Literacy coaches and the dilemmas in supporting teachers' use of learning materials

Research shows that literacy coaches can improve the professional development of in-service teachers (Gibbons & Cobb, 2017; Woulfin & Rigby, 2017), but in this process they also often face different dilemmas in their coaching practice. For example, in the form of different kinds of collegial resistance to what they do (Jacobs et al., 2017). Not much research has focused on how literacy coaches make sense of their support of teachers’ selection and use of learning materials e.g textbooks in different school subjects. Therefore, the aim of this article is to analyse what kind of dilemmas literacy coaches experience in their professional support of their colleagues’ selection and use of learning materials. We will answer this question from the perspective of sensemaking theory (Weick, 1995; Coburn & Woulfin, 2012). The article’s findings are based on a qualitative field study that began in January 2019 and consists of observations and interviews of literacy coaches in three Danish public schools looking at how these coaches make sense of especially using assessment data in supporting colleagues in their instructional decision-making. The findings in this project show that it is difficult to find time to coach and support teacher in selection and use of learning materials. Often the literacy coach does not have the possibility to follow up in which way the teacher implements the ideas and suggestions that she suggests and evaluate how the pupils benefit from that. Another dilemma has to do with the selection and use of learning materials in relation with test results. Learning materials that addresses specific spelling or reading problems are suggested by the literacy coach. This means that the teacher does not necessarily change the “permanent” learning materials. In some situations, the literacy coaches are also entering a political role suggesting learning materials that the municipality has decided that the schools must use. Time also influences the possibility for the literacy coach to follow up.