In-service teacher attitudes to coaching in the E-LIVE (Engaging Languages in Intercultural Virtual Exchange) Erasmus + Project

Résumé En

Our presentation will provide a detailed account of teachers' attitudes to the performance of coaches in the E-LIVE project (2022-2024). Within the educational field, the term "coach" is used as a synonym of teacher, or to describe teachers involved in reciprocal "peer coaching" (Cox, 2012). Here we use "coach" exclusively to designate a person within a virtual exchange project who aids teachers with the organizational, technological, and pedagogical aspects of virtual exchange (VE). There is scant research into this type of coaching-an exception being the pioneering work of Melchor Couto & Jauregi (2017) who administered a coaching questionnaire to 23 secondary school teachers in the TILA European project. The questionnaires contained 5-item Likert scale questions for them to rate the help they received setting up partnerships, with task design, with technical problems, with platforms, with organisational aspects, and with evaluation. Other questions focused on timeliness in coaches' responses, satisfaction with coaching and confidence to carry out VE independently. In this conceptual replication study (Polio & Gass, 1997), a similar questionnaire was administered to 14 primary and secondary school teachers involved in the E-LIVE project in June 2023. The results ranged numerically from 3.9 to 4.7 for the first questionnaire (TILA) and from 4.2 to 4.5 in the second (E-LIVE) showing a very favourable response to coaching. Teachers in both questionnaires commented on how essential coaching had been, especially for teachers new to VE. Finally, teachers reported that having a coach facilitated the exchanges, gave them a better idea of how to use the diverse platforms available, and provided them with someone to turn to for support. We will discuss the implications of questionnaire results for coaching in the next iterations of VE within the E-LIVE project.