What is coaching education?
It may seem a strange question to ask. I have been involved in formal education of coaches/mentors since 2004 and coach supervisors since 2009.
I have been deeply committed during this time to higher level education as the route to effective practice, teaching on the MA in Coaching & Mentoring Practice at Oxford Brookes University and the programme of professional development in Coaching Supervision.
These programmes are founded on the principle of developing criticality and reflexivity in preference to mechanistic ‘skills’.
What are the keys to coach education:
“Criticality is essential because the objective of coach education is not only to assimilate the knowledge of the discipline, but to evaluate it, to be discerning about it, to be able to identify what knowledge is meaningful and in what contexts.”
”Reflexivity is equally important for coaches in order to become aware of their values and principles of change and development, of their drives and intentions as an element of building an approach to practice that is congruent with their understanding of the way they are.”
Bachkirova, T. Jackson, P. Gannon, J. Iordanou, I. & Myers, A. (2017) ‘Reconceptualising coach education from the perspecitve of pragmatism and constructivism’, Philosophy of Coaching: An International Journal, Vol 2, No 2.