This paper examines if coaching has a potential role in helping authentic collaborative partnerships between early intervention teachers and early childhood educators and families.
Coaching is a process that can empower. It can also help ECE teachers to examine their own perceptions about the knowledge they hold.
FULL REFERENCE: Mataiti, H., van Bysterveldt, A. & Miller, J. (2016). Changing roles and responsibilities: The development of coaching in early intervention education settings, in Aotearoa New Zealand. NZ Research in ECE Journal, Special Issue: Equality and Diversity, 19, 15 – 31.
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ABSTRACT: Facilitative coaching aims to empower coach-ees by eliciting their inbuilt capacities as individuals and building upon these to achieve self-chosen goals. The practice is increasingly preferred in early intervention (EI) education settings, due to its strong alignment with family-centred approaches. The practice of coaching involves a shift in the roles and responsibilities of those working with children with EI needs. Specifically, coaching is a way of moving away from an expert, directive approach, toward one that facilitates and empowers adults working with the child day to day in natural environments. This has significant potential to break down historical imbalances of power between specialist practitioners, and families and educators, thus supporting key policy directions in Aotearoa New Zealand NZ. This paper utilises the elements of rules, community and division of labour (roles and responsibilities) from the conceptual framework of Activity Theory to provide an overview of the development of and potential for coaching in EI in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ), focusing on the practice of the specialist teaching practitioner, the Early Intervention teacher (EIT).
KEY WORDS: Coaching; early intervention; activity theory; roles and responsibilities.
INTRODUCTION
Over the past decade, in an effort to provide services that are family-centred, culturally responsive and ecologically sound, early interventionists in early childhood education (ECE) have moved away from instructional models of teaching and providing direct therapy for children (Alliston, 2007; Ministry of Education – Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga (MoE), 2011a). Changes in governmental policy in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) have also resulted in a significant shift toward ways of working with families/whānau (families) that are facilitative, capacity-building and solution-focused. These are regarded as most helpful for aspirations of empowerment and self-determination of families to be realised (NZ Taskforce on Whānau Centred Initiatives, 2010). One practice that appears to align with these directions is coaching, a relational process applied in a range of settings over the last thirty years, which takes place between two people in order to achieve pre-determined outcomes (Green & Spence, 2014).
