An early years setting has established its outdoor provision, trained its staff and equipped them with as many natural resources and all-weather clothing it can muster. Next, should it consider developing mentoring or coaching opportunities as the best way to ensure practitioners continue to develop their outdoor teaching expertise?
‘Coaching and mentoring are the way to go,’ says early years outdoor provision consultant Jan White. ‘That’s the way to do something long term – to have a critical friend who’s supporting you.’ But White believes few settings are using coaching and mentoring in the outdoors for several reasons. It is an expense they cannot afford, and it takes time out of busy schedules. Another challenge is finding the right coach or mentor.
IN FOCUS
Mentoring and coaching ‘allow practitioners time and space to focus on fundamental values underpinning their practice in early childhood education and help them examine and improve their practice’, according to Michel Gasper and Rosie Walker, authors of Mentoring and Coaching in Early Education. Both forms of professional, and sometimes personal, development are slightly different.
The Chartered Institute of Professional Development defines coaching and mentoring as involving the skills of questioning, listening, clarifying and reframing. It says coaching is an approach that focuses on specific skills and goals, usually for a defined period of time; while mentoring tends to describe a longer-term relationship, where a more experienced colleague shares their greater knowledge to support the development of a less-experienced staff member.
Some outdoor training courses include coaching-style support. Learning Through Landscapes Scotland director Matt Robinson says some of the long-term courses his organisation offers, running over two school terms, are designed to be practical and hands-on with trainers giving reflective advice. ‘Our long-term courses are designed to make use of the opportunity for people to go back into school or nursery and actually practice, try things out, learn from experience, come back and share it,’ he says. ‘It’s not one of our staff telling people how it should be. It’s a genuine: what worked well? What didn’t work? How did you see somebody else do it differently? Those kinds of conversations are really important.’
FINDING SUPPORT
Beyond training, with limited budgets, Robinson says the best support a setting can find is through a local professional group, or online virtual groups. ‘It’s a really key part of things,’ he says. ‘A group that’s outside of your setting is even more valuable, to see what other people are doing and see other cultures and approaches.’ He recommends practitioners make sure such groups include people with specific interests and expertise to share, in order to avoid an ‘echo chamber’ where no-one is leading with examples of best practice.
Early years consultant Kathryn Solly, whose book Leading Children’s Learning Outdoors from Birth to Seven is due to be published in 2022, suggests settings could consider approaching mentors and coaches from alternative backgrounds as they have transferable skills that can support continual professional development. As a former head teacher, she has had positive experiences being mentored by business managers. ‘Running a five-star business is very similar to running a five-star school,’ she suggests.
Solly recommends senior members of staff seek coaches or mentors from outside of their settings so that they can speak openly and confidentially. ‘A lot of it is about having a listening ear,’ she says. In order to get the most out of the process, she says a mentor should have had experience of being mentored themselves, or be trained in how to mentor or coach.
Solly says staff can be trained to coach or mentor more junior members of a setting, but managers must be sure these people want to do it. She warns that a poor coaching and mentoring relationship could ‘make things worse’.
It can be challenging to find an outdoor coach or mentor outside of training providers. Outdoor education consultant Naomi Clarke believes part of the problem is that settings have, mistakenly, begun to believe they can only be guided by accredited trainers, such as those with Forest School qualifications. She believes people with ‘skills, experience, passion and knowledge’ can be just as helpful. ‘A move towards more skill sharing, mentoring, and coaching between outdoor educators and communities in need, will create the best outcomes for children, especially those in low-income areas,’ she says.
Clarke also believes that diversity and inclusion could be improved in outdoor early education if settings would make use of mentors and coaches from less-represented groups. These include people from Black, ethnic or minority communities or people with a disability. ‘If a network of educators can be created then tools, skills, outdoor space and knowledge can be shared freely, or cheaply,’ she says. ‘This will create a network that is resilient and, more importantly, accessible. I would like to see best practice shared, and more continual professional development opportunities in outdoor education in a peer-to-peer network, not through sending more staff on external training courses.’