It struck me that most people think they know what coaching is, but most people could not tell you where coaching comes up against mentoring, teaching, consulting or therapy.
As an ex-teacher, I often use school-based settings as a metaphor for any explaination as it’s my experience that most people have common understanding around what happens in a school, as most of us have been there, and experienced it as a student or a parent, at least.
Collins dictionary defines a coach coarsely as a teacher or instructor, but this is not right. The role a teacher has in a classroom is to take the student on a learning journey, which will invariably involve moving them through Bloom’s Taxonomy as they deepen their knowledge and understanding on the topic.
Considering the deepening of learning, as devised by Bloom, the teacher in the classroom starts out as consultant (for the Remebering and Understanding levels) only then to they shift into the role of mentor, as they encourage the student to use their understanding to apply, analyse and evaluate what they have learnt, in these levels, the teacher is in the role of a mentor, only moving into the role of coach as the student becomes proficient enough to use the learning to create something novel.
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