‘Coaching Co-creates; enabling professional and personal growth through coaching’ An invitation to a dynamic conversation

Our theme is coaching in in education and beyond, and how it enables professional and personal growth. We would love you to join us. The evening includes a live chain reaction conversation, with six contributors taking the role of interviewer and interviewee in turn. This will allow cases of practice and research to be discussed and themes to emerge.  The second part of the event will be an open discussion with the event participants.  The session will be hosted by Professor Rachel Lofthouse. 

We are really looking forward to welcoming out event contributors who bring with them insights and expertise from research and practice and who will be reflecting on coaching across a range of contexts. In this blogpost they offer some key insights which provide a flavour of the conversation to come. 

Angie Browne (@angela__browne) is a former Headteacher, coach, diversity, equity and inclusion consultant and author. She is interested in creating safe professional spaces in coaching that also enable an examination of the sometimes opposing forces of personal agency and institutional or systemic restrictions and barriers. Angie works with women and with people of colour who work in education and public sector organisations where these systemic pressures are felt and where she has seen the power of coaching to enable personal growth when these pressures are realised and articulated. 

Yamina Bibi (@msybibi) is an Assistant Headteacher in East London. Yamina has embedded a whole school coaching programme which all teachers and support staff are entitled to in order to ‘elicit the brilliance within them.’ Yamina believes that in school coaching programmes can be transformative for a school staff member and can contribute to staff development, wellbeing and retention. 

Melanie Chambers (@BSBMelanie) is Deputy Head and Whole School Leader for Professional Learning at the British School of Brussels.  She is a CollectivEd Fellow and student on the PGCert in Coaching and Mentoring for Education Practitioners. Melanie believes in the collective potential we hold as educators and fellow professionals and in the possibilities of ‘what might be’ when professional learning is effectively supported through critical friendship, coaching, mentoring and trusted leadership. Melanie notes that school leadership has an important role in facilitating this learning through valuing the skills and knowledge of all staff.  She considers that leaders do this well when believing in the curiosity of others to learn, being open and approachable, being skilled in offering feedback and developing an understanding of coaching and a capacity to coach others in their roles.

John Campbell (@JohnGCI) is the Founding Director of Growth Coaching International (GCI). He led the GCI work in coaching in education from 2004-2019, following many years as a teacher and curriculum consultant. He continues to explore ways in which the benefits of coaching for educators can be made more accessible and cost-effective and is involved in doctoral research investigating these topics. In particular, John is interested in how brief, informal conversations can become significant coaching opportunities. With Professor Christian van Nieuwerburgh, John was the lead author of The Leader’s Guide to Coaching in Schools (Corwin, 2018) and he is currently researching and writing a book about coaching-based leadership.

Andrew Abraham (@AndrewAbraham11) is Head of Subject for Sport Coaching at Leeds Beckett University. His work focuses on understanding what coaching is, how it works best and what the implications are for coach development. Over the last yen years his and colleague's work has extended to also defining the role of coach developers in the process of coach development. The basis of Andrew's work is to define coaching as a Professional Judgement and Decision-Making process. This approach focuses on coaching as a first person, relational activity examining how coach's judgement and decision making process allow them to achieve goals. 

Tanya Ovenden-Hope (@unieducator) is Provost and Professor of Education at Plymouth Marjon University and Marjon University Cornwall. She has over three decades of experience as a teacher, teacher educator, senior leader and educational researcher. Her research focuses on identifying and finding solutions for inequity in education. Her focus on coastal and rural schools since 2010 has resulted in a the conceptualisation of Education Isolation and how place can limit a schools access to resources required for school improvement, such as a high quality workforce and CPD. Tanya developed the RETAIN Early Career Teacher Retention programme, a pilot funded by EEF, that targeted educationally isolated primary schools and used coaching, collaboration and classroom to improve retention. Tanya values, and has facilitated, coaching and mentoring for teachers’ professional development and learning in all education sectors for many years. 

So, will you join us for our conversation on coaching? We welcome attendance and discussion with participants working in a variety of educational settings. Our contributors would love teachers, leaders, coaches, policy-makers and researchers to be present and contribute to the discussion. 

To book a place please use this link.