Coaching for Effective Learning

A Practical Guide for Teachers in Healthcare

Maria-Teresa Claridge, Tony Lewis

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781315345406
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Medical Theory, Practice & Reference

Coaching for Effective Learning adopts a practical, how-to-do-it approach based on the real-life training experience of the authors. The methodology can be applied to a wide range of learning environments such as one on one, apprenticeships, mentoring, supervision, small group work and lecturing. The book considers the adult learning process and recognises different individuals' learning patterns, adapting participants' current skills to address new challenges. Undergraduate and postgraduate health and social care teachers and lecturers will find this book a very useful resource, as will general practice trainers, mentors, appraisers and supervisors. It will also be of interest to healthcare professionals interested in self development.

1
Introduction

 

So what is coaching?

Coaching is a word used in many different arenas and so you may come to this book with many preconceptions about what coaching is. Sports coaches help people do amazing things at the Olympics. Students who do not do too well at school may be coached to improve their performance. The concept of personal and professional coaching is gathering ground in many areas of business and teaching. Coaching is also sometimes seen as a form of therapy or counselling. Coaching and mentoring too, are often confused, though the overlap here is much more marked and both can use similar strategies. So what are the similarities and differences between all these things? Coaching and mentoring are probably the two most similar forms of support for development, and often use the same processes. Mentoring typically involves a colleague in the same line of business who can act as a guide, sponsor or support for a less experienced person, whereas a coach need not necessarily be in the same line of business as the person they are coaching. Coaching, we feel, is definitely not therapy or counselling. This is a trap that therapists who become teachers can sometimes fall into, and adopting a coaching style of working could encourage. As we discuss in the chapter on ‘designing the alliance’ (Chapter 3), it is a good idea to actually write into the contract that you will not be counselling. Boundaries are important in coaching, and there is a clear boundary between coaching and therapy.

For us coaching in the learning context is about enabling a learner to develop in the best way for them at the time, and to enable them to evaluate the choices open to them in order to move forward. It is about getting the ‘learning how to learn’ internalised so that it becomes part of the person for life.

And what happens in coaching?

Coaching is about working with people to help them be more effective in what they want to do. It works with a person’s own agenda rather than that of the coach. A coach rarely gives advice, rather works with a person by challenging, probing and asking questions.

There are several presuppositions about coaching. The first is the coach presumes that the learners themselves are resourceful; they have the means and understanding to help themselves solve their own problems. The essence here is that only the insectioniduals themselves know the full story. It is they who have to put into operation any agreed actions. They know what they can and cannot do. The coach acts by helping people find those inner resources and by helping them realise that they can use them effectively, often by helping them work with limiting beliefs.

The second is that the learner sets their own agenda. This means that the agenda is intensely focused around areas which are important to the learner, and only the learner themself can know what those areas are. This relates closely to ideas developed from the concepts of adult learning espoused by Knowles and others.¹ The challenge for a trainer is to know that there is a professional agenda as well, and to steer a path between meeting that agenda and working with the learner’s agenda.

The third is to know that you, the trainer as coach, and your learner are equals. This is discussed in more detail in the chapter on building the alliance between you as coach and your coachee (Chapter 3). This relationship of equals is fundamental. As one of the premises is that your coachee has all the resources within themself to solve their issues, it is axiomatic that they are as resourceful as you in dealing with their own problems, which means that the relationship between the two of you must be equal.

The fourth is to realise that your learner comes with a history, a past, as well as a future. Good coaches realise that issues learners bring up in the present are affected by what happened to them in the past, as well as by what their aspirations and goals are in the future. To work fully with your learner requires you to take notice of these things and treat the person as a whole.

Finally, coaching is about action, it is about helping your learner do something. This requires commitment from both parties. It requires commitment from you to work within the broad framework of coaching, and requires commitment from the learner to explore places where they need to change. Both of these can sometimes be quite uncomfortable. Change is always challenging, but change when you have a coach at your side is exciting.

So what is different about this approach to learning? Training, teaching and coaching all appear to be about learning. The main difference is that in the coaching environment the learner themself does the exploring. They find out what they need to know. They find resources both externally and internally. Sometimes you as the coach may turn out to be the resource they are looking for. But the learner will have decided what it is they need from you, and how they will use the material. This can at times be quite stressful for you as coach — you know what they should do to change things. You know what they need to know that will make all the difference. And you may well be right. Often though, by not knowing the full picture, or by not knowing the complete context of that learning for the learner, you will get it wrong.

