Facilitating Teacher Study Groups

Although literacy coaching means many different things, all coaching initiatives have one common commitment: the goal of building teacher expertise. In the authors' work as coaches and with coaches, they have relied on teacher study groups as a main strategy for accomplishing this task. Their understanding of the potential for study groups has expanded over time; their current vision combines ideas from real-world book clubs with ideas from the adult learning and professional development literature, and then adds a dash of compassion for the complex and difficult world of everyday teaching. This recipe yields a flexible set of recommendations that can help coaches launch or refresh teacher study groups.