Three Coaching Priorities for Enhancing Teacher Practice in Disciplinary Literacy Instruction in the English Language Arts

Abstract Discipline‐specific literacy instruction is key to supporting adolescents’ overall literacy development. Job‐embedded professional development that supports teachers’ discipline‐specific literacy instruction via instructional coaching is a promising approach to enacting disciplinary literacy instruction in English language arts (ELA) classrooms. Findings from a multiyear study of instructional coaching yielded three priorities that coaches can use as a guide when collaborating with ELA teachers: ensuring that collaboration is sustained over time, considering teachers’ knowledge to create a coaching plan, and adopting a distributed expertise approach to create a collaboration in which both coach and teacher have ownership in the process. Examples from the multiyear study and suggestions for coaches’ practice when working with ELA teachers are shared.