Supporting High-Quality Reading Instruction in Early Childhood: A Collaboration Between Instructional Leaders and Teachers

Legislation such as the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) have emphasized student achievement and test scores. As a result, the landscape of the kindergarten classroom has changed from a more play-based environment to a more academic-based classroom. This shift has caused pre-kindergarten to shift their practices as well, and researchers, policymakers and educators argue that some pre-kindergarten programs are not preparing children for kindergarten. This study seeks to examine how an instructional coach can effectively monitor and support the reading infrastructure in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten in a way that yields positive academic results for students and high-quality instruction for teachers. The intervention centered around three frameworks: implementation and infrastructure, vertical alignment, and curriculum. Through a mixed methods approach, an intervention was designed and implemented in a Professional Development (PD) format. This intervention allowed pre-kindergarten and kindergarten teachers to voice their ideas and work collaboratively with an instructional leader as they sought to create a vertical alignment between the two grades. Three significant implications emerged from the findings: the participants desire coaching in a way that their current infrastructure does not allow, pre-kindergarten teachers’ knowledge development of reading instruction and implementation, and the leaders’ need to create the infrastructure for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten teachers to align their instruction vertically. The study concludes with recommendations for the researcher, the school district, and the educational community.