Coaching Skills in Online Math Coaching : A Transcript Analysis

Sammanfattning: The expansion of online math support is creating a new learning context, which raises questions about complementary learning and coaching in the online environment. This study explores the online learning environment with a focus on coaching skills in the one-to-one synchronous setting of the Math Coach Project (Mattecoach på nätet). With the aim to explore and identify possible coaching skills in the one-to-one synchronous communication between coach and coachee in online mathematics coaching, the study is based on the following research questions: How are the identified coaching skills manifested in the communication between coach and coachee?; What coaching skills are displayed more frequently, respectively less frequently?; To what extent does the variables course level and message length affect what coaching skills that are manifested? The six coaching skills: Provide emotional support; Encourage Discussion; Elicit coachee’s level; Goal Oriented communication and Encourage reflection, are identified from previous research on coaching skills and are explored by using a transcript analysis of coaching conversations. As a result, a table with manifestation indicators for each skill is presented. The skills are shown to be manifested with declining frequency in the order they are mentioned, where the skills Provide Emotional Support and Encouraging Discussion were manifested over 100 times in the material, while encouraging discussion was barely manifested at all. The result of this study also indicates that course level and conversations length to some extent affect what coaching skills that are manifested. Course level affects one third of the manifestations, while length affects almost two thirds, which implies that conversation length is affecting what coaching skills that are expressed to a greater extent.