Discourse Within the Interactional Space of Literacy Coaching

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you to the authors for submitting this valuable and well-conceived study. The paper clearly contributes to the body of knowledge on discourse within instructional coaching sessions, and there are a few areas that I believe would strengthen the paper.

The two overarching areas for improvement relate to the idea of both “literacy coaching” and "discourse," which are included in the title. In the Introduction, the authors discuss literacy coaching specifically, but many of the findings focus on instructional coaching more generally. Additionally, the Discussion begins with a purpose statement that does not mention literacy coaching; instead, the statement is about instructional coaching, in general. If the purpose of the research is, in fact, to understand what happens in literacy coaching sessions, there should be more of a discussion related to how the coaching sessions that happen between a literacy coach and a teacher may differ than in a coaching session with a content-area coach. The authors could return to this difference in the Discussion session to highlight how the findings are specific (or perhaps not) to literacy coaching.

The second area that needs a bit more development is the focus on Discourse Analysis. This method is applied somewhat unevenly – in the Findings, for example, the number of times a word is uttered is counted in Research Question 3, whereas in the prior research question, there is a description of language use and the interaction is analyzed thematically. In addition to explaining why choices were made about how and when to apply aspects of Discourse Analysis, I would have liked to see more of a discussion about the importance of analyzing language use, especially when the authors state their research questions. Why is language use a specific part of the focus? The authors do address this on page 4, and I think the manuscript would be strengthened if the authors include the rationale in other areas of the manuscript as well.

Additional comments are as follows:

On page 2, lines 55 – 62, the authors pose several questions – could any of these become additional questions or sub-questions related to the study? Right now, the questions remain unanswered and therefore a bit distracting to the reader.

Findings, Research Question 3:, p. 24 To report on the findings related to this question, the authors switch the format to pre-observation and post-observation (rather than thematic headings, which were in the earlier questions). I recommend being consistent in how findings are presented.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. The paper is well-written, manifesting the depth of the investigation.
2. The greatest argument against this paper is the use of one coaching pair. The case of these mentor and mentee as participants of the study may show the limitation given the background and the context. The success, the positioning, and the defined characteristics may only be taken in that context. Literacy coaching in this particular paper may only be defined in such context.

Author Response

Comment 1: The greatest argument against this paper is the use of one coaching pair. The case of these mentor and mentee as participants of the study may show the limitation given the background and the context. The success, the positioning, and the defined characteristics may only be taken in that context. Literacy coaching in this particular paper may only be defined in such context

Response: Thank you for your insight on the limitations of this study. Though we feel that the findings of this study add to discourse surrounding successful literacy coaching, we agree that scope is a limitation. We have begun to analyze other coach-teacher dyads which we hope will extend the conversation.