What the Research Says About Video Coaching in Childcare

Running a childcare center comes with a constraint most workplaces don't have: you can't pull a teacher off the floor to observe them without breaking ratio, and there's rarely a spare staff member sitting around to cover the room while they’re out. That makes coaching harder to do in a childcare setting than in a typical school building.

A recent eight-state analysis from the Buffett Early Childhood Institute found that 44% of the early childhood workforce active in 2023 had left the field by 2025, which is a loss of nearly 90,000 educators. Researchers in this study also point to the same underlying reason child development experts have argued for years. The quality of interactions between an adult and a child is the single biggest factor in outcomes for kids, so every time a program loses a trained teacher, it loses ground on the thing that matters most.

That puts real weight on professional development, which makes research on video important, including where the evidence is mixed and not just where it's flattering.

The best available synthesis shows real but uneven results

A 2022 systematic literature review in the peer-reviewed journal Review of Educational Research examined the existing body of studies on teacher video coaching. About half of the studies reviewed found positive changes in teachers' instructional behavior, but far fewer measured impact on students directly, and the reviewers were clear that "evidence was not consistently reported for all types of outcomes." At the same time, the review includes a directly relevant example. In one study of a video coaching intervention for caregivers in Dutch childcare centers, participants "outperformed the control group on all outcome variables at posttest and on four out of six outcome behaviors at follow-up."

Video is also used to make coaching reach more centers without going over budget and adding staff

A 2024 report from the Learning Policy Institute studied early childhood coaching systems in Alabama, Washington, and three California counties. It found that coaching can be effective "both in person and virtually," and that several of these systems deliberately use virtual coaching to supplement in-person visits and stretch limited coaching budgets further, which is a practical response to the same funding and staffing constraints most childcare programs deal with. The report also found that coaching works best when it's tied to the same quality standards and rating systems programs already use, rather than run as a separate initiative.

Teachers themselves report real, specific benefits and concerns

Researchers at SRI Education interviewed pre-kindergarten teachers about their experience with video observation as part of two ongoing studies. Many pre-kindergarten classrooms sit inside the same kind of full-day childcare centers, and the trade-off teachers described, a live observer standing in the doorway versus a camera in the corner, is the same one any childcare director weighs when deciding how to coach staff without pulling them off the floor.

Teachers described feeling less on-the-spot than during live observations. Others pointed out that video lets you catch things a live observer would miss. "It's like getting a bird's eye view of your own teaching," someone said. At the same time, the same research is candid that some teachers' initial reactions include hesitation about being on camera and about data privacy. These concerns eased over time in programs where video observation was a normal, established part of the culture, but they are worth taking seriously rather than waving away.

It works well for self-reflection, not just external coaching

A 2019 study published in Dialog had early childhood teachers record and score their own 15-minute classroom clips using the CLASS framework, then compared their self-scores to a trained coach's. By the end of the study, teachers were scoring themselves reliably and improved their practice. Just as notable were the teachers' own reactions, several said the unscheduled, video-based format reduced the anxiety that comes with a scheduled, in-person observation. This practice makes them feel more comfortable rather than constantly feeling nervous. Another appreciated being able to watch on her own time, whether that’s "on a break or in the luxury of one's own home.” Teachers in the study also started watching and discussing each other's clips informally, building the kind of peer learning community that's hard to create through workshops.

It fits directly into the licensing and rating systems childcare centers already have

Most quality rating and licensing systems such as ECERS, ITERS, and CLASS are built around structured, framework-based observation. Some states require these structured observations as a condition of licensure or of participating in publicly funded pre-K contracts. Video doesn't add a new layer of compliance, but it gives programs a more flexible way to gather the same kind of evidence they're often already required to produce.

It's not a fix for turnover on its own, but it supports the piece that matters

No study claims video coaching by itself solves the retention crisis in early childhood. What the research does consistently show is that the quality of adult-child interactions, and how supported teachers feel in developing that skill, are closely tied to whether they stay. A structured, low-friction way to coach and grow teachers is one tangible way programs can act on that finding, rather than just naming it as a problem.

What this looks like inside a childcare center

For a childcare center specifically, this usually means short clips instead of full-day recordings. It can be reviewed during one of the few quiet times a center's schedule has, such as nap time, instead of a director trying to find coverage so she can sit in a classroom for a formal observation.

The most useful versions of this work within whatever quality framework a center has, whether that's CLASS, ECERS, or Danielson, will allow them to produce evidence for licensing and QRIS reviews instead of creating a separate process alongside them.

Some tools also use AI to flag notable moments within a clip, so a director with no dedicated coaching staff isn't scrolling through raw footage on top of everything else she runs in a day, which can be a time burden that makes coaching hard to sustain in a short-staffed center. And because a center builds up a library of real classroom moments over time, that same footage becomes a practical way to onboard a new hire fast, which matters more in childcare than almost anywhere else given how often centers are backfilling a role, instead of relying on a handbook or hoping they shadow the right person before they move on their own with a room full of toddlers.

On the privacy side, it's important to look for tools built to meet COPPA requirements for handling children's data, with safeguards like face-blurring built in, so footage can be used for coaching without compromising a child's privacy or a family's comfort level.

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