Coaching and Mentoring Students in Higher Education: Behind the Book - Adventures in Advising

Do you wish you had a more comprehensive, evidence-based guide for delivering coaching and mentoring interventions with your students? Enya-Marie Clay, Jennifer Hillman, and Dave Lochtie, the editors behind the brand-new book Coaching and Mentoring Students in Higher Education: A Practitioner Guide to Developing Independent Learners, have just that! From equity-driven frameworks to real student stories, this conversation explores how coaching and mentoring can empower learners, reshape institutional support, and even shift the way we think about advising itself. 

Tune in to hear how these trailblazing editors are helping practitioners everywhere bring courage, reflection, and creativity into student support! 

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Transcript

Ryan Scheckel  
Well, hello there Adventures in Advising friends and listeners. Really excited about our episode today. You know it's it's a unique opportunity when there are publications that are meant for us and and every time that happens, you know that I'm super excited to dive right in and look at what the authors and contributors are trying to say and convey the conversations that are continuing and the new ideas that are being presented. And so today, we have a panel of guests from the UK who have been editors for a new publication, and we want to bring them on now so they can introduce themselves and and tell us a bit more about the book that they were a part of. So one of the things we always do here on Adventures in advising is ask our guests to tell us their stories, sort of how you got started in higher education, what your journey has been so far, and what you're doing right now. So any if you could kick us off. 

Enya-Marie Clay  
Thanks, Ryan. So a bit about how I got started in higher education. It really started with thinking about he outreach and equality, diversity and inclusion. And when I got to university myself, it was a bit of a bump, realizing just how much inequality there was, and particularly where I fit in that sort of inequality, equality landscape. And so that's when I realized, oh, there's, there's all these outreach schemes and contextual offers, and they're for people like me and for backgrounds like me. And that's when I started getting into that space and thinking about, Oh, this is an area I really want to make a difference in that. I think it's really worthwhile. So I began with he outreach in that respect, in EDI and I sort of continued that on. I later became a careers leader and librarian at further education college, and then began working at the Open University as a personal learning advisor, which is what we'll talk a little bit about today, as the work underpinning that is really the key context behind our book. At the moment, I offer coaching and writing services at the edit coaching.com so you can find me there. Thank you.

Ryan Scheckel  
So, Jenny, I think you're next. Tell us a little bit about what you're doing and how you got there and what your journey has been in higher ed. 

Jennifer Hillman  
Thanks, Ryan. So I am a senior manager and educational developer, and I provide kind of staff learning and development support for lecturers, for tutors at the Open University in the UK. And prior to that, I worked in a range of kind of student support roles, advising roles, coaching and mentoring roles at the OU and elsewhere other universities in the UK. And I'm it's probably worth saying as well that I'm also a sort of lapsed academic. So before that, I was in teaching for a number of years. I did a PhD and trained as a historian, went through the kind of postdoc and then into lectureship role, and it was at that point kind of similar to what any was describing, where it suddenly dawned on me that I was kind of one of those students from an underrepresented or minoritized background. And it gave me the kind of drive to want to support students from from similar backgrounds. I think, Yes, that's me.

Ryan Scheckel  
and Dave's been on the podcast before. If our listeners have been combing through our back catalog, they'll they'll be glad to see Dave here, but if you could refresh us on your journey and let us know what you're doing right now.

Dave Lochtie  
Yeah, a bit of a similar experience to to Jenny and Enya that starting off as a student, and got elected to work for a student union and inspired me to make to do a career in higher education. And I had the opportunity to work in the States at one stage as a student success coach. And what I thought about at that time was that I felt there was a real lack of that in the UK, a real need for it, and that was 10 years ago now, and it has kind of gradually developed. And it's when I had the opportunity to work with Jenny and Enya within the Open University personal learning advice service. It was an opportunity to try and utilize those coaching skills, but then also to address those inequities that both of them spoke about, which, again, was something that I kind of took from my role when I was working in the states and my background, the reason I've been on here before was around personal tutoring and linking it to academic advising and. And I found this really, really exciting as a particular focus within those fields, that coaching and mentoring could be a specific part of the toolkit the professionals can use that we could really explore more. So it was really exciting to get involved with this project.

Ryan Scheckel  
Yeah, absolutely. The book is called Coaching and Mentoring Students in Higher Education, a practitioner guide to developing independent learners. It's published by Routledge and and, and I'm curious about, we've heard similar themes in your introductions, of course, and a similar place as far as a starting point, let's say. But I'm curious, if you could tell us more about the book, what was the the inspiration for it. How did things get started? It was, it was part of a journey for all of you in your roles?

