The Effects of Student-Centered Coaching on the Reading Achievement of Elementary Students and Teacher Instructional Practice

With student achievement as the focus of educational reform, teachers in today’s classrooms are faced with meeting the needs of a diverse population. These teachers need to have the skill set to meet their students’ varied learning needs. This quantitative quasi-experimental study examined the impact of student-centered coaching on student learning and attitude toward reading using a comparative group (archival data, 2016–2017 school year, of students whose teachers did not receive coaching) and an experimental group (2017–2018 school year, students whose teachers received student-centered coaching). Three teachers and 276 students were taken from a Title I school in a suburban district. Analysis involved Mann-Whitney U test and repeated-measures t test. A value of p \u3c 0.05 was sought for significance. Student-centered coaching had no significant impact on the reading achievement of the control and experimental groups, BOYDPM score, U = 8146, z = -1.68, p = .09. No significant difference between the MockSTAAR scores of the control and experimental groups was indicated, U = 17145, z = -1.612, p = .11. However, student-coaching had a significant impact on the pretest BOYDPM and posttest STAAR of the experimental group, scores (t = 3.5, p = 0.001). The descriptive statistical analysis indicated that student-centered coaching changed students’ attitude toward reading