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This chapter aims to examine the ways coaching and mentoring are currently leveraged to deliver leadership development in higher education institutions. By exploring the variety of coaching and mentoring approaches and their deployment at different levels and across different institutions we are able to indicate opportunities for further enhancing leadership development in the sector through coaching and mentoring. The chapter examines peer-reviewed articles, sector reports and insights from key informants crafted into mini case studies. Mentoring emerges as a default approach to leadership development, in particular at early career stages and where inclusivity and diversity feature as part of leadership development programmes. Coaching is evident at the senior levels and offers a wider range of individual leader, senior team and organisational leadership development opportunities. Our cases highlight the range of responses and sophistication of coaching approaches and practices, from the highly embedded to other more piecemeal examples. The findings emphasise the importance of empirical research in this area to better understand and inform the sector of the wider benefits and opportunities of coaching and mentoring in supporting leadership development. Opportunities to support greater inclusivity and diversity in leadership should consider coaching approaches and practices too. This exploration of coaching and mentoring identifies why shifts towards coaching may be evident. It challenges those in the sector – researchers, people management and organisational developers, as well as senior leaders – to adopt more integrated and embedded coaching and mentoring initiatives to support the sector in addressing its current challenges.

The purpose of this literature review was to identify best practices in coaching faculty within higher education and the subsequent benefits of effective faculty coaching programs for the retention of quality faculty. In higher education, where an emphasis is on the delivery of curriculum for student learning, faculty performance reviews are not universally defined, nor are coaching practices consistently employed. Giving teaching performance feedback promptly to faculty may be a means to foster professional growth and enhance the implementation of progressive practices to benefit student learning.

The authors undertook a content analysis of current literature on the evaluation and coaching practices of higher education faculty that specifically addressed the quality and timeliness of feedback and gaps in practices.

Through this study, the authors gleaned recommendations for improving faculty evaluation, coaching, and feedback.

Developing coaching programs to include all higher education faculty may lead to improved teaching performance and alignment of the faculty with institutional goals. The insights from this study may provide the impetus to develop structures and processes for university-based professional development and coaching programs that could lead to positive student learning outcomes and better relationships among faculty.

This is the first review to use Cooper's systematic examination of current literature to explore the topics of faculty support, coaching, and development within higher education.

The present study proposes coaching as a pedagogical intervention to prepare students for transitioning to the labour market. Taking a competence-based approach, the proposed coaching practice aims to enhance students' employability competences to facilitate a smoother school-to-work transition. However, what transition coaching looks like remains largely unclear. Moreover, in competence-based education, teachers are expected to be highly skilled coaches, facilitating students' transition to the labour market. The present study aims to map the core competencies of a transition coach.

A qualitative design was adopted to map the core competences of a transition coach. Data were collected from two focus groups, consisting of coaches in higher education and in the workplace.

Results show that, to create the necessary support conditions, a coach creates a safe coaching environment and supports students in setting goals, guide them in the activities they undertake to attain these goals, and asks reflective questions. Moreover, the coach stimulates students' ownership by putting the student in the centre of the decision-making process. Furthermore, the results emphasize the importance of the coach's professional attitude and knowledge about the transition process and the labour market.

The article concludes with practical implications for novice transition coaches and teachers in higher education.

The present study adds to the agenda of graduate work readiness by proposing a coaching practice aimed at preparing students for their transition to the labour market.

Academic coaching (AC) has gained a significant attention to support student success and achievement in higher education, management and psychology. This study aimed to conduct a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of AC literature to identify the top authors, research patterns, hotspots and research topics in the field.

The study utilized a bibliometric analysis of articles published between 1987 and 2023, using descriptive and network analysis methods with tools such as RStudio, Biblioshiny, Excel and VOSviewer. The study also conducted functional, mapping and content analysis, to identify AC literature's key themes and research areas.

The results revealed an increasing interest in AC, with increased publications. However, there are gaps in geographical diversity and authorship. Most studies were conducted in the United States of America and the UK, and were published in education, psychology and coaching journals. Common themes included coaching, professional development, higher education and mentoring. Emerging research areas include: coaching efficacy in education, AC as an online learning support and professional learning communities. More studies are needed in different contexts and with larger sample sizes.

