Real-Time Coaching and Pre-Service Teacher Education

This book details the findings of a small-scale research study on the use of real-time coaching in pre-service teacher education, founded upon the nexus of teacher education, mentoring, immediate feedback, teacher effectiveness, technology-enhanced learning and innovative approaches to developing better teaching practices. The book includes a robust literature review summarizing the scholarship on coaching models used in teacher education. The authors explore how real-time coaching, as a specific approach, has the potential to address persistent problems in teacher education and early career teacher performance in the areas of teachers’ growth mindset, teacher resilience and disjuncture in applying theory to practice.

The scholarship allows readers to gain a better understanding of the history of coaching in teacher training, and the capacity of real-time coaching, specifically, in pre-service teacher training told through the words of participants.

Garth Stahl has an extensive background in teacher training both in London, UK and in New York City, US. His PhD research focused on experiences of marginalized populations in schools and how their experience in schooling could be improved through relationship-building between students and teachers. He is currently working as a researcher at University of South Australia and as a Visiting Scholar at Western Sydney University.

Erica Sharplin is in the final stages of her PhD in education at UniSA, where she has been studying on scholarship. Her PhD research is an examination of how middle-school students in low SES contexts perceive their recreational spaces at school and the impacts on their behaviour. Prior to entering the field of education, Erica worked as a project manager and editor on several large-scale publishing projects, primarily in legal education. In 2009, Erica was the recipient of UniSA’s Satisfac Credit Union Merit Award in recognition of outstanding performance in a B.Ed.

Benjamin Kehrwald is a specialist in technology-enhanced learning in higher education. He has been involved with learning technologies since the early 1990s, developing innovative technology applications with a strong emphasis on user agency and social learning theory. In 2010 he was a recipient of the Distance Education Association of New Zealand’s award for excellence in open, flexible, distance and online education. He is currently leading educational development at the University of South Australia.