Abstract:

This paper describes experiences and observations dealing with pedagogic approach involving coaching as a part of education and development of students’ learning and skills in higher education. Education involving coaching can be very powerful in developing students’ analytical and practical skills. On the other hand, it requires very different approaches from instructors compared to traditional classroom teaching. This paper describes experiences and observations dealing with blending coaching in master’s education. It is based on the authors twenty years of experience in using coaching as part of teaching in higher education. Rapid coaching means here brief individual advisory and feedback given to students as part of instruction dealing with their practical and theoretical assignments.

Coaching is a process for enabling the development of the individual (Du Toit and Reissner, 2012). Coaching is based on dialogue between coach and a participant coachee, asking open questions, active listening, and reflections that are aimed at stimulating the self-awareness and personal responsibility of the participant (Passmore and Jastrzebska, 2011). The purpose of coaching is to foster and habituate self-directed learning: self-management, self-monitoring and self-modifying (Costa and Garmston, 2015). The coach facilitates the learning by prompting self-discovery with sophisticated conversations (Hakro and Mathew, 2020). Coaching and mentoring are close and overlapping concepts. They have sometimes been used synonyms or as a “unified package”, i.e. as a word pair “mentoring and coaching” (M/C) (eg. Ng, 2012; Jones, 2015). According to Ng (2005), coaching is more concerned with learning for performance and takes a short- to medium-term perspective, while mentoring is more concerned with learning for professional growth and takes a medium- to long-term perspective. The skills, techniques and tools are similar in coaching and mentoring. An important part of coaching is feedback because sophisticated feedback can greatly enhance professional growth and implementation of practices (Burleigh et al., 2023). Coaching can be very powerful method for improving students’ learning and skills, however it may be delimited with several practical restrictions. Time of coaching during the teaching devoted to students can be a challenge. While students may perceive coaching to be very helpful, they may have to compete for the time and feel there is not enough coaching time for them (Torío, 2019).

This paper, first, briefly reviews the literature of coaching. Second, based on the author’s twenty years’ experience, it describes experiences and observations on using rapid coaching in higher education. This paper describes the use of rapid coaching method in the context of master’s level education with students who are studying alongside a full-time job—and, who combine theory and practice in case assignments intending to solve practical real-world challenges, usually in their own organizations. It describes practices, advantages, and challenges of rapid coaching.

Keywords:

Rapid coaching, coaching, mentoring, student feedback, higher education, master education.