Coaching or Instructing?

[daz6215]

On the back of one or two of the threads that are active at the moment I would be interested to know what methods are currently used when conducting training. Do you use one or perhaps both, and what are the benefits for the method that you do use? How do you use your questioning skills and what do you do with the answers you receive?

“Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.”
― E.M. Forster

[Horse]

I think there might have been a thread with info about this recently . . . Possibly the 'dogma' thread?

Also recent:
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=4471 Coaching Techniques - Free Guides

[daz6215]

Ah I haven't read that, thanks

[daz6215]

It will be interesting to see how the new DSA check test develops as it appears to consider both methods.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... xample.pdf

[Horse]

Found the text below amongst an article, called 'The 7', on good teaching practice Possibly overlaps with the 'progress' thread


The fifth lesson I teach is intellectual dependency. Good people wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. It is the most important lesson, that we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives. The expert makes all the important choices; only I can determine what you must study, or rather, only the people who pay me can make those decisions which I enforce.

This power to control what children will think lets me separate successful students from failures very easily. Successful children do the thinking I appoint them with a minimum of resistance and decent show of enthusiasm. Of the millions of things of value to study, I decide what few we have time for, or it is decided by by faceless employer. The choices are his, why should I argue? Curiosity has no important place in my work, only conformity.

Bad kids fight this, of course, even though they lack the concepts to know what they are fighting, struggling to make decisions for themselves about what they will learn and when they will learn it. How can we allow that and survive as schoolteachers? Fortunately there are procedures to break the will of those who resist; it is more difficult, naturally, if the kid has respectable parents who come to his aid, but that happens less and less in spite of the bad reputation of schools.

Good people wait for an expert to tell them what to do.

The sixth lesson I teach is provisional self-esteem. . . . Our world wouldn't survive a flood of confident people very long so I teach that your self-respect should depend on expert opinion. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged. A monthly report, impressive in its precision, is sent into students' homes to signal approval or to mark exactly down to a single percentage point how dissatisfied with their children parents should be. The ecology of good schooling depends upon perpetuating dissatisfaction just as much as commercial economy depends on the same fertilizer. . . . the cumulative weight of the objective-seeming documents establishes a profile of defect which compels a child to arrive at certain decisions about himself and his future based on the casual judgement of strangers.

Self-evaluation, the staple of every major philosophical system that ever appeared on the planet, is never a factor in these things. The lesson of report cards, grades, and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents, but need to rely on the evaluation of certified officials. People need to be told what they are worth.

[Zebedee]

Horse, do you know if the DSA is adopting coaching for bike training too?

[daz6215]

A clip from Sir John Whitmore, forward the clip to about 12 mins where he starts to discuss responsibility.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fld90L6Hkw

[Horse]

Horse, do you know if the DSA is adopting coaching for bike training too?

As far as I know - I'm not active in L training or RPMT - the impending changes for ADIs aren't being applied [yet]. However, it would seem likely/reasonable that the RPMT assessments would reflect the new ST1 format against the published training standards.

[Zebedee]

You aren't involved with RPMT?! How come?

[WhoseGeneration]

Found the text below amongst an article, called 'The 7', on good teaching practice Possibly overlaps with the 'progress' thread


The fifth lesson I teach is intellectual dependency. Good people wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. It is the most important lesson, that we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives. The expert makes all the important choices; only I can determine what you must study, or rather, only the people who pay me can make those decisions which I enforce.

This power to control what children will think lets me separate successful students from failures very easily. Successful children do the thinking I appoint them with a minimum of resistance and decent show of enthusiasm. Of the millions of things of value to study, I decide what few we have time for, or it is decided by by faceless employer. The choices are his, why should I argue? Curiosity has no important place in my work, only conformity.

Bad kids fight this, of course, even though they lack the concepts to know what they are fighting, struggling to make decisions for themselves about what they will learn and when they will learn it. How can we allow that and survive as schoolteachers? Fortunately there are procedures to break the will of those who resist; it is more difficult, naturally, if the kid has respectable parents who come to his aid, but that happens less and less in spite of the bad reputation of schools.

Good people wait for an expert to tell them what to do.

The sixth lesson I teach is provisional self-esteem. . . . Our world wouldn't survive a flood of confident people very long so I teach that your self-respect should depend on expert opinion. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged. A monthly report, impressive in its precision, is sent into students' homes to signal approval or to mark exactly down to a single percentage point how dissatisfied with their children parents should be. The ecology of good schooling depends upon perpetuating dissatisfaction just as much as commercial economy depends on the same fertilizer. . . . the cumulative weight of the objective-seeming documents establishes a profile of defect which compels a child to arrive at certain decisions about himself and his future based on the casual judgement of strangers.

Self-evaluation, the staple of every major philosophical system that ever appeared on the planet, is never a factor in these things. The lesson of report cards, grades, and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents, but need to rely on the evaluation of certified officials. People need to be told what they are worth.

Hmm, a rather political statement.
But true.

[Horse]

You aren't involved with RPMT?! How come?

Many reasons, not all relevant to here.

But partly that there was no benefit to me or my trainees - much of what I did was for my, and my trainees' agenda, not DSA's.