Cluster randomized trial of teacher coaching: Evidence from Lebanon's COACHing model

This study seeks to evaluate the causal impacts of a newly developed and adopted reforms to teacher coaching and teaching approaches by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education’s (MEHE) Department of Guidance and Counseling (Direction de l’orientation primaire et secondaire-DOPS). The MEHE-DOPS reformed the approaches in core subjects in public schools in alignment with the newly adopted teacher core competencies framework that focuses on introducing teachers to facilitation moves, deliberate practice, re-voice, and other elements of student-focused pedagogy. Training on the model was delivered to a group of coaches by New York University (NYU) between December 2019 and February 2020 and implementation is expected to begin December 2020 and January 2021 in a randomly selected set of schools with coaches and teachers of English, French, and Science in Grades 4 through 8. The evaluation is designed as a cluster-randomized controlled trial with treatment assignment at the coach level, 54 treatment coaches and 54 control coaches. The treatment coaches are then assigned to two schools where they observe two teachers with an average class size of 20 students. Further, the evaluation is structured with a pre- and post-treatment period for each coach who are tracked longitudinally throughout the evaluation. Control coaches, for the duration of this evaluation, will follow 'business as usual' assignments.