Effects of synchronous coaching in teacher training

Historically, the nature of coaching the teachers is asynchronously: a reflective discussion with the supervisory coach is the follow-up after a lesson has been taught. We expect that synchronous (immediate) coaching may complement and to a certain extent supplant the asynchronous feedback. Nonetheless, in order to investigate the additional effects of combining synchronous and asynchronous coaching, it is essential to obtain an insight into the effects of synchronous interventions separately from the asynchronous condition. Test subjects were assigned random to two conditions: synchronous vs. asynchronous. The participants were required to show teacher's behaviour on the basis of video fragments. An observer scored the quality of this pedagogical action. It appeared from this study that synchronous coaching had significantly greater effects than the asynchronous condition on the quality of the pedagogical action of the trainee teacher.