The Tools Competition is excited to announce the four winners selected from 99 submissions in the Instructional Coaching for Early Childhood Education track!
Coaching is a critical process to support educators in receiving feedback and reflecting on their teaching practices to better support students. However, there remains an urgent need for effective coaching tools that are flexible and adaptive to teachers’ unique needs and student populations, particularly those at the early childhood level. This track sought to identify tools that expand teacher-centered principles in coaching practices while advancing learning engineering as a whole.
Winning tools in this track address a range of pressing issues in instructional coaching for early childhood education such as boosting effective instruction for multilingual learners and enhancing educator awareness of responsive learner interactions.
This track was run in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Winners of the Instructional Coaching for Early Childhood Education Track
- AI-BRIDGE: Advancing Instruction through Bilingual Recommendations for Inclusive Data-driven Guidance for Equity in Early Childhood Education | University of Minnesota (Growth Award)
AI-BRIDGE connects innovation with impact by providing educators with an adaptive and dynamic system to optimize the match between evidence-based instructional practices and multilingual children’s needs through precision learning.
- COEMET Coach: Classroom Observation of Early Math: Environment and Teaching Coach | University of Denver (Growth Award)
COEMET Coach App is a research based and validated observational tool for observing the quantity and quality of the math environment and teaching in preschool through 2nd grade classrooms.
- FIND-C: Filming Interactions to Nurture Development in Classrooms | Stanford University (Growth Award)
FIND-C is a strengths-based video coaching program backed by rigorous research that supports educators by reinforcing responsive interactions with children.
- LENA Grow: Support for Increased Interaction in Early Childhood | LENA (Transform Award)
LENA’s AI-enabled instructional coaching tool individualizes support for increased interaction in early childhood—transforming children’s futures through early talk technology and data-driven programs.
The COEMET Coach team was also named the recipient of the Implementation Impact Prize and was awarded an additional $100,000. The Implementation Impact Prize sought to expand implementation of instructional coaching tools in publicly-funded preschool settings. Competitors were invited to propose implementation plans to co-design, user-test, pilot, or validate their product.
Learn more about winners in all tracks here.
The Tools Competition is open to tools at all stages of development and is run over three phases with support for teams to refine their ideas. Finalists pitched their tools before a panel of judges. View judges in this track here.
To date, the Tools Competition has named 130 winners from 44 countries over four cycles. Winning tools are expected to reach more than 131 million learners worldwide by the end of 2027.
The 2023-24 Tools Competition was run with support from: Renaissance Philanthropy, Griffin Catalyst, Walton Family Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Siegel Family Endowment, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Ballmer Group, Calbright College, Axim Collaborative, Jacobs Foundation, Endless Network, and OpenAI.
Join our mailing list to receive updates on the next competition cycle—launching in September 2024!
