Vocational Coaching for Students

Vocational coaching is a form of career coaching or life coaching aimed at all learners from school children, college students, high school students and students up to PhD level. It really enables students and adult learners to better adapt to their academic requirements and balance both study time and home life.

It can be really rewarding to work with somebody to uncover their personality type and range of possible career options based on their interests. However, with students the results can then be used to agree a study track or life path and will normally help the student focus on specific topics or find ways to develop the skills they require to succeed.

Some key questions this approach can help answer:

What are my strengths and limitations?
What do I enjoy doing most?
Can I make a career choice now?
How can I build knowledge and experience?
Can I change direction or start over?

The Vocational Coaching process

Even though our example only has a few formal coaching sessions, it’s the pre coaching session that ensures you have a compatible style that will work for the student and is where goals or outcomes can be agreed or discussed. And if a parent or guardian has requesting this coaching, you can use the pre coaching session to discuss overall objectives with them.

The explorer session is the first real opportunity for you to start coaching, so this is where an assessment will normally be made of their skills, interests and any volunteering or extra-curricular activities they are involved in. This is also an opportunity to discuss their learning style and any possible study tracks or life paths, and their values, interests, motivations and vocational interests.

The key questions to discuss in the initial explorer session are:

What do they enjoy doing or have an interest in?
Where do they see their future and what skills or studies do they need?

The next step is for the student to take an online Riasec-style vocational test (to identify their Holland code) at home before your next coaching session. This is then followed by one or two planning sessions, where you can work through the results of the test and discuss a range of future careers based on their top three personality types it uncovers.

You can also use the results to help them focus their time on learning key topics or developing any skills required for their future career. A final review and results session is optional, but you can set up an additional follow up session if they would like to deepen their understanding of their personality type.

Academic coaching vs academic support

The differences, and complimentary links between academic support and academic coaching can sometimes be unclear. We believe these two complementary methods focus on different difficulties, with academic support delivering immediate results and academic coaching geared towards the attainment of goals that unfold over time.

Academic support

This is provided to students by their teachers when additional help is required to better understand a specific subject like mathematics, history, life sciences, or languages. Academic support ranges from simple help with homework to taking a refresher course in a specific subject before an exam or test.

Academic coaching

This is normally recommended when difficulties (sometimes of a repetitive nature) appear during a school or university course. These difficulties can include problems organizing time to study or preparing for exams and tests due to stress, anxiety, demotivation or confidence in their ability.

Vocational Coaching for Students