An exploratory study of early childhood coaches’ practices and professional learning needs

ABSTRACT

Coaching is increasingly being used as a mechanism to improve the quality of early childhood education. Yet, for coaching outside of researcher-controlled interventions, limited information details coaches’ reports of their practices’ professional learning needs. We addressed this gap via an exploratory study utilizing online questionnaires of 91 coaches working with educators in a Midwestern US state across 12 coaching initiatives. Most participants had less than 5 years of experience working as an early childhood coach. Almost a third coached for multiple initiatives. Coaching occurred via multiple formats and often addressed behavior management and social emotional development regardless of the coaching initiative. Coaches identified challenges regarding scheduling and working with difficult learners and reported that peer support and being coached themselves were the most beneficial learning experiences. Findings suggest that the perspective of the coach is important in informing training and professional learning for both coaches and educators.

KEYWORDS:

• coaching
• professional development
• early childhood education
• real-world settings
• mentoring

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the members of the Nebraska Early Childhood Coach Collaboration Team for their assistance in creating and disseminating the survey used in this study. We would also like to thank the many coaches who participated in the study. This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Disclosure statement

No financial interest or benefit has arisen from this research.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2022.2108378