Coaching as a pedagogical method

by Katarina Andersson

Coaching can be defined as  ”processes to set free och develop the potential of people”. This definition corresponds to the visions of Folkuniversitetet – to provide people with the best possible prospects for a richer life, by engaging them to continuously add to their knowledge and develop their skills through a variety of creative activities.

People have different ways to learn new things, and we need a variety of methods to make learning and teaching successful, effective and interesting for the students. Coaching as a pedagogical method has met more and more interest the latest years, to be used in combination with other methods.

In recent years the coaching area has grown – from sports to working life and private life. Folkuniversitetet works with coaching aiming for new jobs and career planning, but also with coaching aiming at personal development, with the goal to support people to find the ways to a life in balance and good health.

A coach must create conditions for the person to work forward against explicit goals which he or she expresses themselves. The coach will not give any answers, but must be a support for the person in the development process. The coach listens, asks questions, gives feedback in order to:

• Open up for new possibilities and to remove obstacles
• Promote the person’s own answers and motivation
• Give focus, support and motivation
• Create results

Some years ago, coaching was only used when we talked about sports. Now the area is broader – first the methods began to be used in working life and career planning, now it is used both in education and in other areas to help people forward, for example “life-coaching”, in personal development and in rehabilitation. You use team coaching when you want people to work better together, life coaching when you have problems or want to stop smoking or something like that, there is labour market coaching – the officers in the employment office shall work with coaching, the teachers in the schools are coaches for their students, and so on.

As a short summary, coaching is the art of improving other people´s achievements, ability to learn and personal development. The coach is a guide and gives support to another person in her process of development, and gives her knowledge and methods to reach the goals she (or he) has put up in a given situation, for example to accomplish better and get better results. The coach helps other people to reach their most important goals.

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