Coach coach go!

Coach - coach - go! is a Grundtvig learning partnership funded by the European Commission. The project ran from 2012-2014 and resulted in this website, in which you can find information on coaching. If you are interested in setting up or joining a European Commission programm, you can go to this site.

 

If you wonder why the website is called gudfinna (instead of Coach - coach - go!): well, Gudfinna is our "Askalot" and supervised the making of this website on behalf of the team. If you wonder what an Askalot is, ask Gudfinna!

 

Below you can read a summery of the project description:

In adult education, the trainer plays an immensely important role.  The professional development and the improvement of the quality of adult learning staff has been recognised as a priority at European level. With new, global challenges in the educational sector, e.g. changes in society, politics, globalization, ageing population, cultural diversity, new technologies, knowledge management, communication, values and behaviour, continuous professional development has become a challenge for educational staff. Besides specific courses and training sessions, professionalization requires thorough and thoughtful reflection on the everyday teaching practice.

The European Commission report published in January 2010 „Key competences of Adult Learning Professionals: contribution to the development of a reference of key competences for adult learning professionals”. This report  identifies seven generic competences that are relevant for carrying out all activities in adult learning. Some of those, like expertise and didactic competence, are already addressed by formal teacher/trainer education, whereas others are not easily achieved by the traditional means of training. The latter comprise skills such as personal and interpersonal competence, the ability to empower learners and to deal with heterogeneity and diversity in groups. Coaching has the potential to identify the trainer’s individual needs and strengths and to provide support to develop those strengths and find answers appropriate to these needs. It addresses in particular soft skills such as motivation and empathy and allows the trainer to empower himself, his co-workers and his students.

In addition, coaching offers trainers a possibility to update and strengthen those skills as a part of the life long learning process. This project would also give organizations an opportunity to build on important forms of staff development such as peer support/coaching that, as mentioned before, are currently not sufficiently addressed in the adult educational system. Coaching can be seen as supported self-work. Through coaching, trainers explore and clarify the relationships between their values, knowledge and practice, which draws on concrete evidence to provide challenge and feedback into the system.

 

In-house coaching has a number of advantages as compared to external training sessions:
Firstly, adult educators face a heavy workload and increased administrative work. Attending training and courses for professional development is often an addition to the workload. With in-house and on-site coaching, the professional development is an ongoing process embedded in the daily working environment.
A second advantage is that issues can be addressed that are not easily tackled by conventional training/courses. As described above, the skills to empower and motivate students and co-workers cannot be learned in a workshop: they require communication, reflection  and (appreciative) coaching focused on developing the strengths and answering the needs of the trainer.

Finally, tailor-made coaching can be adjusted to individual needs and environments,  quite simply because they work from within that environment and the focus is on the individual needs of the coachees.

 

Although coaching is a successful and widespread approach in some fields like business, sports professional or personal self-achievement it is hardly known or used in European adult education. With common challenges in adult education throughout Europe, the need for agreed and transferable methods is even more urgent. Individual nations tend to adopt solutions that often address only their specific problems, even though despite cultural and demographic differences, the underlying causes and mechanisms are similar.

Hence , it is worthwhile

• to investigate whether and how models of coaching for leaders can be transferred to models of coaching for adult education trainers.

• to explore to what extend techniques and skills used in certain European educational contexts can be applied in other countries.

• to collaborate between different European partners in order to  promote coaching and bring it to a higher level as a means for professional development of the adult trainer.

• to bring together and exchange the fragmented expertise that has been built up in different adult organizations.