Coaching Cultures in School
Research shows that coaching in Education has a positive impact on learning outcomes. Throughout my teaching career I have been grateful for the opportunities to learn from colleagues and visit schools around the world. I am interested in how other countries use coaching and how their approach improves outcomes for children and young people.
One of these opportunities came about when I attended the first Lapland International Forum for Education (LIFE) in Rovaniemi, Finland. This was an international conference with participants from 18 countries. LIFE 2017 was an exclusive opportunity to visit Finnish schools, talk with the local teachers and students.
Developing your leadership is an important concept within the Finish education system and in particularly the skills of reflecting and thinking. Through observation and dialogue with the different schools we visited, 'coaching cultures' were well established. It became more apparent as to why this may be when visiting a teacher training school. Students are assigned a teacher and a trained coach. In addition to planning and teaching lessons in the teacher training school, student teachers could work as 'supply teachers' across different schools from their second or third year of training. This enabled them to gain practice and experience whilst training as well as earn a wage as a teacher. The teacher and coach were there to support the learning from these experiences and ask questions to develop their thinking and practise further.
This experience helped me to think strategically about developing coaching cultures within schools. It really highlighted the importance of creating a solid foundation to work from. Coaching needs to be defined with the whole community and pupils, staff and families need to experience and learn the skills for coaching.
Jasmine Miller Coaching works with schools to help them to shape their coaching culture. We look at coaching opportunities across the whole school community. Get in touch if you would like to find out more by clicking on the link below.