Jennifer Hillman  
Yeah, I can, I can take that one. So we've, I think we've already alluded to the fact that we all work together at the Open University, and that was on a pilot project that ran for just over four years called the personal learning advice service, where advice was really coaching and mentoring. But the university, the Open University, launched this pilot to trial coaching and mentoring with students from marginalized and minorities, backgrounds specifically, and this was part of the university's access and participation plan. So something that's a kind of regulatory requirement in England, that's a kind of public facing document that sets out how a university will address equity issues around student outcomes. So the pilot that we were working on, students were offered one to one and group coaching and mentoring by practitioners in the team. We had a really positive response from students. So I think we made something like 70,000 offers of support to students during the pilot, and there were just over four and a half 1000 occasions where students opted into the support. And we knew that we were trying to reach students for a whole bunch of reasons. Don't always engage with support and don't always feel comfortable seeking support. So we knew that that was we knew we had an incredible team, and we knew we had a sort of story to tell, if you like. So we we wanted to kind of take the approach that was going on within the team and contextualize it too with other ways that the university was exploring coaching and mentoring cultures. So there were projects within a couple of the faculties where academic colleagues were looking at doing coaching qualifications in developing their own coaching skills and honing those skills. And some of the personal learning advisors in the team, Enya, being one of them, were involved in that, in supporting staff development. So we're sort of writing a book that's inspired by that pilot project and inspired by that service. But it's not solely about that service. It's about the kind of different ways that coaching and mentoring might be embedded in different mechanisms for student support within a university and and really we started from that, and we went to Routledge and said, we want to kind of offer this. We want to be very practical in our approach, and give practitioners some really practical kinds of scenarios and tools and techniques that they could use, that we've learned about over the course of the pilot, and we've heard from students about what they find helpful, and kind of share that with our peers. So that's where we began, really fantastic.

Ryan Scheckel  
And, you know, it's, uh, sometimes I think about our folks who are listening the podcast and their different roles and and it's hard to imagine such a clear beginning point and an ending point. It creates a little bit of a time capsule and a controlled environment. I guess, if that's a way of thinking about it, you've mentioned the practitioner and also students. But who else are included in the intended audiences for this book? And what do you hope folks take away from reading it?

Enya-Marie Clay  
Yeah, I'm happy to take this one. I think you raised an excellent point there, Ryan, on the rules are becoming more holistic in Student Support. That's something we were realizing, even at the Open University when we were doing the four year project, and we were thinking about coaching and mentoring skills and thinking about how other roles can incorporate them as well into their own practice. So when we were thinking about the book, we were thinking about, how can we make it have value for quite a range of people in student support? And something we really wanted to get across is wherever their position or whatever their seniority or experience or skills and background coming into the book, we wanted it to have value for people. Giving it a read and thinking about how to incorporate coaching and mentoring into their work in some way. And with this in mind, something we worked quite hard to do was to explain key concepts and ideas in a way that works for people that are coming into the area with perhaps less or no prior knowledge in a comprehensive way, but that's also still accessible and also still quite a pragmatic way to look at things, while also going into such a depth that it still holds value for those that are in sort of specialist coaching and mentoring positions or are coming to the book with perhaps more seniority or greater experience in the field, and one of the ways we've sought to do that is each chapter is self contained, and we give the authors the space to clarify their own definitions and to discuss and produce key concepts themselves. But what we also did is make sure that the introduction has quite a thorough grounding of not just the context of the book, plus that wider landscape of where the book sits. So both within he he in the UK, and thinking as well about within what's happening in coaching and mentoring and sort of equity work and student support service as well. So thinking about what we'd like readers to come away from the book with, as I mentioned there, is we really want it to have that value for a wide audience, and also to come away feeling quite inspired and energized and excited, to reflect on, you know, their own practice, and how particularly, they can look and challenge their own Practice, as well as systems and processes within the institution that they work in. And I think sometimes there can be a culture, particularly in EDI work, and particularly in the sort of financial, quite pressured environment of he at the moment. Of it can be a difficult space to be in, and it can be one where you're thinking of all the can't rather than all the cans. And we hope this book is a bit of a light bulb effect to think, well, maybe this is something you can do. This is a challenge you can bring and sort of recognizing that challenging yourself, thinking quite reflexively as a practitioner or as a sort of service, does take a lot of courage. It takes time, it takes resource. It takes transparency, and it takes a sort of culture of curiosity and learning as well. 

