Coaching and Mentoring
A Critical Text
- Simon Western - Analytic-Network Coaching Ltd
Coaching is often discussed as if it is a new 'profession' without adequate attention to how it has evolved, what underpins its practice or its training methods. Situating coaching in a wider social and historical context, Coaching and Mentoring: A Critical Text reveals that contemporary 'coaching theory' is more a collection of models and approaches mostly transferred from psychotherapy theory. Coaching claims to liberate creativity but can also entrap us by individualizing social experience. Author Simon Western brings a fresh and critical perspective on coaching and mentoring, challenging its normative assumptions and narratives, and proposing an ethical and emancipatory approach that takes it beyond instrumentalism and individualism.
Key Features:
- Accounts for how coaching has emerged and what discourses and normative practices underpin and influence contemporary coaching practice
- Develops a meta-theory of coaching that acts as a baseline for future developments
- Offers frames of thinking to support and guide coaching and mentoring practitioners and educators
This is a must read for coaches, mentors and coaching educators, and students and academics studying coaching and mentoring at both advanced undergraduate and graduate level.
Very readable text from an author with a clear passion to build a real sense of criticality and reflectivity to both coaching theory and practice. A real addition to the body of knowledge on key coaching and mentoring processes and thinking.
Valuable and insightful addition to the bookshelf
The critical approach is interesting for academic discussion but was not suitable for the aims of the course which were more related to concrete coaching procedures.
An interesting text which challenges some mainsteam understandings of mentoring and coaching.
good and adopted
I have used this to develop the strand of Coaching and Mentoring on our Mathematics Specialist Teacher course.
I haven't adopted it for students as yet but it will be useful for the cross-college mentor training I will be contributing to in the future.
A well written text but its structure is different from what I teach.
This books gives a very good ovrview of Mentoring and coaching styles, and underpins practice and discussions
This is well written text with specific issues for developing mentee in the workplace.
