Reimagining Instructional Coaching in Early Education (RICiEE)

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SRI is building the next generation of tools to support early childhood educators.

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Reimagining Instructional Coaching in Early Education (RICiEE) is an ongoing initiative that aims to expand access to high-quality early childhood education by improving the usefulness, usability, and scalability of classroom quality measurements. The RICiEE team partners with early childhood educators, early learning programs, early childhood systems leaders, policy makers, and families to transform how instructional coaching is conducted in prekindergarten classrooms.

Launched in 2022, the initiative encompasses multiple projects focused on developing innovative observation tools, leveraging emerging technologies – including artificial intelligence – to support educators, and examining new approaches to classroom assessment. Through these collaborative efforts, RICiEE seeks to enhance instructional coaching and assessment practices, leading to improved teaching practices and better outcomes for young learners. Across its projects, RICiEE has engaged dozens of early childhood programs, conducted hundreds of classroom observations, and gathered insights from numerous scholars, education technology developers, teachers, program leaders, and families. 

Our work

Reimagining Instructional Coaching in Early Education (RICiEE) is an ongoing initiative that aims to expand access to high-quality early childhood education by improving the usefulness, usability, and scalability of classroom quality measurements. Launched in 2022, the RICiEE team partners with early childhood educators, early learning programs, early childhood systems leaders, policy makers, and families to transform how instructional coaching is conducted in prekindergarten classrooms. 

The initiative encompasses multiple projects focused on developing innovative observation tools, leveraging emerging technologies to support educators, and examining new approaches to classroom assessment. Through collaborative efforts with diverse stakeholders, RICiEE seeks to enhance instructional coaching and assessment practices, leading to improved teaching practices and better outcomes for young learners. 

Since its launch in 2022, RICiEE has engaged dozens of early childhood programs, conducted hundreds of classroom observations, and gathered insights from numerous teachers, program leaders, and families. This comprehensive approach has yielded valuable data and insights that are shaping the future of instructional coaching in early education. The initiative’s work is leading to improved teaching practices and better outcomes for young learners by providing more accurate and nuanced assessments of classroom quality, offering teachers more timely and actionable feedback, making high-quality instructional coaching more accessible to a wider range of early learning programs, and informing policy decisions around early childhood education quality improvement efforts. 

RICiEE activities have been supported through partnerships with the Gates Foundation and through SRI’s Future of Education and Work Internal Research and Development program. These collaborations have been instrumental in advancing RICiEE’s mission to transform early childhood education through innovative approaches to classroom observation and instructional coaching. 

As RICiEE continues to evolve, the initiative is exploring several promising avenues for future work. These include developing AI-assisted coaching tools that can provide real-time feedback to teachers, creating culturally responsive observation tools that can work in the full range of U.S early learning programs,  investigating how video observations can be used to support professional learning communities among early childhood educators, and examining the long-term impacts of enhanced instructional coaching on children’s academic and social-emotional outcomes. 

RICiEE welcomes partnerships with researchers, technology developers, early childhood education providers, and policymakers interested in advancing the field of early learning quality measurement and improvement. Potential areas for collaboration include piloting new observation tools and technologies, conducting research on the effectiveness of various coaching approaches, developing and testing AI algorithms for analyzing classroom interactions, and creating professional development resources based on RICiEE findings. By reimagining instructional coaching through innovative tools, technologies, and approaches, RICiEE is working to ensure that all young children have access to the high-quality early learning experiences they need to thrive. 

Associated fields of research