Alternative Support for Teachers In Challenging Economic Times: The Use of Virtual Coaching

This qualitative study explored the use of virtual literacy coaching by examining 18 coaching sessions between a university-based literacy coach and a first-grade reading interventionist using Adobe Connect, a web-based collaborative tool. The application provided a virtual meeting space and through the use of video pods the teacher and coach had synchronous audio and video communication. Each coaching session lasted approximately one hour and included a pre-observation discussion, a 30-minute individualized lesson with a struggling reader, and a debriefing conversation. Data, including transcriptions of the coaching sessions, interviews with participants, field notes, and journal entries were analyzed using the constant-comparative method. Categories that reflected patterns in the data were collapsed into themes, which highlighted the influence of the virtual environment on the relationship between coach and teacher and their coaching interactions