Supporting Implementation of Evidence-Based Practices Through Practice-Based Coaching

TLDR

Coaching is a key competency driver in implementation science and a promising job‑embedded professional development strategy for supporting the implementation of quality teaching practices. The article presents a coaching framework to help early‑childhood practitioners implement evidence‑based teaching practices with fidelity and offers recommendations for future research and broader application. The framework’s key components, theoretical and empirical rationales, and operationalization as a coaching protocol were detailed and applied in studies with preschool teachers of children with or at risk for disabilities to implement social‑emotional, behavioral, and instructional practices with fidelity.

Abstract

In active implementation science frameworks, coaching has been described as an important competency “driver” to ensure evidence-based practices are implemented as intended. Empirical evidence also has identified coaching as a promising job-embedded professional development strategy to support implementation of quality teaching practices. The purpose of the present article is to describe a coaching framework designed to support early childhood practitioners to implement evidence-based teaching practices with fidelity. We explicate the key components of the coaching framework, provide theoretical and empirical rationales for each component, and describe how it was operationalized for use as a coaching protocol in several studies. The studies focused on supporting preschool teachers of young children with or at risk for disabilities to implement social-emotional, behavioral, and instructional teaching practices with fidelity. For this special issue, we offer recommendations for future research and considerations for wider scale application and situate each article in the context of coaching and the coaching framework described in this article.