Coaching in Education

Getting Better Results for Students, Educators, and Parents

Christian van Niewerburgh, Christian van Niewerburgh, Christian van Nieuwerburgh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367101268
• eBook ISBN: 9780429912030
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Coaching in Education: Getting Better Results for Students, Educators and Parents will support educational organisations in learning more about the current interest in coaching approaches within schools, colleges and universities. With chapters on coaching in primary schools and secondary schools, with students, staff and parents, this book provides a sound basis for introducing coaching into any educational setting. This book brings together the latest national and international academic research with real case studies and a focus on practice that makes a difference for learners. Starting with a review of the existing literature and research into the area of coaching in education, the book goes on to consider the role of coaching educational leaders, coaching within the primary school setting and then secondary school settings. The notion of "mental toughness" and its relationship to coaching is also explored. The US and Australian perspectives on coaching in education are discussed in two chapters written by leading experts - instructional coaching in the US and the integration of positive and coaching psychology in Australia.

PART I

COACHING IN EDUCATIONAL CONTEXTS

CHAPTER ONE

Coaching in education: an overview

Christian van Nieuwerburgh

Coaching is already having an enormous impact on education. From the UK to the USA and Australia, the use of coaching is increasingly being seen as a useful intervention to support students, teachers, and administrators. In this book, we recognise and celebrate the ways in which coaching is already making a difference in educational organisations and offer ways in which schools, colleges, and universities throughout the world can further exploit the potential of coaching and mentoring.

For students, mentoring and coaching opportunities include providing peer support to fellow students to enhance examination results and improve academic skills. This type of coaching can also reduce stress whilst improving social and emotional skills. For teachers, educational leaders, and administrators, coaching and mentoring can help with transitions into new roles. Coaching is also used effectively to enhance teaching skills and drive up performance in educational organisations. The aim of this book is to support you to implement and embed effective coaching approaches and programmes into your educational organisation. To do this, we will consider coaching approaches and experiences from the UK, the USA, and Australia.

The focus is on the practical application of coaching approaches and the growing body of research into this area. We aim to provide the evidence-based, theoretical context for coaching in education while also proposing a number of specific, education-friendly coaching models that have been tried and tested in schools, colleges, and universities. Throughout, the approach is accessible and practical, using case study examples, diagrams, and stories from practice.

The new millennium

The past decade has witnessed a notable increase in coaching-related activities in educational contexts. Head teachers, principals, and university administrators have started to introduce coaching alongside more traditional continuing professional development activities. Coaching in education can take many forms and has an impact on a broad range of potential beneficiaries. This includes staff (such as teachers, school leaders, and university lecturers), students, and other stakeholders (such as parents, governors, and members of the community). Training in coaching skills now forms part of the professional development for school leaders in the UK and has been recognised as the new leadership skill for educators in the USA.

Key questions

If our aim is to harness the potential of coaching within educational organisations, a few questions need to be addressed first of all. As you will see throughout this book, coaching has enormous potential to make an important contribution to learning and development in its broadest sense.

What is the purpose of our educational systems?

To make the most of coaching interventions in educational organisations, it seems necessary for educational leaders, policy-makers, administrators, and practitioners to agree on the purpose of education. In other words, in order to address the issue of how coaching might support our educational systems, we need to be clear about what that system is trying to achieve. And yet “what is the purpose of education?” is a very challenging question that has been, and continues to be, fiercely debated. Traditionally, schools and colleges were often seen simply as places for the transfer of knowledge. However, it has also been recognised that “the business of education is not only intellectual. There must be an opportunity for the exercise of responsible choice … and also for the acquisition of skills” (Jeffreys, 1971, p. 118).

At a global level, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) proclaimed that “education shall be directed to the full development of human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms” (Article 26). In the USA, the explicit mission of the Department of Education is to “promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access” (2010). In the UK, the Department for Children, Schools, and Families (DCSF) stated that

ensuring every child enjoys their childhood, does well at school and turns 18 with the knowledge, skills and qualifications that will give them the best chance of success in adult life is not only a right for each individual child and family, it is also what we must do to secure the future success of our country and society. (2009)

If we accept that modern education is about learning as well as encouraging young people to exercise “responsible choice”, that it should support the “full development of human personality” mentioned in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that it has a role to play in social justice and equity, and that it can influence the future success of people and nations, then it becomes clear that coaching has a significant beneficial role to play through supporting, encouraging, and challenging students and educators to enjoy their educational experiences and achieve more of their potential.

On the other hand, an influential American educationalist, John Dewey, argued strongly against the notion of education having a purpose:

education as such has no aims. Only persons, parents and teachers, etc., have aims, not an abstract idea like education. And consequently their purposes are indefinitely varied, differing with different children, changing as children grow and with the growth of experience on the part of the one who teaches. (1916, p. 125)

Coaching, through its person-centred learning approach, is a powerful way of supporting all those persons involved in education. It supports the notion that learning should be personalised and changing. Dewey’s approach proposes that both the “student” and “teacher” develop and grow through the learning experience. As we will see later, this is a key principle of coaching in education.

What is coaching?

