Expert reading coaching via technology: Investigating the reading, writing, and spelling outcomes of students in grades K-8 experiencing significant reading learning disabilities.

While qualitative research has shown great benefits for teachers who receive coaching, there is a paucity of experimental research examining students' academic outcomes after their teachers received ongoing support from a knowledgeable and experienced coach. Thus, a quasi-experimental design investigated the literacy outcomes of 452 students experiencing reading learning disabilities in grades K-8th whose special education and/or resource room teachers (n = 44) received student data-focused coaching support through on-site coaching, on-demand coaching (teachers could request support if needed), or through technology-based coaching. Specifically, researchers wanted to investigate if technology-based coaching was as effective as in-classroom support for increasing teachers' knowledge and implementation of research-based reading instructional routines and ultimately, improving the reading, writing, and spelling outcomes of students with reading learning disabilities. Results yielded positive student academic growth for all three methods of coaching; however, coaching via technology, a more efficient, less time-consuming method of giving teachers ongoing professional development, produced larger statistically significant Cohen's d effect sizes than the other two forms of coaching ranging from 0.22 to 1.01 in areas of phonemic awareness, decoding, comprehension, fluency, writing, and spelling. Other findings as well as the educational implications of implementing coaching via technology are also included.

Teacher knowledge, instructional expertise, and the development of reading proficiency.

Teacher knowledge and instructional expertise have been found in correlational and pre- and posttest studies to be related to student reading achievement. This article summarizes data presented in this special issue and additional research to address four questions: (a) What do expert reading teachers know? (b) Why do teachers need to acquire this knowledge? (c) Do teachers believe they have this knowledge? and (d) Are teachers being adequately prepared to teach reading? Well-designed studies relevant to this topic have been sparse with a noticeable lack of attention given to identifying specific causal links between teacher knowledge, teaching expertise, and student reading achievement. Until the appropriate research designs and methodologies are applied to address the question of causal effects, conclusions about the specific content that teachers must know and the instructional practices that are most beneficial in presenting this content are preliminary at best. Future studies of the effect of essential reading content knowledge must be extended beyond word-level skills to vocabulary, reading comprehension, and writing.