Hopeful & unsettled: coaching, schools, AI

Two conferences and one book last week. On Monday it was The Scottish Education Futures Festival at the Botanics where we discussed how Scottish education might look in 2040; on Thursday, Coaching for Good: Keeping Humanity at the Heart of Change at Edinburgh University Business School explored how coaching might evolve; throughout I was reading Jamie Bartlett’s How to Speak to AI - and this rapidly developing technology was a looming presence on both days.  

I ended the week feeling both hopeful and unsettled, with predictably more questions than answers. At the education conference, we kept coming back to the importance of community, and to the attributes and skills that might matter most in an uncertain future - creativity, curiosity, ethical judgment, the ability to ask effective questions rather than produce the ‘right’ answer. On Thursday, the focus was related: what does human coaching offer that AI can’t?

Bartlett highlights the ability to use language effectively as the skill that will matter most in an AI world - articulating with precision and nuance and applying the same criticality to the responses that are generated. Being able to craft effective prompts is one outcome of this. But being able to do that relies on a complexity of thinking, an acute awareness of language, a self-awareness, and having sufficient knowledge to engage meaningfully. In education, these are attributes that can and should be developed across a range of contexts. They are rooted in culture: in the environment people create and inhabit together, and in the extent the adults around young people are themselves curious and willing to be uncertain or wrong.

There’s a tension then in any assumption that AI literacy should primarily be developed by using AI. Language has long been the defining characteristic of humans - it’s why we often see the sites that use LLMs as more than just machines - and language skills are developed in conversation, by reading and writing, by being with humans and by being human. The social dimension of learning is real - community matters. If we go straight to the tool, we risk undermining the very capacities the tool requires.

The unsettled feeling also came from a clear warning about assuming too quickly that there are things that humans can do that AI can’t. What I’ve learned this week is that these are few and diminishing rapidly. There’s also the uncomfortable possibility that if we hold too tightly to our ‘special’ status as coaches and teachers we risk an opportunity to democratise access. An AI coach can reach people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to access coaching, and Sam Isaacson’s presentation on Thursday showed how this might be done ethically and thoughtfully.

Research suggests, though, that people still trust the human more, particularly in complex decision making. They feel the human understands something the machine doesn't. While this might be objectively illogical, it perhaps also speaks to our hopeful belief in each other - in all our fallibility - and to the simple recognition present when in the company of another human. A coaching mindset, in schools, as elsewhere, can help make these connections. At its heart this is about approaching each other with curiosity, without judgement, and with a belief in another’s potential for growth. It’s a fundamentally hopeful stance and one that starts with the human in front of us, not the problem they present.

Coaching for PRD: working for or against a coaching culture?

The first coaching training I did, more than a decade ago as a Principal Teacher, was called ‘Coaching for PRD’. We discussed coaching vs mentoring, were introduced to the GROW model and had a chance to practise using this in conversation with each other. It was the start of a ten-year journey to becoming a professional coach and I am hugely grateful that I’ve had so many opportunities to build on that initial learning. A half-day course has, ultimately, been life-changing.

The course title was also an illustration of how, in Scotland, coaching and PRD (Professional Review and Development) are inextricably linked. This inter-connection, emphasised in policy and in the work of the GTCS and Education Scotland, has been critical in helping us to develop a shared language, and in positioning coaching as central to reviewing professional learning, if not always to supporting it.

But what if the PRD-coaching connection is also limiting the undoubted potential of coaching to transform culture and practice in schools?

For many teachers and school leaders, PRD is not just a place where coaching approaches are used. It is where they develop their understanding of what coaching is - and what it might be.

And when that understanding is formed in the context of the formal annual meeting – what most people think of when they hear PRD – then coaching can become something complex, occasional and specialised, rather than a day-to-day mindset and set of skills that can be learned, practised and used by anyone in a school community.

Of course, PRD is not supposed to be a one‑off coaching event. It’s meant to be an ongoing process of professional dialogue, reflection and learning, with the annual meeting acting as a point of pause and consolidation.

In reality, though, the formal meeting often carries far more weight. It’s the moment where a year’s learning is brought together: what’s gone well, what’s been difficult, how that aligns with professional standards, and what needs to happen next. All in one conversation.

That’s a big ask - and it doesn’t just require coaching. Sometimes it needs guidance. Sometimes it draws on professional judgement. Sometimes it moves quite quickly from reflection into direction, simply because there isn’t the time or space to stay with open exploration. These conversations, done well, do a lot of work.

When the reviewer, as is usually the case, is a line manager, then coaching also sits alongside accountability, responsibility and judgement. Even in strong, trusting relationships, those elements don’t disappear, even if they are not always explicitly acknowledged.

If your main experience of coaching is in that kind of space - time‑limited, potentially high stakes and carrying both support and (unspoken) evaluation - it’s understandable that it starts to feel complex, even slightly uncomfortable. Something that needs to be “done properly”.

Some reviewers may feel they’re not very good at coaching, because they find themselves offering suggestions or giving direction. Others hold tightly to a non‑directive stance, asking carefully constructed questions, following a pre-determined structure but never getting beneath the surface. It’s difficult to build confidence - not necessarily because of a lack of skill, but because the situation itself is complicated.

And if PRD is the main experience that shapes how coaching is seen, then it becomes harder to envisage how it fits into the rest of school life. Which actually goes against the wider intention behind coaching in Scottish education - it’s meant to support ongoing reflection, professional enquiry and more thoughtful dialogue over time, not just in annual meetings.

I don’t have an answer to these tensions – and it’s critically important that coaching approaches continue to underpin the PRD process. But, if we were collectively able to view coaching as a way of being rather than something to ‘do’ or perform, then it could be simplified and be made more accessible – something that happens in everyday conversations, in moments where thinking is explored rather than rushed.

And if everyone in schools was equipped to notice these opportunities to pause, to listen more carefully, to be curious, then perhaps we’d see the transformation that coaching has long promised but has not yet always delivered.