The INTERACT intervention is a measure aimed at teachers in upper secondary education who wish to further develop their teaching practice. The initiative focuses on teacher-student interactions in teaching and how one can increase student involvement in learning activities in order to contribute to their social and professional learning.
The measures in INTERACT is fully digital and consists of four main elements that will be implemented in the school year 2022/23;
coaching of teachers based on video recordings from the teacher's teaching. The video recording, together with the professional framework Teaching Through Interactions (Hamre et al. 2013), will form the basis for professional conversations between a teacher and an external INTERACT coach. There will be seven rounds of coaching during the school year 2022/23. Each round of coaching is based on video recordings from a regular teaching session. The teacher and coach prepare conversations based on the video recording. Each conversation ends with a plan for further development of the teaching practice.
a webinar that introduces the academic framework related to teacher-student interactions, and which concretizes connections between the quality of teacher-student interactions and the practice of key principles and goals in the Competence Promotion 2020.
a workshop that facilitates the sharing of experience between the participating teachers.
online resources that provide academic replenishment and/or illustrate elements within teacher-student interactions.
In the school year 2023/24, 3 digital follow-up sessions will be held with groups of teachers. The intervention has been tested on a small scale both in lower secondary level and in upper secondary school. Based on the experiences in these two pilot studies, the intervention will be revised together with teachers and school teachers during the autumn of 2021.
Research on the effect of INTERACT
The study will contain both qualitative and quantitative data
Experimental design
The INTERACT intervention is evaluated in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) with at least 100 teachers and a class of upper secondary students who teach (approx. 2000 students). Fifty of the teachers will participate in the INTERACT intervention in the school year 2022-2023 and in three digital follow-up sessions in the school year 2023-2024. The other 50 teachers form a comparison group in the period 2022-2024 before they are offered the INTERACT school year 2024-2025 if the measure shows effect.
The study will include both qualitative and quantitative data. The teachers and pupils, both in the intervention group and the comparison group, will participate in questionnaire surveys three times: before the intervention begins, in August / September 2022 (Time 1), after the INTERACT intervention has been completed in May 2023 (T2) and one year after the intervention. is completed in May 2024 (T3). During the intervention period in the school year 2022-2023, the teachers in the comparison group will record one hour they teach with approx. 3 weeks apart, a total of seven times. One will thus have observation data from both the classroom/workshop in the intervention group and the classroom/workshop in the comparison group.
In addition, we will conduct an implementation and process evaluation to examine how the results of the intervention are affected by how the measure is implemented. In the implementation and process evaluation, we will use a combination of questionnaires (mentioned above), interviews and observations. All teachers who participated in the intervention group and a sample from the comparison group will be invited to participate in group interviews after the intervention has been completed in the spring of 2023. In addition, it may be relevant that some teachers are invited to individual interviews. Furthermore, the context INTERACT will be implemented in the review to see how factors in the classroom or school can affect the result.
The INTERACT protocol
The protocol outlines the mixed-methods cluster randomized controlled trial of the INTERACT teacher coaching intervention in upper secondary schools. The study investigates how video-based online coaching can support teachers’ competences in teacher-student interactions (TSIs) and thereby improve student engagement and learning. The intervention takes place over a school year with at least 100 teachers and 2,000 of their students. During the implementation and one-year follow-up, we will conduct an extensive implementation and process evaluation (IPE) to understand the intervention’s effects on TSI and student engagement and learning outcomes. This protocol outlines the background, design, intervention, and primary and secondary outcome measures as well as moderators. The protocol is published in International Journal of Educational Research.
Ertesvåg, S.K., Vaaland, G.S. & Lerkkanen, M-K. (2022) Enhancing upper secondary students’ engagement and learning through the INTERACT online, video-based teacher coaching intervention: Protocol for a mixed-methods cluster randomized controlled trial and process evaluation. International Journal of Educational Research, 22, 102013. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088303552200091X