Ryan Scheckel  
Yeah, we've had a guest on recently who gave us a reason to consider the idea of reverse mentoring and where power dynamic based on position or seniority or title might dictate a different context. You know, the the word, there are so many things having had advanced access to read the book, which we're so thrilled to do. There were a lot of concepts that stood out to me, and one of them is the placement of the word practitioner in the title, it doesn't have an apostrophe s per se, so it's not the intention, isn't this is a guide for them, but also a guide by them. How did y'all incorporate practitioner perspectives from the field? Is there a process to gather their viewpoints from folks who are coaching and mentoring, but also students and leaders and so forth.

Dave Lochtie  
Yeah, I can come in on that. And I guess Jenny alluded to a little bit about how we started off within the personal learning advice team, and we thought that they had some real stories to tell, because they were spending the majority of the week speaking to students. And when we met together for meetings, they really spoke with authority and knowledge about the barriers that these students were facing and how they could they could best be supported. And I guess the three of us, as an editor, Team Jenny, spoke about being a lapsed academic. I guess we probably brought a little bit more of a experience within kind of those fields, but we were really passionate that it didn't have to be that, that we could help other practitioners to give them a voice in an academic setting or via a kind of a published work, and that's what we really wanted to do. So it was, it's quite a large author team that contributed towards this, rather than giving responsibility to individual authors, to author an entire chapter. There's often three people working on a chapter, that sort of thing. So we tried to empower them. And it started off within our team, and then we kind of went out to the rest of the institution. But we did seek to go beyond that, because whilst we had our experience that was at one institution and a large cohort of students, but for one cohort of students, of students, and we tried to utilize networks that are available to us. And the moment we saw anywhere in a university around the country that was utilizing the term coaching or mentoring for students, we went directly to them and asked them their experience directly. I tried to benefit from their learning because it did feel like it was a really quickly developing field that people were learning from. They would try something, this worked, this didn't work, and they'd kind of learn from that and off. Around about the same time, a more formal network has established for coaching professionals within higher education, which people are really excited to come to see happen. I guess we also utilized the existing networks of roles, like personal tutors, of other types of advisors in other parts of universities where there were different networks and things that were available to them. I guess we built upon the literature as well, because there was a fair amount that people had put into their views into that. So I guess we tried to soak it up as much as possible on a national but also international basis, via organizations such as NACADA. So it was informal things that we captured, but also some formal aspects to it as well. We ran a lot of workshops which were outwardly facing that we would invite individuals to and give them the opportunity to give feedback on what they felt about our service. And we've had the opportunity in the kind of latter parts of what the project that we were doing to we were looking towards legacy, basically, to try and have as much of a maximum impact elsewhere as possible. So we had the opportunity to meet with a few different colleagues from different institutions, and the found a lot of commonalities, even if the institutions were different, the students were working with were different, and there were, there were some common challenges that were coming across. So I thought we managed to get a lot of different viewpoints from from them. I think I should probably say that the student input throughout was was pretty paramount as well, because our practitioners were, as I say, for saying, most of their week talking to students in one to one. So they quickly built up a real knowledge of the challenges the students were having with their studies, the barriers to them and how they were, the skills they had within themselves. And that's a big part of coaching that actually the individuals got it themselves. So we sought towards capturing that in those one to ones in those workshops that we did, and then we did some research as well. So there was surveys which were done of our learners, that we got quite an in depth knowledge of what what they were saying about their experiences, and we put that into practice. We had the opportunity within a pilot project to do that, and then to learn those lessons, which is why we feel we got kind of a story to tell from our experiences, to put that out to the sector. And that's why we want to encourage those professionals to come back and say, Oh, this is what I've experienced. Oh, this is different, and critique it and tell us what you think, because that's how I think we'll take the sector forward.

Ryan Scheckel  
Absolutely, I that's one of the things I noted in reading, is how present the student felt. You know, sometimes when we're working through the scholarship of the field, there can be this distance where it's sometimes hard to find the person and not only the student, but also the practitioner. Is this so forward in so much of the writing and so much was presented. I know there are going to people who might come across this podcast episode, and the words that are going to stand out to them are coaching and mentoring. They're really going to find some resonance there. And I'm curious, how are those terms, coaching and mentoring, defined, especially in the context of higher education and personal tutoring and academic advising, how are they situated in the text?

