Coaching Students in Secondary Schools

Closing the Gap between Performance and Potential

Adam Abdulla

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138080492
• eBook ISBN: 9781351625197
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This practical, evidence-based guide provides a comprehensive introduction to the coaching of secondary school students. Using a clear, step-by-step structure, the book explores how coaching can help students improve performance, enhance wellbeing, develop skills and achieve goals. The ultimate aim is to help the student become his or her own coach.

Divided into six parts, Coaching Students in Secondary Schools explores all of the key aspects of coaching, from basic coaching skills to effective methods of evaluation. Having explained why coaching benefits students, the book shows readers how to adopt a 'coaching approach,' structure a formal session, launch a coaching programme and measure its success.

Topics covered include:

• the uses and benefits of coaching
• the evidence for coaching
• core coaching skills
• conducting coaching sessions
• the practicalities of coaching
• evaluating the impact of coaching.

With real-life scenarios and examples embedded throughout, Coaching Students in Secondary Schools will be essential reading for practising secondary school teachers, classroom assistants and student support staff.

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Part I

Background and prerequisites

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1 The benefits of coaching

In this chapter

● The many uses of coaching

● The benefits for students

● What makes coaching so effective?

The uses and outcomes of coaching

All educators (one hopes) want to get the most out of their students. Sadly, however, that aim is often not achieved. Students regularly run into obstacles that prevent them from fulfilling their potential. They may, for example, have difficulty in:

● settling in

● managing workload

● meeting deadlines

● revising for tests

● preparing for exams.

How can we help students with these challenges? One answer is coaching. In the next chapter, we explore what coaching actually is. Here we consider some of its major benefits for students. Coaching can and often does lead to significant improvements in all of the following:

● commitment

● perseverance

● resilience

● perceived self-efficacy¹

● well-being

● performance.

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Given these benefits, it is not difficult to see how coaching can complement and supplement teaching. Teaching focuses on the knowledge and skills required for academic success. Coaching contributes to that success by enabling students to manage themselves more effectively. It helps them to sharpen their focus, marshal their resources and make the most of their abilities. It allows them to overcome many common barriers to learning, e.g. inadequate self-discipline, poor time management and lack of self-awareness. Ultimately, it enables students to close the gap between their performance and their potential.

It is important, however, not to see coaching as merely a remedial intervention. True, coaching may be used to help students who are ‘underperforming’ in some respect. But it can also help students who are already doing well to do even better – what we might call ‘Coaching for Excellence’. In fact, coaching is an extremely versatile intervention. Consider the following scenarios in which coaching might be useful:

1 A student in Year 10 wishes to set up a society but does not know where to start.

2 A student in Year 11 is on course for straight As but believes she is capable of A*s.

3 A new Year 12 student is keen to settle in and become part of the school community.

4 A student in Year 13 wants to maximise her chances of getting into a good university.

In each of these cases coaching could be of considerable benefit to the student. Notice too that only one of the above cases is explicitly about academic performance. Coaching is much more than a tool for improving grades (though of course it can and does serve that end). In fact, there are countless scenarios that lend themselves to coaching. Generally speaking, coaching can be helpful whenever a student is keen to:

● deal with a practical challenge;

● accomplish a specific task;

● develop a particular skill.

There are of course a great many challenges, tasks or skills that a student might be concerned with. Coaching therefore has wide application when it comes to students.

What makes coaching so effective?

This is not the place to examine the coaching process in detail. We do that in the rest of the book. However, it may be useful to point out some of the ways in which coaching brings about the results mentioned earlier (e.g. improved performance). What is it that makes coaching so effective? There are many important factors. Below we consider four of them:

1. Self-determination

As we shall see throughout this book, coaching encourages students to take ownership of their lives. This results in a ‘proactive acceptance of responsibility for their own futures’ (Ives and Cox, 2012, p. 41). Coachees set their own goals, determine their own action-steps and make whatever adjustments they deem appropriate. This self-determination has several positive effects. For one thing, research has shown that students who are encouraged to be autonomous show greater motivation than students whom teachers ‘control’ (Ryan and Deci, 2000). In addition, when students take the initiative – as they are encouraged to do in coaching – then they are on their way to becoming self-regulated learners. As Zimmerman (1990) notes, self-regulated learners select, structure and create their own learning environments, proactively seek out information, take responsibility for their own achievement outcomes and report high perceived self-efficacy. In addition, ‘students who assume personal responsibility for self-regulating their academic activities not only outperform students who fail to self-regulate (Krouse and Krouse, 1981; Zimmerman and Martinez-Pons, 1990), but have higher self-esteem and self-concepts, and are less anxious and more self-accepting (Borkowski and Thorpe, 1994)’ (Grant, 2001, p. 4). Most schools would regard these as ideal outcomes. They are thoroughly promoted by coaching.

