Cognitive coaching and reflective thinking of Jewish day school teachers

Abstract

This study examines the extent to which cognitive coaching, a staff development technique, affects the reflective thinking of Jewish day school teachers. Three groups of elementary school teachers who have each had at least two years of teaching experience participated in the study. The experimental group of eleven teachers experienced cognitive coaching, developed by Costa and Garmston, from the present researcher, who has been trained in its use. This method of instructional staff development is designed to facilitate trust, learning, and autonomy in teachers. The control group of eleven teachers experienced other forms of staff development/supervision regularly used in the school. The third group of ten teachers experienced other forms of staff development/supervision regularly used in the school and participated in informal discussions about their teaching, as a control for attention.;Growth in reflective thinking between October 1996 and May 1997 was measured by the Reflective Pedagogical Thinking Instrument (RPT), developed by Simmons, Sparks-Langer, Starko, Pasch, and Colton (1989). The research was conducted in the context of a pretest and posttest design with participants who had volunteered for the study randomly assigned to their group, while matching for balance in years of experience. The results indicated that the teachers who experienced cognitive coaching had significantly more growth in reflective thinking than the teachers in the other two groups.