Dave Lochtie  
Maybe, if I start and I might switch some context into this, but I might ask you, Enya, because there's a bit that you put in the continuum within your chapter, which I think is really useful the way I alluded to it as being a bit of a toolkit that I feel practitioners call upon at any particular time. And we spent a lot of time listening to individuals, sometimes live phone calls they would have with students and things like that. And I've always thought of it as that, like you delve into a different part of your toolkit according to what the needs are of the students. Sometimes that's coaching, sometimes it's mentoring, also mixed in with information, advice and guidance and various different things. And my background, because I've been working within personal tutoring, we published a book a few years ago, and there was one chapter on coaching, which I think was hopefully useful to personal tutors, that they would have that but I can remember looking at the time and having worked within coaching to think it needs so much more than this, because there's so much to coaching, there's so much to mentoring that really needed exploring, and that's what I wanted to do as part of the book, and that the coaching and mentoring continuum was a bit particularly that Enya covered in her chapter, that I feel like we saw the practitioners go back and forth between those two, and it's a really a nuanced thing. I don't know if you want to come in.

Enya-Marie Clay  
Yeah, absolutely. So when we were thinking about the continuum, basically, we were as part of a working group, and we were looking at how to do a professional framework that suited the work we were doing. Because we were looking at. At existing tools and models, and we were finding that they were quite often quite prescriptive. And the other thing we found when we were really digging into what already existed and looking at into the literature, was that they we couldn't find anything that really had equity at its heart. And that's what we did as a team. And so when we were thinking, okay, how can we come up with a tool for ourselves that's dynamic that also maximizes the skills experience and the diversity of our team, which is a really big strength of ours, and that also best serves the student because we were working with quite a unique student body, in the sense that we were working with students that are marginalized and minoritized at distance learning university, and we're working on sort of a faculty basis. And the way our team operated was that we didn't go into the coaching space with a sort of set idea of what we would be talking about in that space. It was very much you meet the student where they are, wherever that may be, wherever that is, on that day. So that's where the continuum really comes in, because sometimes a student who would very much be in a sort of coaching space in a previous session, they could come into another session, and perhaps they've got caring responsibilities, perhaps they're managing a fluctuating disability. Perhaps they're just very, very busy and they've had a rough day, and then more in the space for mentoring and for hearing about your experience, hearing about the knowledge you've gathered as a professional working in higher education. So it's been able to use the continuum, and as Dave mentioned, sort of dip into that toolkit to meet the needs of the students in front of you as you are. And in developing that, we created a sort of list of core competencies which our coach mentors could then pick from to meet the needs of that that student in front of them, and that really helped with sort of meeting them where they are, but also working with the practitioners themselves, so they could use their own creativity, that professional judgment and their expertise to think, okay, how can I best serve this student in this moment? So when we're talking about coaching and mentoring as terms, we haven't so much rigidly separated them. We acknowledge that, you know, coaching is more sort of eliciting question, using questions sort of elicit the student to find their own path. And mentoring is more using your experience and expertise to guide the student and perhaps offer some answers if they're in a particular space where they need that guidance. But instead, we thought of it more is, how can we best meet the student with our skills at this particular moment in time? And that's where that model really comes into the fore, thinking about, how can we develop our practice so we can sit more comfortably with this uncertainty of we don't know what's going to come up. We don't know how this student will be in this particular moment in time, and we need to prepare the best way we can for that.

Ryan Scheckel  
I'm an old theory geek, and there's at least from the 60s or 70s in the business world and in the US, the Situational Leadership Model. And you know, basically what they're saying is the leadership behaviors, the tools used, let's say, will vary based on the need, the situation, the circumstances the person you're working with. And I know that there's a lot of folks out there who can relate to the idea of having to change strategies or shift approaches with the same student, perhaps even in the same interaction. And so the flexibility is also something that stood out to me as a reader, that we didn't get locked in so much in this prescriptive sense of musts and shoulds, but the the idea of being reflective and present in the moment and really thinking through what is the best strategy was, was something I found helpful. I'm curious, if we take a step back though from those interactions, what ways do you all see coaching and mentoring, mentoring practices, those tools, positively influencing like bigger picture conversations about student success and institutional priorities like retention, equity, completion rates and so on.

