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The Teaching and Learning Programme explained

What is the role of the Subject Learning Coach?

By attending the regional networks and completing the Professional Training Programme, Subject Learning Coaches will develop a range of skills that will enable them to coach their colleagues. They will present themselves not as ‘experts’, but as trained facilitators who will work alongside colleagues, and act as a critical friend to:

  • review current practice
  • clarify opportunities for future development
  • plan fresh perspectives and approaches to teaching and learning
  • support innovation and experimentation
  • review progress.

Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them.

Whitmore, J (2004)
Coaching for performance: GROWing people, performance and purpose (3rd edition)
London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing

The work of your Subject Learning Coach will be central in supporting the delivery of your organisation’s quality improvement strategy and in helping you to achieve organisational excellence. As a manager, you will need to plan how to make the best possible use of your Subject Learning Coaches’ expertise.

Some ways in which a Subject Learning Coach can work

  • On a one-to-one basis with new staff, with experienced colleagues who have reached a plateau in their teaching or with colleagues who are experiencing specific challenges.
  • With small groups of staff to facilitate the sharing of effective practice and the development of important cross-cutting themes such as differentiation, harnessing leaner engagement, active questioning and embedding information learning technology within the curriculum.
  • With curriculum management teams to support the design of new programmes or to deliver staff development sessions.

In addition, by attending the regional subject coaching networks, Subject Learning Coaches will keep up to date with new developments in teaching and learning. They will form partnerships with other teachers and trainers working in local organisations and as a result will be able to disseminate a range of shared ideas and information on evolving practice.

For further information relating to the work of a Subject Learning Coach, you may find it useful to read Good practice in the deployment of Subject Learning Coaches produced by the Association of Colleges (November 2005).

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What skills and competencies do Subject Learning Coaches require?

The role you expect your Subject Learning Coach to play in your organisation will influence your nomination for each of the subject areas. However, in addition it is important to focus on the personal skills and competencies that a Coach will need to possess if they are to motivate and enthuse others.

Ideally a Subject Learning Coach will be a qualified and experienced teacher who can demonstrate an impressive track record of using innovative and effective practice that has led to an increase in learner engagement and achievement. Enthusiasm is also an essential attribute for a Subject Learning Coach: enthusiasm for their own professional development and the opportunities the programme creates, and enthusiasm to work with colleagues. Enthusiasm is infectious and far reaching — one enthusiastic member of staff can inspire many more.

Equally a Subject Learning Coach will need to demonstrate a series of emotional competencies (explored further on the Professional Training Programme), which include:

Coaching is not merely a technique to be wheeled out and rigidly applied in prescribed circumstances. It is a way of managing, a way of treating people, a way of thinking, a way of being.

Whitmore, J (2004)
Coaching for performance: GROWing people, performance and purpose (3rd edition)
London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing

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