Enhancing Administrator Coaching of Classroom Teachers

Purpose: In previous research and development, the team created LiveSchool, a technology for teachers to report student behavior in their class. In this project, the team will fully develop and test ClassCoach, a dashboard for administrators to track student behavior and to recommend resources teachers can use to address student behavioral needs in their classes. Over the past several years, schools have increased focus on identifying students who exhibit behavior challenges and in providing personnel tools to more effectively and efficiently meet student behavioral needs.

Project Activities: During Phase I in 2017, the project team developed a prototype of ClassCoach, including a user interface, an information management system for housing and organizing data, and the reporting engine for generating reports The team completed a pilot study with 89 administrators, and they found that 97% of the administrators reported that the prototype functioned as intended and was easy to use to track student behaviors. More than 50% used the dashboard to identify teachers who needed additional guidance in providing students behavioral supports. In Phase II, the team will fully develop the dashboard's architecture to host diverse sources of data, a filter to sort and analyze data by relevant school characteristics and needs, and a portal with recommendations teachers can use to support improvements in students' behavior. After development is complete, the research team will conduct a pilot study to assess the feasibility and usability, fidelity of implementation, and the promise of the dashboard for supporting administrators in tracking student behavior and providing resources teachers can use to meet the behavioral needs of students. Participants in the pilot study will include administrators from 100 schools, half of whom will use the platform and half will use LiveSchool without the new component. Researchers will investigate whether the dashboard increases the ability of administrators to track student behavior, and provide teachers resources to manage and improve student behavior relative to the comparison condition.

Product: ClassCoach is a dashboard to provide school administrators reports on student behavior and to recommend resources for teachers to more effectively and efficiently meet students' behavioral needs. The intended users are principals and guidance counselors. ClassCoach will include reports with data-driven information for administrators to determine students who need more intensive behavior interventions, and to identify classroom teachers who need additional resources to improve student behaviors. The dashboard will also provide videos with step-by-step coaching and modeling of best practices for teachers to support and improve student behavior in classrooms.