Introduction

Teacher learning, as one of the keys to improving the quality of education and student achievement (e.g., Desimone, 2009), often take place in various contexts and in different forms (Borko, 2004). It is assumed that one of the most powerful teacher learning experience occur when their own teaching practice is examined either by themselves or by coaches (Putnam & Borko, 2000) with a focus on subject pedagogy and how their students learn their subject (Borko, Jacobs, & Koellner, 2010; van Driel, Meirink, van Veen, & Zwart, 2012). Thus professional development interventions comprising of classroom observation and coaching on actual teaching practice can be promising to facilitate active learning of teachers, as such interventions give teachers the opportunities to receive direct feedback from the coach as well as the opportunity to further reflect about their classroom teaching practice. 

While many studies have provided insights into the effective designing features of teacher professional development (PD) programs (Desimone, 2009; Kennedy, 2016; van Driel et al., 2012), little research is available about which features exactly make them effective (van Driel et al., 2012). A feature hardly mentioned in reviews, is the quality of the PD coaches and the process of coaching, which is assumed to be essential for teacher professional development (Darling-Hammond & Snyder, 2000). However, it is still largely missing regarding how PD coaches were prepared and how exactly they executed such interventions (cf. Borko et al., 2010; Knapp, 2003; van Driel et al., 2012). We therefore assumed that the effectiveness of PD, especially PD programs with high presence of observation and coaching, rely more strongly on the quality and even personality of the coaches, and how exactly they have delivered the PD programmes. More research insights are needed into aspects such as the specific quality of PD coaches and what exactly happens in the process of coaching for a better understanding of how a PD works for teacher continuing development. Therefore, in this study, we focus on PD coaches regarding how they delivered the PD program and what they perceive as effective for teacher learning during a specific type of PD program using observation and feedback coaching to improve teaching quality.

Regarding the design of the study, Borko (2004) distinguished three types of PD programs and studies, in which the most common was that one program was explored, which was often designed and executed by the researchers themselves. A second type of studies explored such a program, executed by different people in different settings. A third type of study explored different PD programs in different settings. The current study can be described as a type 2 study in which one PD intervention is executed by different persons, in this case different coaches, allowing us to explore the intervention in more depth, especially the role and impact of the coaches on the PD intervention.

Against this background, the central research questions are:

What are the key elements in the process that has empowered or impeded teachers to learn?

What role did the PD coach play in this process?

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