Coaching for Systems and Teacher Change

Pierce and Martin’s systems coaching aims to create the space for leadership teams to acknowledge what is and is not working and to provide guidance and support for how to create, communicate, and adhere to systems or processes that focus on whole system change. –Daryl Michel, Ph.D.,

Jennifer D. Pierce, Ph.D., is Senior Technical Assistant Consultant/Researcher for American Institutes for Research (AIR) with experience working as a teacher, coach, and building- and district- level leader. She also has served in higher education as an adjunct instructor. Her areas of expertise center on supporting the implementation of evidence-based interventions by teachers and schools, including teacher and systems coaching models to reduce the research-to-practice gap; implementation science and systemic change, including frameworks across fields and factors associated with sustained use of evidence-based interventions; and the application of Multi- Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) across general and special education. Dr. Pierce also has a background in literacy instruction for struggling learners. Dr. Pierce works in two capacities at AIR: to provide high-quality technical assistance to educators and to conduct meaningful research with practical application to the school setting. On the research side, Dr. Pierce serves as the implementation and coaching lead for several randomized control trials. She is also the project director for an Institute of Education Sciences (IES) funded study examining the psychometric properties of a MTSS fidelity tool. On the technical assistance side, Dr. Pierce leads coaching and systems change projects for national technical assistance centers, including the National Center for Systemic Improvement (NCSI). Dr. Pierce is committed to translating research into usable materials for teachers, coaches, and leaders. As a prior colead for the Global Implementation Society Standards Committee and founding member of that worldwide group, she stays attuned to the most recent findings of implementation science to improve the uptake of research in educational settings. Toward this end, she has authored peer-reviewed articles, numerous free, online tools (including coaching modules), and this book. Dr. Pierce is originally from Seattle and earned her doctoral degree in special education from the University of Washington. She lives in New York City with her wife.

Kimberly St. Martin, Ph.D., is the Assistant Director of Michigan’s Multi-Tiered System of Support (MiMTSS) Technical Assistance Center. She regularly works with State Education Agencies, Regional Education Agencies (REAs), and districts across the country to assist them in successfully using an implementation infrastructure that can scale the components of an integrated behavior and reading Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) model. Dr. St. Martin is a panel member for an Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Practice Guide focused on supporting adolescents in Grades 4-9 who need reading intervention supports. She collaborates with the National Implementation Research Network (NIRN) in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Effective Implementation Cohort. Dr. St. Martin has also directed a federally funded adolescent literacy model demonstration grant and has been a coprincipal investigator for a Low-Cost Evaluation Trial, Integrated Tier 2 IES grant. She coauthored the Reading Tiered Fidelity Inventory (R-TFI) and implementation capacity assessments for districts and REAs to guide their supporting infrastructures for an MTSS framework. Before working with the MiMTSS Technical Assistance Center, Dr. St. Martin was a school administrator and teacher with experience in urban, urban-fringe, and rural school districts.