one development and team building. The instructional coaches have an opportunity to influence change in the school through direct relationship building with their teachers. This study focuses on a mixed methods exploration of a theoretical framework designed to improve resiliency, psychological safety, and team performance in a high school. This study begins with understanding the role of an instructional coaching model and the importance of trust, confidence and team performance. The general study is followed by researching self-determination, self-efficacy, and social learning theories since there is a lack of research regarding how instructional coaches can develop a safe environment that fosters risk-taking and adaptability. As a result of this theoretical research, the researcher created a resource guide for instructional coaches to introduce responsibilities to their teachers to answer the following research question: Can instructional coaches change the culture and improve team performance by increasing psychological safety and resiliency with their teachers? After identifying a high school that recently incorporated the instructional coaching model, the researcher used quantitative and qualitative surveys to analyze the impact of coaching interventions introduced by the resource guide. Those results were cross-referenced with the instructional coaches’ journal entries and unstructured interviews. The research shows that the theoretical framework and logic model, combined with fidelity of implementation of the resource guide, produced significant findings. Specifically, the resource guide is general and adaptable for any school district. School conditions are conducive to fostering resiliency. Increased responsibility does lead to improved psychological safety. Instructional coaching interventions positively impacted teacher sentiment. This study informs the academic leadership team’s understanding of the teachers’ response to the resource guide. This research identified the importance of collaboration and feedback loops and how essential they were for teacher success. However, it also informed the continued need for team performance. With continued research, the resource guide should validate how the instructional coaching model positively influences student success.
Instructional coach, resiliency, psychological safety, team performance, resource guide
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign