Coaching Practitioners and Families to Provide Academic Instruction to Young Children: A Systematic Review of Single Case Experimental Studies

Early academic skills predict later achievement, yet many caregivers and teachers feel unprepared to teach academics to young children. Coaching may be effective at supporting these adults to provide academic instruction. In this systematic literature review, we identified eight single case design (SCD) studies in which coaching was used to support the use of academic instruction with children aged 2–5 years. We coded studies using a researcher-developed coding scheme and the Single Case Analysis and Review Framework (SCARF). We found many authors did not report critical components of the intervention and variability in the number of quality indicators present and strength of outcomes. Thus, there is insufficient evidence from the SCD literature to support that coaching practitioners and caregivers to provide academic instruction in early childhood settings is an evidence-based practice. Implications include the need for more research on coaching in academic instruction in early childhood, as well as a need for more stringent reporting of coach, coachee, and intervention characteristics.