The Peer Coaching Programme is launched!
3rd April 2023
At the end of February 2023, the School of English launched its first ever ‘Peer Coaching’ programme for undergraduate students. In this blog post, Sophie (the programme Research Assistant) explains the motivation for the programme, and reflects on the first two workshops.
After becoming a qualified executive coach, Rachel (the Programme Director) quickly realised that her newfound coaching skills were extremely helpful in enabling students to think differently and arrive at their own solutions to problems. This sparked an idea: what if equipping students with the knowledge, skills and behaviours of coaching could empower students to reciprocally coach and support their peers?
Looking into existing research about coaching programmes for Undergraduate students, Rachel found evidence that coaching can be effective in improving students’ academic performance, employability, self-confidence and wellbeing. However, the peer coaching model used in most existing programmes often involved older or more experienced students being trained to coach younger or less experienced students: a one-way relationship closer to mentoring. Having been on both sides of coaching relationships, Rachel and Programme Coordinator Chloe are deeply familiar with how rewarding coaching can be, for both the person being coached and the coach themselves. As such, they wanted to design an innovative peer coaching programme where students would get the opportunity to both coach and be coached by a peer from within their academic department. And so the School of English’s Peer Coaching Programme was born.
When we began promoting the programme to students, it was clear that for many, ‘Peer Coaching’ was an unfamiliar concept. Nevertheless, 22 students were sufficiently curious to apply for the programme and thereby found themselves sat in anticipation in a campus seminar room for the kick-off workshop on a chilly day at the end of February.
In this ‘kick-off’ workshop, we focused on building strong foundations for the programme by exploring our motivations and our shared purposes for participating in the project. Using participatory methods and a magic sticky wall, we collated our individual goals for the programme and observed common threads. For example: the desire to build confidence and communication skills, to learn with and from each other, and to set and achieve goals - particularly those future-oriented goals that look ahead to life after University.
Having identified the group’s shared purpose(s), it was also important to develop a shared understanding of how we need to relate to each other during the programme. Through group discussions drawing on a range of previous experiences and future expectations, the students identified the Peer Coaching programme as a collective learning environment, where each of us is integral to the learning and development of each other. The students articulated a clear sense that we all need to be committed and accountable on multiple levels: to themselves, their coaching partner, and the cohort as a whole. Again using coloured paper and a sticky wall, the students turned this principle into a set of shared commitments to: help each other learn, create an inclusive environment, and put in the work.
The collectively-defined purpose and commitments lay a strong groundwork for the programme; provide a resource for the student participants and the staff team to return to for orientation, particularly if things get challenging; and will strongly shape the programme evaluation, where we will be looking to find out how far the students’ purposes and goals were met. This process also constituted a form of ‘contracting’; a practice which the students will be introduced to later in the programme.
After all this challenging but productive thinking, it was game time! In pairs or small groups the students were given a game or toy (assembled from Rachel’s attic) and a blindfold, and left to experiment, play, fail and learn. From jenga to dress-the-barbie, the students approached their experiment in different ways: some attempted to complete the task relying on the sense of touch alone, others were led by verbal guidance from their peers. Throughout the room there were sounds of jenga blocks tumbling down and laughter, as students tried to navigate the discomfort, vulnerability and uncertainty involved. Reflecting as a group on what they observed during these games, students highlighted the importance of thinking together, rather than alone; experimenting with language - ‘trying on’ different phrases until a shared meaning was found; and waiting in the wings for each other - being there to provide encouragement and guidance when needed while also giving their peers space. Through these games, the students were already identifying and trying out lots of the coach behaviours and attitudes that they will be taught in the next two training workshops, and which they will be putting into practice in their coaching partnerships throughout the programme.
Stay tuned for next week’s blog post where we will be reflecting on the two coaching training sessions.