Peer support interventions have been widely used within the Higher Education sector as a means to enhance student success and retention. However, much of the evidence to measure the impact of mentoring and coaching has relied on anecdotal, self-reported evidence from the participants. In addition there is much confusion in the terms to describe peer support interventions making it difficult to compare and contrast the different programmes. The need for evidence of a more robust, quantitative nature has long been called for by a number of authors such as Jacobi (1991), Capstick (2004) and Medd (2012). This is a mixed methods case study of an extant coaching programme in Higher Education in the UK. It makes explicit the process of the peer coaching intervention by use of individual case stories and measures the impact of the peer coaching on academic attainment in the form of module grades. In addition, the use of a control group enables a comparison to be made of the academic attainment of non-coached students with those who received peer coaching. Academic behaviour confidence of those who were coached was also measured pre and post-coaching using the Sander and Sanders (2009) ABC questionnaire. There was found to be a statistically significant impact in the academic attainment of those students who received coaching when compared to those students in the control group who did not. It was seen that the peer coaching had a beneficial impact for particular groups of students such as those in their first year of study and those who were performing less well at the outset as well students within the business school. There was found to be a significant increase in the academic behaviour confidence of those who received coaching as well as a reduced attrition rate when compared to those in the control group.
Andreanoff, J
Faculty of BusinessBusiness School
Year: 2015
© Andreanoff, J Published by Oxford Brookes UniversityAll rights reserved. Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder(s). The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.