Literacy coaching and Reading First ‘redelivery’: a discourse analysis

Abstract

Practitioners are often faced with the national legislation’s influence at the school‐based curricular level. In the United States, the federal government No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 mandates reading instruction at the early primary grade levels. The position of literacy coach was created to support this curriculum change by providing professional development to teachers in schools. This study focused on a crucial component of literacy coaches’ professional lives – the redelivery of professional development in Reading First, in order to understand what it means to redeliver state‐mandated curriculum change. The authors interviewed two literacy coaches in the Georgia Reading First curriculum model about how they redelivered professional development. The authors used a social constructivist perspective and discourse analysis to explore how two literacy coaches operated. The coaches negotiate competing discursive forces, frame success and represent their practices in different and complex ways despite the assumed uniformity of Reading First redelivery.

Keywords:

• literacy coaching
• Reading First
• discourse analysis
• professional development
• redelivery

Acknowledgements

We appreciate the support and insights from Dr Donna E. Alvermann, Kathleen T. Waugh, and Hilary Ruston in the writing of this article.