Invited paper: Educational coaching – coaching psychology for students’ development of positive learning dispositions and higher-order thinking capacities
Dr Qing Wang PhD
Coaching psychology is increasingly applied in the field of education for school leadership development, teachers’ professional development, and students’ well-being and academic growth. Educational coaching is defined as a systematic facilitative methodology to enhance individual’s academic performance and develop thinking and learning capacities based on established coaching psychology approaches. This presentation starts with articulating how coaching psychology contributes to students’ learning processes and teachers’ facilitation of learning. It then proposes evidence-based educational coaching frameworks that specifically target enhancing individual learner’s positive learning dispositions (e.g., mindful agency, resilience, self-determination) and higher-order thinking capacities (e.g., meta-cognition, strategic awareness), combined with various learner-centered pedagogical approaches. Empirical studies and personal reflections are shared in the presentation and these address critical discussion on the role of coaching psychology in facilitating people to learn how to learn.
Dr Qing Wang is a chartered psychologist and accredited coaching psychologist. She is Associate Professor in Educational and Coaching Psychology at the School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, and a Visiting Professor at Neag School of Education, University of Connecticut. She has more than 12 years’ experience in coaching psychology in the field of education. With a genuine interest in coaching psychology for learning, she explores, designs, delivers, and evaluates coaching models and approaches with teachers and students in secondary schools, medical schools, vocational schools, universities and in parents’ education. She uses ideas from CBT, mindfulness, narratives, motivational interviewing, solution-focused and positive psychology approaches to provide a comprehensive service that encompasses professional and personal issues.