Early childhood teachers’ noticing skills in the context of an intervention: supporting teachers to effectively reflect on practice

ABSTRACT

Positive early classroom interactions are crucial for children’s development. Increasingly, more professional development programs focus on improving interactions and their underlying skills. Research on interventions has focused on their effectiveness in changing teachers’ classroom interactions; however, less is known about how this occurs. This study investigated how teachers who changed their classroom practice in an intervention developed their reflective skills through conferences with a coach. Results indicate that the coaching support is associated with teachers’ reflective skills. Coaches and teachers, over time, engaged in more cumulative exchanges, enabling spaces for teachers to reflect more about their practice, and specific types of exchanges promoted more reflection and willingness to change. This is relevant as increasingly more children are in classroom settings at an early age, and little research is available to guide improvement efforts. This article can serve for designing interventions to improve early childhood teachers’ skills and their children’s development.

KEYWORDS:

• Coaching
• reflection
• dialogue
• early childhood education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Institute for Education Sciences (IES) [R305A100154].

Notes on contributors

Francisca Romo-Escudero

Francisca Romo-Escudero, PhD is an Assistant Professor at the School of Education at the Diego Portales University in Santiago, Chile. She researches in what way teachers’ skills, knowledge, and predispositions are related to their interactions in the classroom. She has conducted multiple studies about how early childhood teacher development programs in the USA and Latin America influence teachers’ skills and children’s development. Currently, Dr. Romo is investigating how early childhood teachers’ cognitive processes and emotions interact and influence their interactions in the classroom.

Jennifer LoCasale-Crouch

Jennifer LoCasale-Crouch, PhD is a Research Associate Professor at the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia. She researches the supports and systems that influence children during their early school experiences and how we can best enhance those experiences to support children’s development. She has authored multiple peer-reviewed manuscripts about how adults’ beliefs, skills, and behaviors support children’s social and academic outcomes, as well as professional development that enables caregivers to engage in more effective interactions and ways to implement such professional development supports with high degrees of fidelity.

Bridget K. Hamre

Bridget K. Hamre is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at Teachstone. Her areas of expertise include student–teacher relationships and classroom processes that promote young children’s positive academic and social development. She has authored over 65 peer-reviewed manuscripts on these topics over the past 15 years. Her research documents how teacher–child relationships and teachers’ social and instructional interactions support children’s development and learning and may help close the achievement gap for students at risk of school failure.