Dave Lochtie  
Yeah, particularly picking up on the completion rates. I guess it kind of comes to me, because part of my role was that it was, like, very data driven, and we I've worked in the sector for a while. I've never seen feedback like we got from these students about about this project, the quotes of them saying that, like, it saved my studies, it saved my life. You've changed everything. And the volume that we were getting was so powerful, and kind of I was getting that from the personal learning advisors. And what I guess I tried to do is to try and translate that in data to something that the institution would understand would buy. And to see how it links to the kind of broader institutional priorities. And it wasn't an easy thing to do. I guess practitioners know how human beings work, and you know how students work, and we knew that this was working, and we knew that it was having a really profound impact upon these students, to try and show how that had an impact upon upon completion rates we measured over a period of time the students we worked with. We asked them, first of all about their opinions at a certain point, and then their opinions at a later point, about where they were without their studies, we asked them measures such as belonging and mattering, which gave really rich data of how they felt before the interaction they had with their personal learning advisor, and afterwards, the profound impact that it could have of working one to one and having that safe space where they would work within The individual and we also measured their outcomes, the students that did engage with us, the students that didn't engage with us. It was, as is often the case with this, to try and get a kind of a true data set comparison from one to the other. It is not an easy thing to do, because if you're going to do that, you have to not offer the service to students that you know equally need the service as much as the ones that you are offering it to, and you're offering it to for no reason. So we went, we did a lot of kind of ethical considerations and a lot of discussions within that, because you spoke about equity, and we're aiming towards that, and we know that statistically, these students need that support. We delayed support to some individuals on that that kind of basis that kind of argument, knowing that just delaying it and then providing that support one semester later doesn't make your longitudinal research. It doesn't benefit with what you do. So there were lots of barriers between that to kind of getting the kind of the concrete proof. But I passionately believe that, short of denying that support to individuals in a way which it doesn't sit well with me on an ethical basis, that we showed the difference between students that engage with us and didn't engage with us in terms of their retention, in terms of their completion, in terms of their attainment, it was like 15 20% difference from those that did and those that didn't. We spent a lot of time talking with our senior administrators about the bias that might come from there being take up and things like that. So we did a lot of look at the statistics to try and break that down to see well, how much of an impact that does have, and it has an impact the self selection bias. But what we found beyond that was a pretty clear indication. We found that actually the there was significant amounts within that, and there's a lot in the literature as well that shows that there really is an impact that's positive on this. It's not cheap having somebody work one to one with a student. And that was a part of the challenge that we always, always had. So we that's part of the reason why we looked at group coaching and group workshops, and we found that that was such a powerful vehicle to get across a lot of the similar things that we were doing, and we tried to show to individuals that they are valued. If you're working one to one with them, okay, that's fine, but we created a safe environment for them where they would feel valued and as though they mattered alongside other people. We also made sure that they saw in those workshops something that other individuals that had a similar lived experience to them, whether that was somebody that had racial diversity, that they could see that, and this is we're talking about online students, so they don't see that normally, and they had the opportunity to do that, whether we had opportunities for them to see that somebody had a similar diagnosis or a condition that they had declared to the institution providing that sort of an environment for them, and we found that kind of took it that stage further. So we found ways that we feel were financially viable that could really have that impact. And ultimately, I think we showed there was improved retention rates, improved completion rates, and we were able to focus on students to try and address the inequities of higher education. I'm not saying that we solved this and it's done forevermore, and that's, that's that's okay from now on, but I think that hopefully what comes across within the book is that there is that there's models and schemes that work for us in certain settings, and there's bits that you can take from it that we feel good working within different institutions, and we hope that the people can take that away and can keep trying to make more equitable situations for our students.

Ryan Scheckel  
Yeah, I think it's it's always interesting when we consider this idea. Of the larger conversation, whether it's at an institution level or a sector level, we immediately go to metrics and and that's just it's a telling thing. But there are these contexts, we have these perspectives that inform and I'm curious, how would you say what's presented in the book aligns or differs from the existing perspectives in the field, for example, those from say, UKAT or NACADA, and in what ways is it different or the same? 

