Stef and Rachel talk about Professional Development, Coaching and Mentoring in Education, with a specific focus on the Early Careers Framework and Contextual Coaching. We dig into the importance of relationships, nuance, challenge and the educational landscape in which we find ourselves as well as consider how practice can really be shaped to support and nurture teachers as professionals.

We talk about a recent research paper that Rachel has written and published with Trista Hollweck (@tristateach), titled Contextual Coaching: levering and leading school improvement through collaborative professionalism. The paper has many golden nuggets within it, of which we definitely do not get to cover everything within it in our conversation. The main focus is contextual coaching and collaborative professionalism, of which both have super powers in relation to quality improvement in schools and colleges. More to come on both of these in future podcasts. 

If you would like a copy of the paper then you are more than welcome to contact Rachel on twitter @DrRLofthouse or by email on r.m.lofthouse@leedsbeckett.ac.uk.