Page 105: Continued professional development - Coaching vs Mentoring

 Page 105: Continued professional development - Coaching vs Mentoring

Getting the culture right surrounding professional development is vital. Through fostering a culture of a school as a 'learning organisation', relevance to continued professional development is positively perceived and the impact of the development that it will have on pupil outcomes is understood. 

When reading around culture and successful practices to embed a good professional development programme, I learnt that drawing on both external and internal expertise are essential resources for teacher learning. Internal expertise is sustainable and allows your own to deliver training, additionally developing their own expertise. Drawing on the wider networks, utilising externals factors such as other schools, higher education institutes and online webinars widens areas of expertise and allows an expert for an identified improvement area, with an outside perceptive to be drawn upon. 

In current educational research, the buzz around professional development is around coaching vs mentoring and the use of the most appropriate for your schools need to be put in place.

To start ... what is the difference?

Coaching 

Coaching is a structured, sustainable process for enabling the development of a specific aspect of a professional teachers practice.

Mentoring

Mentoring is a structured, strainable process for supporting professional learners through significant career transitions.

An example of this and the different can be illustrated as the support given as a trainee teacher. Your 'class mentor' (the teacher of the class you are placed in) acts in the coaching role. As a trainee, you will also have the support of a 'professional mentor' often who is a member of SLT. They will provide a more mentoring relationship.

Whether you are coaching or mentoring, both of these support systems are built on forming strong professional relationships and establishing trust. Honestly, trust and respects allows for interpersonal respect, personal regard, integrity and competence. Key factors in a coaching/mentoring role.

This year, I have stepped into the role of coaching when supporting a trainee PGCE student. Supported by research from the university and EEF, we used instructional coaching which is interestingly currently the best evidence form of professional development. Instructional coaching is a 'goal based observational cycle'. The cycle consists of practice, observation and feedback. Each of these steps have key components that I would embed in supporting the professional development of the student.

Practice:

I ensure that the student has an opportunity to observe what is planning to be observe. To put it simply, ensuring high quality modelling of the desired expectation, clear steps to success provides a guide of what to do. Set professional development up for success.

Observe:

Observing practice is a tool of measuring progress towards the area of learning. When setting the observation, be clear on the focus area and ensure this is thoroughly understood and is the focus of the session.

Feedback:

Feedback is key. Ensure feedback is measurable and motivating. Providing nexts steps of practice examples, modelling yourself if possible always change to be accessible. 

I hope you have found this page interesting and consider giving instructional coaching ago when supporting continued professional development. 

- Miss Yeoman