EPAA Call for Papers

Education Policy Analysis Archives (EPAA) has just released a special issue on “Politics, Policies, and Practices of Coaching and Mentoring Programs”. Under relentless pressure to improve student achievement many states and districts have turned to coaching as a policy lever to catalyze instructional change. With the intent of improving instruction, coaching is used as a lever to increase teachers’ knowledge and skills related to a reform. In many coaching initiatives, coaches are uniquely positioned as intermediaries in the education system. At the district-level, coaches interact with central office administrators around instructional materials, testing, and budgetary issues. At the school-level, coaches can support teachers inside and outside of their classrooms. As instructional leaders, coaches and mentors help set a vision for instruction at their site and often play a role in managing student data.

More research is needed on the policies structuring coaching and mentoring programs, as well as the implementation of these programs. We lack an understanding of coaches’ role in the dynamics of change, including how their position as intermediaries influences their reform work. We know little about the relationship between forces from the macro-level and coaches or the relationship between coaches’ power and position and their interactions with teachers. Furthermore, more empirical studies are needed that compare the implementation of various coaching models and that consider how a single coaching model is enacted across multiple contexts.

Education Policy Analysis Archives (EPAA) announces a call for papers for a special issue exploring coaching with the goal of speaking to policymakers, reformers, and educators and will contribute to broader discussions about the potential of policy levers to improve classroom practice and educational outcomes. Research papers using interdisciplinary or mixed media (images/audio/video clips) formats are highly encouraged.

About the Journal: Celebrating its 20th year, EPAA is a peer-reviewed, open-access, international, multilingual, and multidisciplinary journal designed for researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and development analysts concerned with education policies. EPAA/AAPE accepts unpublished original manuscripts in English, Spanish and Portuguese without restriction as to conceptual and methodological perspectives, time or place.

Submission Information: All manuscripts should be submitted electronically through the EPAA website and follow the Journal’s submission guidelines: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/. Please submit to the “Special Issue” section. We will not consider manuscripts submitted for publication or published elsewhere.

Deadline: December 1, 2013
Publication date: June 2014
Early submissions are encouraged.

Guest Editor: Sarah L. Woulfin sarah.woulfin@gmail.com