Across many OECD and European jurisdictions, under-resourced schools face persistent challenges in accessing scalable, evidence-based professional learning (PL) models that improve both teaching quality and student learning (Hofmann & Ilie, 2022). These challenges are exacerbated by teacher shortages, high student diversity, varying levels of institutional autonomy, and uneven capacity for implementation. The Momentum Schools Extension project addresses these shared systemic concerns through the design, validation, and evaluation of an instructional coaching model for Australian schools serving low socioeconomic and vulnerable communities. The study is situated within a broader international discourse on evidence-based instruction, inclusive education, and mechanisms for sustainable workforce development, with strong potential for adaption to European contexts where comparable educational inequities and policy priorities exist.

The primary research questions guiding this study are:

1. How can coaching instruments—developed from evidence-based instructional progression maps—support teacher growth from novice to expert?
2. How does targeted and sustained online professional learning and one-to-one coaching influence teacher practice, school-wide instructional change, and student perceptions of learning over time?
3. What differences emerge between treatment and Business as Usual (BAU) groups regarding teacher practice and student learning outcomes?
4. How do school leaders, teachers, and students experience the intervention, and which contextual factors enable or hinder sustained instructional change?
5. How can a sustainable model of evidence-based instructional practice be developed and scaled in vulnerable school communities?

The theoretical framing integrates three major bodies of scholarship. First, the learning sciences (or science of learning) underpin the instructional practices targeted in the coaching intervention, including cognitive load theory, explicit instruction, retrieval practice, and structured literacy. These practices are increasingly referenced in policy and curriculum reforms across international schooling systems (e.g., Ontario Human Rights Commission, 2022; Pellegrini &Vivanet, 2020; Teacher Education Expert Panel [TEEP], 2023), particularly in literacy, where structured pedagogies and early intervention are linked to reduced attainment gaps (Gath et al., 2025; Hanford et al., 2025; Ontario Human Rights Commission, 2022). Second, the study draws on scholarship ininclusive education and equity-oriented pedagogy, recognising that many low socioeconomic schools serve culturally, linguistically, and socially diverse learners. Inclusive education is both a pedagogical and policy priority across the European Union and aligns with broader reforms intended to mitigate structural disadvantage and support multilingual learners. As such, inclusive practices form the third coaching focus, along with explicit instruction and structured literacy to broaden the intervention’s applicability across varied educational systems. Third, the study is theoretically grounded in research on professional learning, instructional coaching, and implementation science. Effective PL is characterised by sustained duration, alignment with classroom practice, iterative cycles of feedback, and student-centred impact measures. Limited longitudinal and quasi-experimental evidence exists on how PL influences both teacher behaviour and student outcomes over time—particularly in vulnerable schools. By adopting a Difference-in-Differences (DiD) quasi-experimental design, the project fills a methodological and empirical gap within the PL literature.

This presentation details the process of development and validation of the research instruments and practical coaching materials relating to knowledge, skills, behaviours and attributes related to explicit instruction. In addition, the preliminary findings of the pilot study data are presented, revealing initial insights into school leader and teacher perceptions and experiences with the instructional coaching program.

The project adopts a three-year, Difference-in-Differences (DiD) quasi-experimental design with phased school participation, enabling comparison across treatment and business as usual (BAU) groups and measurement of longitudinal change in teacher practice and student perception data. The study encompasses 20 low-income, hard-to-staff schools in Australia, with two waves of participation introduced across staggered timeframes. This paper presentation will focus on Phase 1, a pilot study, which involved the design and validation of research instruments and coaching materials, along with, insights into teachers’ perspectives on and experiences with the explicit instruction online coaching program. Phase 1 (Design and Validation) focuses on instrument design, expert validation, and learning platform development. Underpinned by several systematic reviews and scholarly work on instructional coaching, explicit instruction, inclusive education and structured literacy, a range of research instruments were developed. An expert panel review was used to establish content validity of the instruments for teacher self-assessment and instructional coaching purposes. Phase 2 (Pilot study) draws on the preliminary data collected from the participating pilot schools (n=4) who were assigned to either the intervention or BAU condition. Using quantitative teacher self-assessments (Guttman items), surveys and interviews, the data indicated changes related to teachers’ knowledge about and application of explicit instruction before and after several coaching cycles. While school leader interviews, instructional coach interviews, aggregated student achievement data and student perception surveys will also be collected for this study, they are not the focus of this presentation.

Given that this longitudinal project is still in its early stages, the expected outcomes are both educational and empirical. Educationally, the project is expected to strengthen teacher capacity in evidence-based instruction, inclusive education, and structured literacy, leading to improved student learning outcomes within vulnerable school communities. Empirically, the project will generate quasi-experimental evidence on the effectiveness of instructional coaching over time, addressing a recognised gap in PL literature. Educational systems globally share a strategic interest in improving teacher workforce capability, scaling evidence-informed practice, and reducing equity gaps. The proposed coaching model offers an adaptable architecture for implementation in diverse settings, particularly where structural inequity and teacher shortages are salient. The project also contributes methodological value by demonstrating the viability of DiD designs in PL research and by integrating student-level indicators into evaluations of teacher professional learning—an approach consistent with OECD, TALIS, and European research priorities relating to impact, monitoring, and continuous improvement. Expected outputs include validated coaching instruments, developmental rubrics, implementation guidance, and empirical analyses suitable for cross-jurisdictional comparison.

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