Dave Lochtie  
I'm going to take this one and then I'm going to be quiet afterwards, because I've had a run of questions together. It's just how it's worked out. But because I've worked with with UKAT a fair amount, and NACADA, and it was a big part of what we wanted to do. And as I say, I wanted to look at coaching and mentoring as one of the things within a toolkit that they might utilize, I don't think that it differs, really, from from what is elsewhere. I think that there's different ways of supporting a student that's part of the continuum that I think Enya was talking about, that student to student, individual to individual, that you might utilize the different skills in a different way. And I think there's if as a personal tutor within the UK, you're likely to be a faculty based member of staff, so your expertise could be anything from any particular subject you're working on. So what I think we were keen to do with the book, to make sure that it could align for somebody working within that was, I think any kind of touched upon this a little bit that you didn't need to be an expert to come into it, that we made it try to make it kind of understandable, that it could be and but we also wanted to make it so that somebody who is a specialist advisor professional services like primary role advisor, would also actually get something from it as well. And I think we tried to align it within that we saw the framework that UCAT utilize, and similar versions to what nicara do. And whilst it wasn't, we don't map it as part of the red version of the book. It very much underpins it, which is why it's part of the literature. It's something that's referenced kind of throughout kind of key points, because it is part of this wider field, but we didn't want to make it just for that role, because I think there's more similarities that even faculty advisors, primary role advisors have with people that work within mental health counseling, wellbeing advisors, financial student loans advisors and those sorts of roles. Because ultimately, what you're doing is working with an individual human being, a student, who is seeking to achieve what they're achieving. They have barriers, they have challenges, they have all those things going on, and you're applying these techniques of coaching and mentoring towards that. So I think definitely it aligns a lot more than it differs.

Ryan Scheckel  
Yeah, and my fundamental philosophy is we have way more in common than than we tend to think. I'm particularly drawn to the words in the title of independent learners and and well being. And I know that's not going to be the case for everybody, but there are so many things that we do share. How about we jump into some specifics, though, would someone be willing to share an example of a coaching and mentoring framework that's presented or or an approach that's in the book, and share with our listeners how it helps anyone in any role, whether an advisor or tutor or otherwise, navigate student situations?

Enya-Marie Clay  
Yeah, I can take this one. And so I think an example here, and it's something that sort of underpins a lot of the book, is that equity lens approach, and that's something that we talk through, myself and co author Joe Blissett in our chapter, coaching and mentoring through an equity lens, where we really include the resources that helped us develop our practice as individuals, but also at a more service level, and also the sort of skills and environment and spaces and sort of culture we try to create as well to help us not just challenge our practice and deepen our practice, but also to challenge systemic practices and processes that could be barriers for our students really becoming that advocate and oppressive practitioner in a very active way. So something we did, we've done in this chapter, is we've included the framework we developed as a tool to show you how we use an equity lens in our service, as well as information on and suggestions on how that could be more widely applied and thinking more to individual practice levels, that's more of a team view. What we've also done is we've included quite a lot of practical and reflective exercises on things like identity, power. Power and privilege. And these are based for individual use as a reader, but we've also put suggestions on how you can expand them. Myself and co author of another chapter, the learning development chapter, Mary Jo in Wilton, we did a series of workshops for staff, a wide variety of staff audiences on anti oppressive and inclusive practice, and it was through some trial and error and some feedback and figuring out what worked in this space to make it sort of psychologically safe and to really encourage people to open up with vulnerability and courage, but not just their own lived experiences, but also that sort of learning journey into being a more equitable minded practitioner, because it's recognizing that it is something we come to imperfectly, and that imperfection can sit with difficulty when it's your professionalism on the line, and when you're you deeply care about the work that you do in your students, and you want it to be the best for them. It can be so thinking about what we were talking about before, of meeting the student, where we are, where they are, and how do you prepare a coach to prepare for the unpreparable It's It's a big question mark. The way we were thinking about that is, you know that there's the tools and models are there, and they're incredibly useful and valuable, and we draw from them, but it's thinking, how can we outside of the coaching space look reflexively at our own work and do that sort of deep thought work, use each other's expertise experience, especially lived experience, in the team, and get that feedback from students as well, to really drill down and think, Okay, how can we best show up in This space and to make it more of an equal space in terms of power dynamics, and be a space where we can listen to the students and we can become advocates for transformative change, not just as an individual level, one to one with the student, but also feeding more back, more widely, back into that institution and going outside that space and Providing communities of practice, of what can we do here to make it fairer? So that's really where we start that work. And we hope that readers take something away from that, and take away the sort of invitation to think about their own practice and to bring that challenge in provider spaces.

