Collaborative Coaching

With a new federal grant, UD Associate Professor Lynsey Gibbons and her team will study teacher coaching in mathematics education

As we reflect on our elementary school experiences, we rarely think about our teachers as students in the classroom with us. But teachers are students too, refining their content knowledge and instruction through professional learning and collaboration with colleagues.

University of Delaware Associate Professor Lynsey Gibbons has studied teacher learning for nearly 20 years, working alongside teachers to examine professional learning routines, the roles of instructional leaders like principals and coaches and the impact of learning events that occur within a school or district. Supported by a new National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, Gibbons will now study teacher coaching more deeply, partnering with school districts in Delaware, California and Colorado.

Inspired by a previous NSF-funded study on understanding professional learning, this project will examine how expert instructional coaches use a specific routine with teachers—called a Lesson Analysis Cycle—to facilitate conversations that support more ambitious mathematics teaching.

“Our first project deepened our understanding of how the professional learning structure  supported ambitious mathematics teaching,” said Gibbons, who specializes in mathematics education in UD’s College of Education and Human Development (CEHD). “We wanted to understand what teachers learn, what challenges they face as they apply their learning, what supports ameliorate these challenges and how students ultimately benefit.”

“Now, we’re focusing on better understanding how coaches learn to implement and adapt the Lesson Analysis Cycle across a range of district contexts,” Gibbons said. “We’ll be able to study how coaches learn, while examining how to scale up and replicate the approach across the country.”

The research team includes Kelly McKie, assistant professor at Nipissing University, and Corey Drake, director of professional learning at The Math Learning Center. James Hiebert, CEHD professor emeritus, will also serve as a project consultant. Delaware educator and CEHD alum Valerie Maxwell will serve as a coach facilitator, along with Jamila Riser. Shazia Akbar and Maggie Ellis, doctoral students in education, will also support the project as graduate research assistants.

This fall, Gibbons and her team are working collaboratively with district partners to better understand their needs as they make plans for coaches to learn the Lesson Analysis Cycle. The team is also meeting with coach facilitators from the previous NSF-funded project to plan for professional learning with district leads and coaches. To date, Cape Henlopen and Christina School Districts in Delaware will participate, along with Aurora Public Schools in Colorado and Tustin Unified School District in California.

“If we can replicate the Lesson Analysis Cycle’s success in other contexts and document the learning conditions that enable coaches to implement and adapt it, we can share a robust curriculum-based coaching structure accompanied by insights into coach learning,” Gibbons said. “These insights will ultimately help teachers engage in ambitious mathematics teaching across content areas, improving mathematics learning opportunities for elementary school students.”

The project will continue through August 2029.

To learn more about CEHD research in STEM education and professional development, visit its research webpages.

Header image caption: With a new federal grant, UD Associate Professor Lynsey Gibbons and her team will study teacher coaching in mathematics education. Here, Kaitlyn Hand, a graduate of UD’s elementary and middle school teacher education program, teaches math at Fred Fifer III Middle School in Camden, Delaware.

Article by Jessica Henderson. Photos by Kathy F. Atkinson and courtesy of Lynsey Gibbons.