Q1: What is practice-based coaching?  

<Denise Binder>

Practice Based Coaching (PBC) is a key strategy to use with primary caregivers and other adults to facilitate positive adult-child interactions. Coaching is a relationship-based method of professional development that has several different formats. You may have heard things like expert coaching, or peer coaching, or maybe even self-coaching. Coaching primarily involves a practitioner and a coach who helps facilitate the practitioner’s implementation of some sort of evidence-based practice, or DEC Recommended Practices, that may lead to or hopefully leads to positive outcomes for children. The PBC process uses the Live or Expert Coaching Model and is adapted from the National Center for Quality Teaching and Learning. PBC is widely used by Head Start and Early Head Start as well as other early childhood programs. PBC occurs within the context of a collaborative partnership. A skilled coach will take time to respect and nurture their partnership through the use of researched strategies that prepare practitioners for the coaching process. Research of the PBC model has shown that it is within this goal-focused partnership that we see long term change of instructional practices. When practitioners feel supported to use Recommended Practices, all children get the assistance they need to become engaged in the learning environment. It is the goal of PBC to move practitioners from a place of hearing and learning about Recommended Practices to actually feeling confident and prepared to implement Recommended Practices in their classrooms or early childhood programs. PBC can also be used to support practitioners when implementing any type of initiative, e.g., pre-literacy, numeracy, or social skills initiative.