Ryan Scheckel  
Yeah, and you know that was one of the things that was evident reading through the book is not only are the the chapters sort of self contained, even though there's a through line and a common theme, but there are so many opportunities for readers to pause and consider, how does this apply to my role to my context and and have tangible takeaways that are not just practical, but also in a way, helpful in finding little footholds or better ways to leverage things, perhaps even just adding a concept or a name to claim a practice that's already Been in place, I found really helpful as well. But looking at the book in its totality, I am mindful of the couple dozen or so contributors and the many people involved in its making, and looking through the titles of the chapters, I'm curious as editors, having a chance to talk with folks who accepted the responsibility of being a part of its formation. And like I said, were there any challenging conversations that came up or any difficult decisions in your role as editors of the book that you'd like to share with us here?

Jennifer Hillman  
Sure I can take that one. Ryan, so we, it's really interesting this question, because we spent a lot of time sort of trying to unlearn habits that we picked up, you know, in kind of learning how to write it in higher education or as an academic or whatever. You know, there's a certain kind of format, a certain formula, and we were trying to consciously unlearn that as editors, because we wanted to allow the very sort of distinct voices of the contributors to come through. And actually earlier, Ryan, when you said, you feel the student, but also you feel the practitioner, I nearly burst with joy, because that is exactly why we were having those conversations, you know, because we wanted those we wanted it to feel authentic. We didn't want it to feel that there was kind of a gloss, you know, that people could read about the authors as practitioners, you know, in their day, this is what they were doing in their work. And we work well, we tried really hard to make that that happen and let that come through. So it's absolutely wonderful to hear that you felt that as a reader. So thank you. We obviously though had to balance that kind of authenticity with, you know, consistency and kind of language and how people were using Terminal. Technology. And obviously that's always a challenge and a delicate balance, but we were trying to be really thoughtful about that. Whenever we came together, actually, as a group, all the authors were as well as editors. I think probably the other kind of significant challenge and difficult thing that we talked about a lot was that we had here, we had a in the PLA service, but also in some of the other projects that are talked about in the book, people who were in a very unique and privileged position, as many many of us are. I'm sure many people listening to your podcast are as advisors to hear these stories from students. That's, yeah, it's a privilege, isn't it, actually, to hear about people's experiences and students are sharing their vulnerabilities. And so we wanted to sort of steward that really carefully and really ethically, and we thought a lot about what we would share, the kind of the stories that would highlight the transformative power of coaching, but with also showing that actually the sector has universities, the wider sector has significant systemic issues which need to change. And actually, yes, you want, you can transform an individual. You can empower an individual, but it does not diminish everything that's that's still wrong, you know, that's caused barriers in the first place. So there was some really tough conversations and thinking that took place with striking that balance, you know, to make sure that we were talking about and the people that we were worked with wanted to talk about the systemic issues that coaching and mentoring helps to surface, you know, in these these deep, powerful conversations, and to make sure that that came across In the book as well. So, yeah, I mean, you can let us know whether you think we did that. We found that balance, but it was, it was a piece of work was that, yeah.

Ryan Scheckel  
Well, that's one of the reasons why this question I just asked, and the question I'm about to ask is something I always want to have folks here, because this process of the making of a text, there are decisions being made constantly, and some of those decisions are what might be considered compromises, and also sometimes might be really revelatory and and it's just curious when we have a panel of folks who contributed to the final product in the way that you did, just to get the perspective of what's that like, what's it like to live through it, and the responsibility, but also, like Jenny, you said, the privilege of being in that position, I just always, I want to hear, I want to have folks be able to hear that as much as we can, because I'm also curious about what you've learned through this as well. You know, I know Dave has been a part of other publications, and everyone in their own journey has had, you know, some way of putting themselves out there. But did this process reveal any misconceptions that people who might be thinking about doing something in written form might have about the publishing experience? Did anything reveal itself through this for you in a way that might be new or fresh?

