The first year of study is very exciting for many students. Everything is new: the school, your schedule, the teachers, and your fellow students. How can a university ensure a smooth transition for first-year students? For this, Inholland launched the Students for Students (S4S) project in the 2019-2020 academic year. In this project, second-year students (studentcoaches) support first-year students with their studies. They do this based on their own experience and the training they receive during their year as studentcoaches. Research shows that peer-mentoring is very successful in aiding first-year students through their first year of the study program. Peer-mentoring has the potential to increase well-being, social bonding, the feeling of belonging, and student resilience. It also ensures smoother academic integration, as peer-mentoring focuses on developing academic skills as well. Additionally, a studentcoach is often a low threshold point of contact for students where they can go with questions.
As a result of the changing notions of work schools are increasingly acknowledging that they have a strong responsibility to guide students not only in their academic growth, but also in their career development. This paper presents the result of a study about effects of teachers training on career dialogue promoting career competency development in students. For the quantitative part of the study, a quasi experimental research design is used to measure effects among 2500 students. Video-recordings of conversations are used for qualitative research. The results show only when the off-the-job training is followed by on-the-job coaching, the professionalizing proves to be effective on student level: students notice that the guidance conversations are more appreciative, reflective and activating and are about self image development, work and career actions. Also the observation on guidance conversations show that the conversations are more career related.
Just what and how eight experienced teachers in four coaching dyads learned during a 1-year reciprocal peer coaching trajectory was examined in the present study. The learning processes were mapped by providing a detailed description of reported learning activities, reported learning outcomes, and the relations between these two. The sequences of learning activities associated with a particular type of learning outcome were next selected, coded, and analyzed using a variety of quantitative methods. The different activity sequences undertaken by the teachers during a reciprocal peer coaching trajectory were found to trigger different aspects of their professional development.