This comprehensive bibliometric analysis adds to the existing literature by presenting a detailed analysis of the field of AC, filling a gap in the current literature. The study's unique contribution is its examination of emerging research areas and themes in AC literature, providing directions for future research. This study is particularly relevant for researchers, practitioners and policymakers interested in understanding AC's state of the art and identifying promising areas for future research.

The research demonstrates the role of activity systems based in Cultural Historical Activity Theory as a means of analysing characteristics and efficacy of specific provisions of coaching in education.

Three examples of coaching in education were selected, involving 51 schools in England. The three examples were re-analysed using activity systems. This drew on existing evaluation evidence, gathered through interviews, questionnaires, focus groups and recordings of coaching.

In each example, the object of the coaching was to address a specific challenge to secure the desired quality of education. Using activity systems it is possible to demonstrate that coaching has a range of functions (both intended and consequential). The individual examples illustrate the potential of coaching to support change in complex and diverse education settings.

The use of existing data from evaluations means that direct comparisons between examples are not made. While data were collected throughout the duration of each coaching programme no follow-up data was available.

The analysis of the examples of coaching using activity systems provides evidence of the efficacy of specific coaching provision in achieving individually defined objectives related to sustaining and improving specific educational practices.

The research offers insights into how coaching in education might be better tuned to the specific needs of contexts and the challenges experienced by the individuals working in them. In addition, it demonstrates the value of activity systems as an analytical tool to make sense of coaching efficacy.

The aim of this study is to examine the experiences of business students on case method coaching for problem-based learning and its influence on student engagement and learning performance in the context of Malaysian private higher education.

This study applied quantitative method with a self-administered questionnaire survey was used to collect data from 410 undergraduate business students from five top private universities in Malaysia using convenience sampling. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to analyse the data, and five hypotheses were tested.

The findings reported that learning assessments, analytical skills, interpersonal skills and interdisciplinary learning have significantly influenced student engagement. Student engagement is positively correlated to the learning performance. Overall, the business students have positive perception on the case method coaching approach for problem-based learning as an effective learning tool in classroom. The case method coaching is able to garner students' interest in learning, improve engagement with peers and educators and enhance their learning performance.

Higher education institutions can leverage on effective planning and implementation strategies for case method coaching for problem-based learning through more effective coaching strategies, enhance education curricula, allocation of adequate resources, and qualified and trained business educators as coaches.

The present study provides new insights on coaching in business education. This study developed a new framework integrating features of case method coaching and problem-based learning to the outcomes of student engagement and learning performance within the context of business education.

The purpose of this paper is to present a review of the evidence base on coaching and mentoring in education, to provide a commentary on literature published in the first 10 volumes of the International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education (IJMCE) in particular and to offer some directions for future research in the field.

This review and position paper draws on the authors’ knowledge of the extant literature on coaching and mentoring in education, their own research in the field and their perspectives as editors of coaching and mentoring journals.

Among the outcomes of their review and commentary, the authors observe that coaching and mentoring research conducted to date largely occupies two separate fields, and studies published in one field frequently fail to draw on relevant literature from the other or recognise the overlap between them. The authors highlight a number of additional limitations of the evidence base on coaching and mentoring in education and offer some potential means of addressing these.

The paper offers an original reflection on current research into coaching and mentoring in education. It is intended that the paper will inform the design and publication of future studies in this area to strengthen the evidence base and, in turn, inform improvements to coaching and mentoring practice. In particular, the authors hope to encourage the ethical deployment of coaching and mentoring which enhances, rather than inhibits, the well-being of all participants, while realising other positive outcomes.

In this article, the outcomes of a survey aimed to investigate how aware of and how capable coaches in higher vocational Dutch education perceive themselves to assist students displaying mental health and well-being issues are presented. Additionally, the article explores coaches’ perceptions regarding the frequency, form of help offered, topics to be tackled and the preferred form in which this help should be provided.

The author conducted a survey that gathered qualitative and quantitative data from coaches (N = 82) at a Dutch University of Applied Sciences in the north of the Netherlands. A differentiation in coaches’ number of years of teaching and coaching experience was considered.