Enya-Marie Clay  
Yeah, I'm happy to take this one and see if Jenny or Dave want to add anything to it. But I think something that struck me, this is my first time publishing a book in any way, struck me as it's hard work, and that's there's no misconceptions about that. It is hard work. But one thing that that got me, and I sort of saw it as a sort of echo of among, among the team, let's say, is that when you put the word publish and book and these, these big, big words, they carry a lot of weight. When you put these words out there, there becomes this notion of it has to be a certain way, or has to sound a certain way, of I have to write a certain way. And that can bring with it a lot of fear. It can bring with a lot of expectation, and that can be really difficult to negotiate, because you want to you want people to be themselves. We certainly did. That was one of our biggest aims. As editors. We wanted people to show up and express themselves in the manner they chose, in whatever way that was, and then we wanted to do the hard work of making that into a cohesive piece ourselves. And as Jenny said, bringing that together and keeping that authenticity that was that was really key to what we wanted to do. So I think that. That's the misconception for me, that it has to be, you think it has to be one way. And when I was reflecting on this, when I was going through the process myself, because I certainly felt that fear of I must write in this way, must be this level of sort of perfection, or what have you, as I was, I don't know where I'm getting this from, and I think I'm getting this from university, when I was a student, when I was thinking, Oh, it must be a certain percentage to get me that grade. It's that sort of mentality, and it really wants you free yourself a bit from that. And think actually there's space here to get a bit more creative with it. There's space here to bring in difference, to bring in diversity, and that makes it richer and more interesting, in my view, anyway, and that's certainly something we try to do in the book. Sometimes, when we were having our conversations to editors and thinking, Oh, that this, this doesn't quite work as a flaw doesn't quite in this chapter. How do we make this work? It was okay. Let's get back to the drawing board and think of how we can do it differently. It doesn't have to be a particular set way. And what happens if we we do try and look at a different way. So that's why I think her book does have quite a sort of eclectic mix of we've got student scenarios in there. We have those practical exercises all the way throughout. We've got the framework in there, as we've said, and we've got that, I said it's, it's got that range of being both for sort of early career, early entry into the field, and also being for those who have expertise and who are coming to it with that sort of more seniority, or with that sort of wider knowledge base, Let's say.

Ryan Scheckel  
So let's, let's get down to it. Where can someone purchase the book? What's it cost? How's that? How's that been for the like, the launch process for y'all and then I guess I, as we wrap up here, what are the next steps? Now that it is out there in the world.

Jennifer Hillman  
I can answer this one. So this is available in all good bookstores. Is that what you're supposed to say at this point, it's available via Routledge Taylor Francis website. It's on Amazon, Apple books. It costs 30 pounds ish for a paperback. So what $40 bit more for an e book, I think, or or the other way around. Sorry, this isn't helping, is it, but check the website, folks, would be my advice. And one thing I do want to say is the royalties for this volume are all being donated to USET, which is a charity that supports OU students in financial need. So just as a very small token of our appreciation to all the students that took the time to give us feedback help us out when we were, you know, trialing things and developing our own practice, we we've made that decision to donate royalties. So, yes, wanted to mention that in terms of next steps we've got, we've been invited, which is a lovely thing, to speak on the 15th of September in the morning UK. Timing, it's about 10 o'clock at the coaching in he network, which Dave mentioned earlier. It's convened by Yelena matttic at the University of Nottingham, and it's online, and it's open and welcomes new members for anyone who's interested in coaching and higher education. So we're going to be talking a little bit more there about some of the chapters in greater depth. I think one thing that's really important for us now is our is feedback from our peers, from practitioners. Because that's one of the things that hopefully has come across today, that we what we've created this book for our peers. So we want to hear from our peers, and we want to kind of open a dialog and hopefully connect with others who are trying to do this work in other organizations and, you know, in different in different settings, in different contexts. So that feels really important for us as a next step. I think personally, we're all working on different projects as well in the day job and including coaching and mentoring in different ways. I don't know if Dave or any want to come in at this point on either of those things.

Dave Lochtie  
No, I think you covered it well. I think coaching and mentoring, I feel like it underpins everything you do, because you can utilize it. I won't say I use it in parenting, because I think the kids will forget annoyed me doing that. But there have been moments where I thought, actually, yeah, that probably helps a little bit. But I think yeah, in so many different fields you can do, and that's what I guess, we try to put within the book, that I feel like this is adaptable to every different situation, and that's what I'm going to continue to do. But yeah, I really want that, as you said, Jenny, just that feedback from different practitioners. And I don't think when you release a book, that's the stuff. Not the end. If anything, it's the start.

Ryan Scheckel  
Well, fantastic. Enya, Jenny, Dave, so much for everyone else out there listening or watching this, perhaps, you know, check out the book you you've been invited by its editors to chime in and give you a give your perspective on the matter. Thanks so much to our guests today for being here and for everyone listening. Uh, we hope that your adventure is going well, and we'll see on the next one.

Jennifer Hillman  
Thank you, Ryan.