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1. District leaders in support of coaches: Examining district mathematics leaders’ support for school-based mathematics coaches

   Kochmanski, N; Wilson, PH; Rhodes, G; Recore, J (February 2025, NCSM Journal of Mathematics Education Leadership)
2. DISTRICT LEADERS IN SUPPORT OF COACHES EXAMINING DISTRICT MATHEMATICS LEADERS’ SUPPORT FOR SCHOOL-BASED MATHEMATICS COACHES

   Kochmanski, N; Wilson, PH; Rhodes, G; Recore, J (January 2025, NCSM journal of mathematics education leadership)

   Mathematics coaching differs significantly from mathematics teaching, and many coaches transi- tion to the role directly from teaching with limited opportunities to learn to work effectively with teachers. Although coach professional develop- ment can provide one source of support for coach- es’ learning, coaches might also benefit from close work with other accomplished facilitators of teach- ers’ learning, such as district mathematics leaders. This study analyzed interviews with 15 district mathematics leaders to understand whether and how they supported school-based mathematics coaches. We found 13 of 15 leaders worked closely with coaches to support them, and we identified seven ways they did so (e.g., classroom visits with coaches). Our findings have significance for re- search on district leadership and district leaders’ support for coaches. 

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3. Leveraging Mathematics Teacher Leaders in Support of Student and Teacher Learning

   https://doi.org/10.1080/19477503.2022.2140989  

   Rigelman, Nicole; Lewis, Chandra (January 2023, Investigations in Mathematics Learning)
4. Summarizing Behavioral Change Goals from SMS Exchanges to Support Health Coaches

   Gupta, Itika; Di Eugenio, Barbara; Ziebart, Brian D; Liu, Bing; Gerber, Ben S; Sharp, Lisa K (July 2021, Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue,)

   null (Ed.)

   Regular physical activity is associated with a reduced risk of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and improved mental well-being. Yet, more than half of the US population is insufficiently active. Health coaching has been successful in promoting healthy behaviors. In this paper, we present our work towards assisting health coaches by extracting the physical activity goal the user and coach negotiate via text messages. We show that information captured by dialogue acts can help to improve the goal extraction results. We employ both traditional and transformer-based machine learning models for dialogue acts prediction and find them statistically indistinguishable in performance on our health coaching dataset. Moreover, we discuss the feedback provided by the health coaches when evaluating the correctness of the extracted goal summaries. This work is a step towards building a virtual assistant health coach to promote a healthy lifestyle. 

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5. Agents of change? How district leaders shape absorptive capacity within research–practice partnerships

   https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-08-2024-0275  

   De_Voto, Craig; Pitvorec, Kathleen; Cosner, Shelby; Siciliano, Michael D (June 2025, Journal of Educational Administration)

   PurposeThis study explores how district leaders shape the absorptive capacity of research–practice partnerships (RPPs) when addressing local problems of practice. Design/methodology/approachDrawing from Farrellet al.(2019), we focus on three core partnership domains shaping absorptive capacity: (a) prior knowledge, (b) communication pathways and (c) strategic knowledge leadership. We then employ a mixed-methods, multiple-case study design (Yin, 2013), highlighting two districts participating in a five-year National Science Foundation grant (2019–2024) to improve math instruction and learning. Data collected include semi-structured interviews (N = 180), the Visions of High-Quality Mathematics Instruction Rubric (VHQMI), social network surveys, meeting observations (N = 80) and the effective teams rubric (ETR). FindingsData suggest that district leaders variably shape an RPP’s absorptive capacity to engage in joint-partnership work. Notably, these differences are related to the degree to which district leaders promote or hinder the assimilation of new knowledge among other stakeholders within the RPP network. Originality/valueIndeed, we do not yet know how district leaders moderate stakeholder involvement within a given RPP network and how such involvement might influence the partnership’s absorptive capacity to address local problems of practice. 

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