Exercise

Think of a good learning experience you had some time in the past.

Really get into that experience, live it for real, and as you do that, see what you see, hear what you hear and feel what you feel.

What was the experience like? How was it good? What were the features of it that really worked for you?

Now think of a learning experience that was not good.

Again really get into that experience — or, if that is too uncomfortable, see it as if it were happening to someone else, as if you are standing back from it.

Again, what was the experience like? How was it not so good? What were the features of it that really jarred for you?

The guess is that the good experience had features where you were in charge, you felt valued, you knew what you wanted, and you were energised by the process and came away from it feeling you could do anything. And the bad experience was something about feeling small, feeling incompetent and useless, about feeling you would never get a handle on how to do it right, about never seeing yourself as being OK.

We believe that adopting a coaching frame of mind and of being, when you are teaching and helping others learn is more likely to produce good learning experiences. Try the strategies we offer in this book, and see what happens. As is said in neurolinguistic programming, try them on for size and see if they fit. We think you can walk a mile in these shoes, and what a fantastic mile it will be ...

How to get the most from this book

This book will be of value to you whether you are teaching on a one-to-one apprenticeship model or in small groups. Many of the chapters will also be useful to those of you who lecture to hundreds of students at a time. As teacher to yourself and to your children, this book will also be a valuable tool.

You will know how you get the most from books; you may flick through to get a flavour and then read sequentially; or you may be a ‘dipper in and out’ — or you may read cover to cover. We have written this book as a ‘how to’ manual, it is practical rather than theoretical. We suggest that you approach this book with an open and curious mind, and that as you read you stop and think about real cases, teaching scenarios that you personally have been involved in. The exercises that we have used are essential to the learning process — they will enable you to shift from conscious competence to unconscious competence. Take the time to do them and to answer the questions honestly for yourself, knowing that there are no right or wrong answers. Remember also that you are a learner too, be open to the learning as you teach and notice what challenges you; where you flow easily; where you are surprised; where you have fun and where you do not. Keep a note of these times and come back to the book and the exercises to discover what the stretch is for you. Above all, remember that you are human — this may all sound obvious, but the doing is harder than the reading. Practise one new thing at a time and allow yourself to have fun and enjoy the learning.

Reference

1 Knowles M. (1984) The Adult Learner: A Neglected Species (3e). Gulf Publishing, Houston, TX.

2
Curiosity-coaching for learning: a different state to learn from

Remember as a child the excitement of special treats, the anticipation of receiving a gift. The curiosity of wanting to know now, hunting in your parents’ favourite hiding place for that present, prying open the wrapping of parcels then trying to stick it all back together before you were found out. That’s curiosity.

Curiosity suggests playfulness, it is open and inviting. It is non-judgemental. Consider a baby learning to walk or exploring its environment, where despite the bumps it keeps on going and trying again. As adults learning a new skill we give up more easily, informed as we are by an educational culture of right and wrong. The art of curious wondering and trying different ways is often much harder for the adult. How often have you heard the learner paralysed in fear of judgement ask ‘yes, but what is the right way?’.

Suspend judgement and wonder instead

We use judgement every day of our lives, we have to in order to decide what to pursue or what to avoid. However, there is a potential danger in the rapid and rigid judgements that are so often required of any professional. We tend to use stereotypes and we put up ‘either/or’ choices to justify our own or others’ positions. The danger of judgement in learning and development is two-fold, in the rejection and in the acceptance. Something rejected vanishes from our perception and attention; it is difficult for it to resurface in our thinking. Equally, something may be accepted so unquestioningly that there is no room for options and flexibility related to person or circumstance.

We are well aware of the dilemmas this creates in real life where there are rarely completely right or completely wrong answers. For many learners, particularly those trained in deductive or scientific methods, the measure of achievement is in the ability to be ‘right’. For these learners, the loss of curiosity and creativity about themselves and the world is...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Forewords
• Preface
• About the authors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Curiosity-coaching for learning: a different state to learn from
• 3 Building the relationship between coach and learner: designing the alliance
• 4 What do you want … and how will you get it?
• 5 Feedback: the foundation for learning
• 6 Coaching tools
• 7 Meta-models and meta-programmes: why do people always …?
• 8 Beliefs and values
• 9 The secrets of success – the art of modelling
• 10 And finally
• Index