Much of the recent scholarly work about coaching has focused on executive coaching (e.g., de Haan, 2008; Dembkowski, Eldridge, & Hunter 2006; Hawkins & Smith, 2006; Passmore 2010; Peltier, 2010). In these texts and others, there have been numerous attempts to define the practice.

• “Coaching is a robust and challenging intervention, is results driven, delivers tangible added value, is typically a short-term or intermittent engagement and enables the attainment of high standards or goals” (Grant, 2007, p. 23).

• “The aim of coaching is to improve the coachees’ performance by discussing their relationship to certain experiences and issues” (de Haan, 2008, p. 5).

• “Coaching could be seen as a human development process that involves structured, focused interaction and the use of appropriate strategies, tools and techniques to promote desirable and sustainable change for the benefit of the coachee and potentially for other stakeholders” (Cox, Bachkirova, & Clutterbuck, 2010, p. 1).

• “Empowering people by facilitating self-directed learning, personal growth and improved performance” (Bresser & Wilson, 2010, p. 10).

It is fair to say that there is still ongoing discussion and debate about an agreed definition. There seems to be broad agreement that coaching is about helping a person to achieve their goals or improve their performance through structured one-to-one conversations.

Coaching in education

“Coaching in education” is a relatively distinct area of work that has been growing over recent years, starting in the early 2000s. Similarly to other sectors, educational organisations have used the term “coaching” quite loosely, to refer to a number of widely differing approaches.

In the UK, the emergence of coaching was supported by the publication of a Key Stage 3 National Strategy booklet in 2003 (Department for Education and Skills (DfES)). Sustaining Improvement: A Suite of Modules on Coaching, Running Networks and Building Capacity aimed to increase the range of tools available to school leaders to continually improve. In these relatively early days, the proposed form of coaching had a distinctly directive slant. However, the DfES was already optimistic about the impact of coaching, proposing that it “could have the power to transform teachers’ professional learning” (p. 23). Coaching was described as a “three-part process” which focused on lesson observation. The process involved a pre-lesson discussion between the coach and coachee, an observation of the classroom practice of the coachee by the coach, and a post-lesson discussion to analyse what had been observed. While the document accepted that a coach was not a “universal expert”, it suggested that this person should have “expertise in a particular area” that would be the focus of the coaching (p. 9). This point is further qualified when the document advocates that “coaching is often at its most powerful when the people involved teach different subjects” (p. 9). This is reinforced by the observation that the coach does not need to be “older, have more years of experience or hold a more senior management post” than the coachee (p. 23). Coaching in education, then, was an activity with classroom observation at its centre and professional learning as its aim. It involved two educational professionals, one with expertise in a particular area of practice, which was the focus of the coaching. The relationship was characterised as “confidential” and “based on trust” (ibid.). Importantly, there is recognition that ownership of the learning and the “desire to change and develop” should be within the coachee (p. 63). Overall, the document can be interpreted as strongly supporting a specific interpretation of coaching and its use in an educational setting.

The DfES document was followed in 2005 by a National Framework for Mentoring and Coaching as a response to the growing interest (and confusion) in schools about the two approaches. The framework attempted to clarify the definitions of mentoring and coaching and identify how best to use both (Centre for the Use of Research and Evidence in Education (CUREE), 2005). This outstanding five-page framework continues to be a good reference document, although it has been largely ignored by the educational and coaching communities.

Without attempting to impose a uniform model for schools to adopt, the document listed ten principles which were designed to inform coaching and mentoring programmes in schools in order to “help increase the impact of continuing professional development on student learning” (ibid., p. 1). The similarities between coaching and mentoring are highlighted when they are both described as “learning conversations” and “thoughtful relationships” based on trust and focused on professional learning. The document advocated the establishment of learning agreements before coaching or mentoring with school colleagues to support improvement. It recommended that the learner (coachee or mentee) should take “increasing responsibility for their professional development” and set their own goals. The principles suggested that a learner should develop an understanding of the theories that underlie any new professional practice and recognise the professional learning that emerges from coaching and mentoring (for both parties). The creation of a context that “supports risk-taking and innovation” is encouraged.

After outlining the shared principles of coaching and mentoring, the document helpfully defined three terms to cover the broad range of professional conversations that can usefully take place in schools: mentoring, specialist coaching, and collaborative coaching. Mentoring is defined as a “structured, sustained process for supporting professional learners through significant career transitions” (p. 2) and further subdivided into three categories: Mentoring for Induction, Mentoring for Progression, and Mentoring for Challenge. In all cases, the assumption was that the mentor was a more senior professional with significant experience in the area of learning.

“Specialist coaching”, which most closely resembles the practice promoted in the 2003 DfES document, was defined as “a structured, sustained process for enabling the development of a specific aspect of a professional learner’s practice” (p. 2). Specialist coaching was deemed appropriate for improving practice, professional learning, and the development of a “culture of openness” (ibid.). One characteristic that distinguished specialist coaching from mentoring was the fact that the learner often chose their own coach.

The third category was “collaborative (co-) coaching”, defined as a “sustained process between two or more professional learners t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ABOUT THE EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS
• SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD
• PART I: COACHING IN EDUCATIONAL CONTEXTS
• PART II: CASE STUDIES
• INDEX