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2. Expanded awareness

One of the primary functions of coaching is to raise the coachee’s awareness (Whitmore, 2009). This is extremely important within education. Many students are barely conscious of the way they approach their studies, manage their time or tackle assignments. This can be a serious problem. Fortunately, coaching is a powerful remedy. Coaching helps students to see what they are doing. It encourages them to reflect on their approach in light of their goals. Two typical coaching questions are: ‘What are you doing to achieve your goal?’ and ‘How effective is that?’ In addition, coaching helps students to become aware of their strengths. Consider another typical coaching question: ‘What skills do you have that you could bring into play here?’ (Rogers, 2012). By expanding their awareness, coaching empowers students to overcome their challenges and achieve their goals.

3. Optimised decision-making

Another significant benefit of coaching is that it leads to optimised decision-making (Bresser and Wilson, 2016). This will be especially clear in Chapters 11 and 12, where we see how the coach helps the student first to explore her options and then to determine her action-steps. This is a very thorough process at the end of which the student decides what she is going to do to achieve her goal. With the help of the coach, she carefully weighs up the pros and cons of different options and chooses the ones that are the most feasible and effective. Going through this process not only helps the student to make progress in school. It also prepares her for the future. As many commentators have argued, students need to be equipped with the decision-making skills that are required in later life (e.g. Conklin, 2011). Coaching is an excellent way to accomplish this goal.

4. Improved time management

Coaching helps students improve their time management (Bettinger and Baker, 2011; Dawson and Guare, 2012). Typically, coaches help students to decide what tasks are most important, when to carry them out and how much time to allocate to each one. This can make a huge difference. There is good reason to think that many students underperform not because they lack ability but because they struggle to manage their time (Krouse and Krouse, 1981). Conversely, students who feel they have control over their time report less stress, greater satisfaction with life and improved academic performance (Macan et al., 1990). In helping students to improve their time management, coaching therefore promotes a wide range of positive outcomes.

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There are many other features of coaching that make it especially effective with students, including goal-setting, action-planning and performance and progress feedback. These are discussed in Chapter 3 so nothing will be said about them here. By this point, however, you should have a reasonably good idea of the benefits of coaching.

It is now time to define ‘coaching’ more precisely. In the next chapter, we therefore address the fundamental question: ‘What is coaching?’

Chapter summary

● Coaching complements and supplements traditional teaching.

● Coaching helps students to manage themselves more effectively.

● Coaching can be used to help students who are struggling. But it can also be used to help ‘high-flyers’ make further progress (‘Coaching for Excellence’).

● Coaching is more than a tool for improving grades. In fact, it can be used to help students (i) deal with challenges, (ii) accomplish tasks or (iii) develop skills in a wide range of scenarios.

● Many different factors make coaching effective. These include: self-determination, expanded awareness, optimised decision-making and improved time management.

Note

1 The concept of (perceived) ‘self-efficacy’ was introduced by Bandura (1977). It is akin to self-belief. A student with a strong sense of self-efficacy is confident that she can do what it takes to succeed in a given domain (e.g. her school work).

References

Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioural change. Psychologic...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Coaching Students in Secondary Schools
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I Background and Prerequisites
• PART II Core Coaching Skills
• PART III Coaching Sessions and Coaching Programmes
• PART IV Emotional Obstacles
• PART V The Practicalities of Coaching
• PART VI Evaluating Impact
• Appendix A: Generating Options
• Appendix B: Performance Goals and Learning Goals
• Appendix C: Student’s Coaching Form
• Appendix D: Coaching Contract
• Appendix E: From PITs to PETs
• Index