ABSTRACT

Coaching is becoming widely recognized as a tool to help early childhood educators enhance teaching and build professional skills. Although effective, the use of an external coach can be cost and time prohibitive. This study examined the effectiveness of internal peer coaches as compared to external coaches in implementation fidelity of an evidence-based framework aimed at enhancing the social-emotional competencies of young children in early childhood classrooms. Fifteen Head Start teachers and 125 of their students participated in this study. The intervention consisted of training on practice-based coaching, training on the social-emotional framework, and eight weeks of coaching (eight teachers participated as internal peer coaches and seven received external coaching). Pre and post data included an assessment of fidelity to the framework and evaluation of individual child social skills. Overall, results suggest that internal peer coaches were more effective at supporting the implementation of practices with fidelity. Children in classrooms with internal coaches demonstrated a significant increase in social skills. Although more research is needed, internal peer coaching can be considered as a potential solution to the challenges of working with an external coach.

摘要

教练作为帮助幼儿教育工作者加强教学和培养专业技能的工具正被广泛认可。虽然有效，但使用外部教练的成本和时间可能会令人望而却步。本研究检验了内部同伴教练与外部教练相比在循证框架的实施保真度方面的有效性，该框架旨在提高幼儿课堂中幼儿的社会情感能力。15 名启蒙教师和他们的 125 名学生参加了这项研究。干预包括基于实践的辅导培训、社会情感框架培训和八周辅导（八名教师作为内部同伴教练参与，七名接受外部辅导）。前后数据包括对框架忠诚度的评估和对个别儿童社交技能的评估。总体而言，结果表明，内部同伴教练在忠实地支持实践的实施方面更有效。有内部教练的教室里的孩子们表现出社交技能的显着提高。虽然需要更多的研究，但内部同伴辅导可以被视为应对与外部教练合作的挑战的潜在解决方案。