Context: Coaching has been associated with changes in teacher practice and gains in student learning, but logistical and financial obstacles limit the extent to which individualized coaching can be offered and sustained. These challenges are especially pronounced in social studies, a subject area where teachers receive little content-specific oversight, professional development, or instructional coaching. Against this backdrop, districts would be wise to leverage experienced social studies teacher leaders to serve as coaches for their colleagues. Doing so would require supporting teacher leaders to take on new identities as coaches. Focus of Study: In this study, we follow two middle-school teacher leaders who were invited to coach fellow teachers in their district as part of a design-based effort to create a teacher-led coaching program. The program was intended to help teachers enact document-based history lessons that centered student sensemaking. After two years, one teacher left the classroom to take on greater administrative responsibility over the coaching program; the other left coaching altogether. How do we account for these different trajectories? Research Design: In this comparative case study, we applied the dynamic systems model of role identity (DSMRI) to analyze the coaches’ interviews over two years and elucidate the factors that contributed to these disparate outcomes. Conclusions: Our findings make a conceptual case for the complex dynamic process of coach role identity development: the development of an aligned coach role identity cannot be reduced to a single factor, such as instructional vision or experience, but rather should be seen as a constellation of personal and situated factors that shape the extent to which one has opportunities to engage in productive role identity exploration.
Reisman et al. (Tue,) studied this question.