The outcomes of the data analyses showed that overall, coaches claimed to be very aware of students’ mental health and well-being-related issues and that female coaches tend to be more aware of these than male coaches. The group of coaches with 5–25 years of coaching experience resulted in being less trained to notice when students struggle with mental health and well-being issues. Overall, coaches indicated to be tentatively willing to assist such students and reported to have a rather low ability and capability to assist students who displayed mental health and well-being issues. More than half of the respondents declared that “face to-face” was the most appropriate approach to address mental health and well-being topics, and most of the respondents (43%) answered that it should be “offered at student’s request.” Some suggested topics to be offered were stress, depression, anxiety, study-related issues, study motivation, persistence, emotional intelligence and emotional resilience. Coaches proposed to be provided with trainings that equip them with the necessary knowledge, tools, and concrete mental health and well-being topics that could be addressed during coaching. Additionally, there should be a clear distinction between professional mental health help and coaching for mental health and well-being in universities.

There were very few studies that reported on coaching for mental health and well-being in higher education after the Covid-19 pandemic in the Netherlands to compare the results with; the sample size of this survey was small; the survey was designed to capture only the coaches’ perceptions on students’ mental health-related issues.

By performing this survey, more empirical knowledge is added regarding higher education coaches’ perception of their awareness, willingness, capability and ability to assist students who display mental health and well-being issues in general, and students affected by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in particular. Furthermore, insights regarding higher education coaches’ perception on the frequency, form of the help offered, topics to be tackled and form in which this help to be offered were gathered.

By performing this survey, more empirical knowledge is added regarding higher education coaches’ perception of their awareness, willingness, capability and ability to assist students who display mental health and well-being issues in general, and students affected by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in particular. Furthermore, insights regarding higher education coaches’ perception of the frequency, form of the help offered, topics to be tackled and the preferred form in which this help should be offered were gathered.

This study aimed to examine how the effects of traditional tertiary education (lecture format) on various outcomes – including goal attainment, psychopathology (stress, anxiety and depression), resilience, solution-focused thinking and self-insight – compare to effects of traditional education supplemented by health coaching, delivered through Zoom video-conferencing.

The study, which involved mature-age Israeli undergraduate students enrolled in a health promotion course (n = 178), used a randomized controlled between-subjects (pre-post) design. Participants were each randomly assigned to a traditional-education condition (n = 90) or to a coaching condition (n = 88). All participants attended 13 weekly course lectures; those in the coaching condition also participated in weekly Zoom-based coaching sessions, with trained health coaches. Each participant completed online questionnaire measures at the beginning and at the end of the semester. Data were analyzed using repeated-measures ANOVA.

Compared with participants in the traditional-education condition, those in the coaching condition showed, over the course of the semester, significant improvement in goal attainment, solution-focused thinking, self-insight, resilience and psychopathology. Participants in the traditional-education condition showed no change in these measures.

The authors’ findings suggest that health coaching, as a supplement to traditional lectures, can enhance undergraduates' goal attainment and multiple facets of their mental well-being. These findings may have significant practical implications for the vast numbers of students struggling to cope in higher education systems worldwide. The authors further suggest a range of alternative, coaching-inspired interventions that do not require development of a full coaching program.

In digital education curricular initiatives, some teachers are taking on key roles when appointed as instructional coaches (ICs) and become crucial in the sustainability of the initiative by coaching teachers. This study aimed to find out the difficulties ICs are facing when mentoring teachers in the development of the digital skills and to identify the coaching activities the coaches offer.

Employing a mixed-methods research design focusing on a qualitative approach, the research team conducted 6 focus groups with 38 ICs from 12 primary schools in Switzerland. Quantitative descriptive data were collected through a survey submitted before and after the focus group.

The results indicate that (1) the professional development (PD) activities offered to teachers vary greatly depending on the instructional coach characteristics and the school to which the teachers belong, (2) the in-service training of ICs should include coaching and leadership skills and (3) distributed leadership to ICs could facilitate the adoption of technologies by teachers and support change in the school.

Some ICs offer activities with a low involvement of the teacher. ICs' training programs should provide strategies to better take advantage of PD activities. The authors suggest training ICs in PD activities, aligned with Gibbons and Cobb's (2017) such as analyzing classroom video or lesson study involving a group of teachers working together with an expert to improve a lesson. District and school leaders should provide ICs with explicit guidance and more resources to achieve systemic change. ICs should also be empowered by being involved in the development of the school's continuing education training plans.

This study presents a new perspective about understanding and applying in-service teacher PD in the context of a digital education curricular initiative.