Coaching in Education Podcast Series

Kate Grayson feels fortunate to have been coached by some wonderfully supportive people very early in her school career. Going through that process inspired her become a champion of coaching in her role as Deputy Principal at Churchlands Senior High School in WA.

In this interview, you will hear how Kate uses a coaching approach to inspire the development of others so that they can confidently meet the demands of their rapidly growing school community.

You've completed your coach training and are keen to start implementing coaching in your school. But where to start?

In this short interview, Chris Munro, Growth Coaching Senior Consultant, gives us some practical tips on what happens after the workshop – moving from learning about coaching and how to do it, to actually enacting it in your local context.

Maria Serafim is a Director with NSW public schools where she has worked for more than a decade and currently supports 32 Principals. Maria is well-known to many in the field of education leadership, in particular for her application of a 'Solutions Focused' coaching approach to strategy and planning.

Maria's story is an important one in terms of engaging, learning and growing for impact and improvement in education.

A Solutions Focused (SF) approach offers a way of managing change that leads to faster progress. It's about finding what works and doing more of it.

In this interview Annette Gray, Director of Strategy and Development at GCI, shares the story of the success of the SF approach and gives a demonstration to show how adopting a Solutions Focused approach in conversations can lead to quick insights.

The fundamental element of any sort of organisation is not necessarily a human being, it's a relationship. It's conversations that build, grow, and sustain those relationships.

In this interview Jason Pascoe, Director at Growth Coaching International, explains the importance of each of the interactions within a school's complex relational environment.

Stephen Auer's message is one of continued development for everyone - with coaching as a supported and confidential way of doing that.

As Principal at Hercules Road Primary School in Queensland, Stephen has implemented coaching not only as a way to build teacher capacity but also as a way to give every child at the school a better chance of improving.

Together with six other schools and Method Lecturers from Macquarie University, Killara High School teaching staff have embraced Peer Coaching in a way that is constructive, sustainable and which links teaching goals to strategic directions and standard descriptors from the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers.

In this interview, Alison Gambino explains how coaching underpins their professional learning and supports teaching practice improvement.

Developing teachers and students in the Northern Territory is John Cleary's passion. He believes the coaching process supports people to move from proficient to highly accomplished and lead in their practice, and that those standards really talk about what impact one can have on others.

In this interview, you will hear about the impact John, Principal at Casuarina Street, is making – from improving the staff retention rates to the significant improvements in reading, writing and numeracy achievement for students at his school.

Some leaders perceive 'crucial conversations' as potentially negative - but not Steve Harrison, Principal of the Stella Maris Catholic Primary School at Point Cook in Victoria. Steve embraces a coaching culture, freeing him, and his team, to talk about what really matters in a constructive way, so that conversations are shared and partnerships built and learning happens.

In this interview, you'll hear how Steve embodies a coaching way of being. His passion will inspire you.

Back in 2012, Professor Christian van Nieuwerburgh wrote the book Coaching in Education: Getting Better Results for Students, Educators and Parents. He understands that ultimately that's what interests us all: getting the best results for everyone in our school community.

Since then, there has been more research into this area and in this interview Prof van Nieuwerburgh delves into the interplay between theory, research and practice and looks at coaching as an applied intervention.