Erica Sharplin

Developing pre-service teachers’ confidence: real-time coaching in teacher education

Abstract Teacher quality continues to be of major concern in the Western world, and identifying the most effective approach to teacher training remains a contested area. It has been argued that teachers resist change because they lack motivation, have inadequate knowledge and expertise to modify their practices, and are reluctant to take risks for fear of having their confidence damaged. While remaining skeptical of such a deficit view, our interest is in pedagogic approaches which seek to better prepare teachers for teaching in contemporary society and, thus, to enhance their ‘effectiveness.’ This article discusses the use of a Real-Time Coaching (RTC) model designed to enhance pre-service teachers’ practical skills for contemporary classroom teaching. The model focuses upon pre-service teachers micro-teaching while simultaneously gaining feedback via a headset in real time; this is then combined with multiple collaborative feedback cycles within a learning community in order to foster reflective practice. To collect information about participants’ experiences with the RTC process, two rounds of semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants. Our findings indicate the RTC model has the capacity to foster a sense of confidence and ownership of learning by developing practical skills alongside affective attributes such as resilience, efficacy, and a disposition toward continual improvement.

Reflective Practice and Teacher Identities

While it is widely accepted that teacher training should engage with teacher identity, the pedagogic approaches teacher educators should use to foster this are less clearly established. An unexpected finding of our study of the Real-Time Coaching for Pre-service Teachers Model is that it positively influenced the identity development of pre-service teachers. As the pre-service teachers experienced the model, we saw them reflect upon and conceptualise their teaching practice in a variety of ways related to their identity as teachers and values as educators.

Affective Learning: Adaptation, Resilience and Efficacy

This chapter presents research findings on participants’ affective learning within, and as a result of, our model of learning for pre-service teachers. The model focuses on enhancing two key features of students’ practice teaching experience: feedback and reflection. Affective learning is loosely defined here as learning related to ‘things felt’ such as motivation, emotion, interest and attention (Picard, 2004). It includes values, attitudes and dispositions, each of which is manifest in the research data reported in the chapter.

Fostering Teaching Practice and Practical Teaching Skills

This chapter presents an analysis of how the pre-service teachers in this study experienced significant improvements in their pedagogic practice and practical teaching skills. The Real-Time Coaching for Pre-service Teachers Model develops a pre-service teacher’s critical orientation towards teaching practice, which they cast over their own practice and that of their fellow students, as well as the teachers encountered during their practicums. The analysis is divided into three sections: theory into practice; the experience of Real-Time Coaching and the community of learners; and identifying gaps in skills.

A Review of the Literature on Coaching in Pre-service Teacher Education

This chapter focuses on previous scholarship on coaching in pre-service teacher education drawing upon 25 studies published between 1996 and 2016 (see Appendix). The chapter canvasses the diversity of coaching models in teacher education and critically considering the roles that training, feedback, reflective practice and skill development play in each model.

Meeting the Needs of Pre-service Teachers Through Teacher Training

Teacher educators continue to wrestle over the most effective strategies to train pre-service teachers who enter teacher education programmes with their own personal beliefs, images of themselves as teachers and memories of themselves as pupils. This chapter captures how contemporary pre-service teacher education is framed by a multiplicity of pressures and challenges before discussing recent shifts towards a more practice-based clinical approach in teacher education.

Addressing the Needs of Pre-service Teachers Through the ‘Real-Time Coaching for Pre-service Teachers Model’

Coaching, as an amalgamation of overlapping elements of teaching, mentoring, facilitation and counselling, must always be learner-centric and adaptive to the needs of those coached. Our Real-Time Coaching for Pre-service Teachers Model capitalizes on design-based research (DBR) in which researchers and practitioners jointly design, develop and investigate interventions that address practical educational problems in context. This chapter captures the development of the model according to the principles of DBR before describing how our model was implemented.

Addressing the Strengths and Weaknesses of the ‘Real-Time Coaching for Pre-service Teachers Model’

A key challenge facing teacher educators today is how to educate pre-service teachers to become confident, reflective practitioners and to continue to learn through their own teaching practice. This chapter addressed the strengths and weaknesses of the Real-Time Coaching for Pre-service Teachers Model, barriers to its adoption and possible ways forward for future research.