Conceptualizing coaching within the home visiting field

Coaching has received attention in early childhood education, early intervention, and family science. In the home visiting field, coaching is a distinct professional development tool to improve home visitor effectiveness in meeting the complex needs of families, improve child development outcomes, and meet home visiting field priorities (e.g., home visitor recruitment, retention, and training). Home visitors dually serve in roles as coachees when receiving professional development and as coaches for the families with whom they work. This article focuses on the roles of home visitors as coaches and as coachees. We explore justifications for coaching, models of coaching, the timing of coaching, being recipients of coaching, and the delivery of coaching to recipients. This paper underscores the complexity involved in coaching in the home visiting field and the need for further research to develop a framework and procedures for coaching best practices. Using our exploration of home visitors as coaches and coachees, we propose implications for higher education.