Project Summary

The Education Alliance is conducting an evaluation of The Coaching Cycle: An Interactive Online Course for Mathematics Coaches, awarded to EDC through the NSF Discovery Research program for the training and support of instructional coaching in K-8 mathematics. The goal of the project is to deepen coaches’ understanding of selected mathematical topics that are frequently problematic in K-8 instruction, while providing participants an opportunity to learn and practice content-based coaching skills in a collegial online community.

The Education Alliance’s evaluation design for this program includes components to examine the extent to which the program was developed and implemented to meet project objectives as well as the outcomes of the course. The implementation component will focus on delivery of “The Coaching Cycle” course, the development of tools and resources, and the extent to which the project met its goals around providing opportunities for targeted coaches to engage in a collegial community to support their professional learning. The outcome component will include a pre- and post-assessment of participants’ knowledge of mathematics and pedagogical skills through a coaching scenario in the context of a situated coaching interaction. The coaching scenario will be developed in collaboration with EDC project staff, based on existing scenarios used to study school leaders’ content knowledge in mathematics for Thinking About Mathematical Ideas (TMI), a project funded by NSF.