How can Coaching Make a Positive Impact Within Educational Settings?

There is growing acceptance that large-scale educational reform is needed to meet the challenges of the 21st century. The contribution that coaching can make in these settings has been the focus of recent discussions and research. Much of the research comes from the UK, USA and Australia, and these will be reviewed to provide an overview of some of the approaches that have been used. A systematic literature search has been done using the keywords “coaching” and “education”, followed by a manual search based on references. Articles, books and reports were read in order to extract the most relevant and the most interesting studies. There is an emerging evidence-base that coaching is a powerful tool to support learning and development for students, teachers, school leaders and their educational establishments. A variety of coaching approaches have been used successfully. These approaches are outlined: behavioral coaching, solution-focused coaching, cognitive and cognitive-behavioral coaching, instructional coaching, executive coaching, peer coaching, and positive organizational leadership. The coaching approaches are also reviewed based on their focus on the three main educational actors: students, teachers, and school leaders. The contributions made by positive psychology for creating learning cultures within schools are also reviewed. All coaching approaches can provide valuable contributions, but ultimately school improvement will fail if coaching remains on an individual level. Therefore, systems of collective and collaborative learning are necessary to generate a collective learning culture