We experimentally compare two modes of in-service professional development for South African public primary school teachers. In both programs teachers received the same learning material and daily lesson plans, aligned to the official literacy curriculum. Pupils exposed to two years of the program improved their reading proficiency by 0.12 standard deviations if their teachers received centralized Training, compared to 0.24 if their teachers received in-class Coaching. Classroom observations reveal that teachers were more likely to split pupils into smaller reading groups, which enabled individualized attention and more opportunities to practice reading. Results vary by class size and baseline pupil reading proficiency. * Results reported on in this study forms part of the Early Grade Reading Study (EGRS) which was lead by the Department of Basic Education to find out how to improve early grade reading. We are grateful for useful feedback from Servaas van der Berg, David Evans, Clare Leaver, Rob Garlick, James Habyarimana, and an anonymous pair of reviewers.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.