Practice Areas
Innovative teaching and learning

Coaching learners

 

Coaching students is an increasingly important role for VET teachers, facilitating project work and team work, providing individual support, providing constructive feedback to learners, and networking with colleagues and companies in order to strengthen interdisciplinary approaches and work based learning.

Coaching involves one-to-one support for young people on an ongoing basis. Cedefop (n.d.) make a distinction between coaching and mentoring. Coaching has more clearly defined goals and objectives. Once these are achieved, it comes to an end. Mentoring is broader, with evolving goals/objectives. 

Cedefop has identified four success factors that can make coaching more successful:

  1. Build a relationship based on trust, implying that the teacher is perceived as supportive.
  2. Agree on improvement-oriented goals and activities tailored to the learner and empower the learner.
  3. Identify the right coach for the learner (the coach is not necessarily a teacher, but could possibly be a career counsellor, trainer or even a volunteer). Ensure that all coaches are trained in coaching.
  4. Offer long-term support.

Coaching can provide a positive role model to learners, support them with their learning, offer opportunities to discuss and find solutions to challenges they may be facing, and provide them with an individualised response to their support needs. Coaching can have positive effects for the well-being of the learner, support people in developing career management skills by getting a positive future vision for themselves, and support learners in progressing in their learning.

Students do not only learn from teachers. To stimulate the development of competences, students are expected to learn more in hybrid contexts in which they are exposed to authentic situations and problems. Students should learn to take more control of their learning, plan their learning, learn to work together and reflect on their work. However, these competences are often not yet sufficiently developed, in which case it becomes important to get support from teachers.

Saxion teacher training college in the Netherlands unpacked the coaching abilities of teachers in four key areas (Woudt-Mittendorff & Visscher-Voerman, 2019):

  1. Create a safe learning environment in which students feel well.
  2. Ask questions that stimulate reflection and critical thinking of the students.
  3. Provide constructive and predominantly positive feedback that is aimed at specific tasks or objectives.
  4. Offer tailored support in the form of diagnosis, models, advice and hints.

 

Further reading:

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