2016 - 2021
The Study of Coaching Practices in Early Care and Education Settings explores
- how coaching practices are implemented in early care and education (ECE) classrooms serving children supported by Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) subsidies or Head Start grants
- how core features of coaching vary by key contextual factors
- which core features are ripe for more rigorous evaluation
The project established an empirically supported conceptual model and a set of surveys to explore the variability of coaching features in ECE center and family based child care. Follow-up surveys were collected to examine the extent and viability of coaching and professional development given the impact of COVID-19 on the child care and early childhood education landscape.
The 2019 web surveys were completed with directors, coaches, and child care providers/teachers working in 60 center-based programs and 40 family child care homes. The follow up surveys reached out from June through October of 2021 to the same sample to ask about the current implementation of coaching and professional development. The study findings may inform future evaluations of the core features of coaching while also informing coaching practices in the field.
This work is being carried out by Mathematica in partnership with Child Trends and the Children’s Learning Institute at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at Houston, under a subcontract with ICF.
Point(s) of contact: Wendy DeCourcey
This study is registered on the ClinicalTrials.gov site under the title Study of Coaching Practices in Early Care and Education Settings Visit disclaimer page [The registration number is NCT03743337]