Coaching in Education Annual Survey report 2016

Objectives:

To capture annual data on coaching activity, training and perceptions within the education sector.

Design and method:

The results reported here are based on an online survey link shared within and beyond the Growth Coaching International education community, primarily school leaders within Australia. Questions were multiple choice, ratings and some open ended to elicit more detailed responses. Responses were gathered over a 4 week period in November 2016.

Results Overview:

643 respondents. 78% long-time educators. 84% from within schools. 75% female. Senior Leadership were the largest single group in relation to their roles.

86% of respondents have been coached themselves and of those 97% said their conversations with colleagues had improved as a result. 93% had coached someone else. Of those, 92% had some coach training.

In relation to their decision to become involved in coaching the primary reasons were to improve professional practice and support personal and professional growth.

As a result of being coached, 89% of survey respondents agreed that their professional practice did improve. 88% of coachees agree that they are now more open to giving and receiving feedback and 88% agreed that their conversations with colleagues has improved.

RESPONDENTS

The majority of the Coaching in Education Survey respondents were senior leaders, female and have worked in education for over 15 years.
62% of survey respondents said that coaching is a formal part of their role.

EXPERIENCE OF BEING COACHED

86% of respondents have experience of being coached themselves. Roughly half were coached by someone within their institution and the other half by someone external to their institution.
89% of those to whom this question was applicable said that their professional practice improved after receiving coaching.
88% agreed that they were more open to giving and receiving feedback after being coached.
88% agreed that their conversations with colleagues has improved after being coached.
Whilst some were unsure whether their being coached had had any impact on their students, many others did agree that “yes, students seemed to have increased…. wellbeing (40%), resilience (31%), engagement (43%) and hopefulness (33%) as a result of my coaching.”

EXPERIENCE OF COACHING OTHERS

93% of survey respondents had experience of coaching others and they were mostly likely (59%) to have coached someone else from within their institution.
Most had coached others more than 12 times in the past 12 months.

COACHING TRAINING

Of those coaching others, 92% have participated in some sort of formal coaching training or professional learning.
The largest proportion of respondents (28%) had completed between 8-15 hours of training in the past 12 months.
People undertook coaching training because the following factors are important to them:
- It improves my professional practice - 99%
- It will support my personal and professional growth - 98%
- It enhances my relationships with colleagues - 96%
- The least important reasons for them in doing coaching training were:
- I need the hours for my accreditation/registration - 74% unimportant
- It’s mandated by my superiors - 66% unimportant
Since doing coaching training 94% agreed that their professional practice has improved.
Since doing coaching training 95% agreed that they were more open to giving and receiving feedback.
Since doing coaching training 94% agreed that their conversations with colleagues had improved.
Once again, we saw that some were hesitant to say categorically that they saw improvements in their students since they undertook coaching training. Those who did want to make a definitive response saw improvements in engagement (45%) and wellbeing (42%). There were also improvements noted in hopefulness (38%) and resilience (35%).
58% noted improved conversations with parents of students since they undertook coaching training.

COACHING CULTURE

Def: Coaching cultures exist when coaching is used consistently by all partners across the school community, to help develop learning, understanding and personal responsibility in others. C van Nieuwerburgh

Most schools are either starting to implement a coaching culture (38%) or building a coaching culture (37%), only 10% of respondents felt their school had a strong coaching culture already established.
When we asked which group of people could benefit the most from having a coach, the highest percentages pointed to ‘People being developed in their roles’ (91%) and ‘People who leads teams’ (89%) but we noticed in the ‘other’ section of the question many people said ‘everyone’ and ‘all of the above’.
When we asked which group of people would benefit most from having coaching skills, the two highest groups were ‘People who leads teams’ (95%) and ‘Those who have performance development conversations with others’ (90%).

COACHING IMPLEMENTATION

The area within the survey respondents’ institutions where the most coaching takes place is ‘coaching to improve professional practice’. This is also the area where most plan to extend coaching in their institutions.
The second largest area of coaching implementation is in ‘improving leadership skills’. This is the area which was identified as the second priority for future extension of coaching programs.
The third largest area of coaching implementation is coaching to improve students’ success and wellbeing. Again, this is the third priority for extension of coaching programs.
The area where coaching is least applied is in coaching to improve community relations. This is also the area identified as the least likely area for the extension of coaching programs.
12% of respondents said there was no coaching being implemented yet in their institution.

EVALUATION OF EFFECTIVENESS

Only a minority of respondents (35%) are aware of coaching evaluations taking place.
Those that do evaluate coaching do it in a number of ways such as (in order): Surveys (76%); Staff wellbeing (53%); Student results (42%) and Student behaviour (29%). Those who answered ‘other’ to this question included the following methods of evaluation: feedback, observation, discussion and critical conversations, for example.

Download the report here Coaching-in-Education-GCI-Survey-Report-2016.pdf