COACHING FOR THE SCIENCE OF READING: COLLECTIVE SENSEMAKING AS A MEANS OF CONTEXTUALIZING POLICY AND UPLIFTING CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE PRACTICES

Literacy coaches serve in a multitude of roles and play a critical role in bridging district and school priorities (Walpole and Blamey, 2008; Steckel, 2009). Currently, coaches and teachers are navigating a national policy shift to Science of Reading (SoR) aligned instruction, and educators want more than a new curriculum (Schwartz, 2022). This study centered literacy coaches in a large, urban school district, situated in the mid-Atlantic region, who are working to contextualize literacy policy implementation based on their students’ needs. This study explored how literacy coaches successfully understand and frame new reading policies and how they then implement effective coaching for SoR-aligned instruction at individual school sites. Additionally, the study explored how collaboration with other coaches could support a coach’s ability to make sense of SoR-aligned instruction and how this collaboration supports culturally responsive practices in their schools in a time when professional learning has trended toward collaborative approaches but rarely includes intraorganizational exchanges across school buildings (Galey-Horn, 2020; Hammond, 2023; Ladson-Billings, 1995). The study found a shared, collaborative space can positively impact coaches and educators. Within these collaborative spaces, the participating coaches worked diligently to identify students’ needs, based on data and an understanding of the students’ backgrounds. Recommendations for the district include streamlining priorities for educator improvement (Bryk, 2015) by investing in coaching through strategic professional development planning, including learning focused on the connection between diagnostic approaches and culturally responsive practice. Recommendations for the education sector include the development of cross-sector professional learning opportunities that reinvigorate and inspire educators (Mockler, 2022). Future research should continue to interrogate the implementation of SoR in our nation’s public schools, ensuring all students are considered in current and future literacy policy implementation in order to move closer to what Zaretta Hammond (2023) refers to as the “epicenter of equity”, a space in which Culturally Responsive Teaching and reading science meet to ensure students have the capacity to determine, and be prepared for, their futures. Finally, the researcher’s positionality and process of reflexivity throughout the research process is discussed.