My Best Course - Thinking for themselves
Monday, March 21, 2016
A course in supervision helped Catherine Lawrence stop giving advice and lead practitioners to their own conclusions about performance.
‘When doing staff supervision,’ says Catherine Lawrence, ‘it is really hard not to give advice. But this isn’t always helpful – and you are doing it to somebody rather than them thinking of it themselves.
‘The idea is that it is about staff thinking for themselves. It is similar to sustained shared thinking. As practitioners we won’t go in and tell children the solution. Yet when you are working with adults you can often end up saying, “Why don’t you do it like this?” We should be using early years practice more in life.’
The inclusion manager and early years co-ordinator of Moreland Primary School took Early Education’s course in effective supervision. The course lasted from 9.30am to 3.30pm and took the form of group work and work in pairs with professional coach Jane Cook, focusing on practical development of coaching and mentoring skills.
Ms Lawrence says, ‘We were thrown in at the deep end working with different partners. As part of the activity, we had to think about something in our personal or professional life we would change. I chose trying to get my kids to do their homework – it was useful to think of something real because I couldn’t avoid thinking about it in a real way.
‘The coach gave out a set of generic questions which are open, and seem to work in whatever context. It could be, “What does it look like for you when it’s better?”, “Is there any way we can help?” It’s about getting someone to focus on what the issue is, where they want to get to, and how to get there.’
Advice isn’t something to be over-used, though it could be useful where a practitioner has direct personal experience. ‘It’s quite hard not to give advice – you really had to bite your tongue at the start of the session.’
She adds, ‘We had to do it both the “good” and the “bad” way but found with advice-giving, the person didn’t listen to you as much. It was about being an active listener and building a rapport.’
