Between responsive and directive literacy coaching: Achievement pressures, dialogic ethos, and epistemic authority

Navigating tensions between responsive and directive approaches is a well-documented challenge in literacy coaching. This study probes this challenge by examining two related coaching events in one underperforming elementary school, problematizing dialogicity within the inherently hierarchical coaching relationship. Using linguistic ethnographic methods, we analyze a coach's interaction with her mentor and her subsequent facilitation of the same activity with teachers. Our findings highlight the power of social positioning, epistemic authority, and epistemic artifacts to shape possibilities for dialogicity in coaching conversations. We argue that strategic use of shared knowledge artifacts, alongside directive coaching methods, may help scaffold dialogicity. • Coaches' preference for responsive over directive modes may lead to pseudo-dialogue. • Achievement improvement may demand elements of directive coaching. • Social and epistemic positioning shape possibilities for dialogue. • Strategic use of shared knowledge artifacts may scaffold dialogicity.