What Is Student Coaching? How It’s Different From Tutoring (And Why It Matters)
While setting up Invicta, I struggled to define what it is I actually do. Initial explanations to friends and family often resulted in a common response: “so you’re setting up a tutoring business?". Tutoring is common, everyone understands the concept, a student needs extra help with a class, a tutor provides very specific support and the student passes the test.
Let me be very clear, there are some wonderful tutors out there, who do a great job helping students understand difficult skills and concepts. There is a clear need for their expertise and many learners are better off for their support.
In my career as a Head of Year, I was responsible for analyzing student performance across my cohort. I would have dozens of conversations with parents throughout the year discussing a student’s report card. Many would look at a poor grade in a class and immediately employ a tutor to help with that specific class. Unfortunately, for most students: this is the wrong advice.
The key here is to understand why that student has under performed in that area. A 10 minute conversation with a student asking some direct questions can be very revealing.
Have you spoken to your class teacher about your grade?
How many hours of independent study do you complete every week?
When you study for a test, what are you doing?
When your teacher gives you feedback, what do you do with it?
How hard are you working in class?
Have you completed all of your homework assignments?
Almost always, the reason for a poor grade is caused by a problem with the students' approach to the class and their wider study habits (or lack of them) rather than a subject specific difficulty. Are they working hard enough? Do they learn from their feedback in the most effective way?
By employing a specific math or English tutor, are we really addressing these problems? In most cases no. Tutors are great at explaining complex difficulties or being able to walk a student through a specific test. However, if the reason for the poor performance is caused by a fundamental issue with their learning habits, employing a tutor simply avoids this problem. More worryingly, we allow that problem to sit unaddressed, potentially holding back a student in other classes.
Schools do a great job of teaching students knowledge and skills within certain classes - math, science and English for example. However, when it comes to teaching learners how to be a great student, we’re playing catch up. Most schools simply do not have the capacity to teach students how to be great learners. There are schools out there trying really hard, but often it’s done on an ad-hoc basis. Learning support departments and counsellors do wonderful work teaching skills to some learners, but not all students have access to this.
So how does student coaching help? Firstly we identify strengths and shortfalls in a learners study approach across all classes. Then we provide tailored, structured support to guide that student on the right path. We’re taking the best practice from real world learners along with current research and embedding them into every day study.
Regular meetings with a learning coach can help students learn to prioritize and focus on the right things to support their own learning. The goal here is to give students the right tools to become efficient, independent learners. We’re able to help students set goals, organise their study, embed the right habits and mindsets and select the right study skills.
A math tutor might be able to provide a new perspective to a complex math problem that’s holding back a student. This is the time to employ a tutor. However, for most students, there’s always a more systemic or more difficult problem to address. This is when a higher level intervention is needed from a trained education professional.