Coaching and mentoring: an inclusive approach to student learning and development

Academics from Nottingham Business School (NBS) share their experience of coaching and mentoring Business Management and Human Resources undergraduate students and present an inclusive way of facilitating learning and development.

In the context of UK higher education (HE), there are a range of support services that facilitate academic progress and wellbeing of students.  These include mentoring, tutoring, wellbeing initiatives and targeted interventions, such as ‘personal value development’, which incorporate peer support systems, community service projects and student action teams (Gamage et al., 2021). Despite their significance, they often focus on short-term challenges or crisis response, particularly targeting students already in difficulty (Bradley et al., 2024). Although helpful, they may fall short in facilitating students’ learning and development and experience. 

Coaching and mentoring go beyond traditional support systems within HE by nurturing ongoing growth in a tailored manner. Research suggests that coaching and mentoring facilitates self-analysis, self-awareness, resilience, confidence and action orientation enabling students to achieve a sustained academic and personal growth (Friend, 2021), often through reflective and reflexive engagements.  

Here, we share our experience of coaching and mentoring Business Management and Human Resources undergraduate students at Nottingham Business School (NBS) and present an inclusive way of facilitating learning and development.  

A case for personalised support

Evidence suggests that student support services are often inconsistently delivered, particularly for those in difficulty or actively seeking help (Jones & Smith, 2022). At NBS, we have employed coaching and mentoring not as remedial tools, but as a humane approach grounded in adult learning theory (Knowles et al., 2014). 

These methods foster continuity, relational depth and non-directive support, enabling students to build resilience and navigate academic and personal challenges (Huong-Giang Le et al., 2024). By treating students as capable individuals, we promote intrinsic motivation and empower ownership of self-development in a safe environment.  

Personalised support that makes a real difference

Coaching and mentoring represent a shift in how universities engage with students, moving beyond academic remediation to fostering reflective, future-focused dialogue and non-judgemental conversations that builds confidence and purpose (Alzen et al., 2021).  

At NBS, our long-standing mentoring practice has shown that traditional didactic methods often fall short for students facing complex challenges including neurodiversity, caregiving responsibilities, mental health and financial pressures (Bradley et al., 2024). Informed by our NBS personalisation and experiential learning strategy, we offer coaching as a reflective space to students where we empathetically listen and encourage students to critically engage with their own ’voices’ in a trusting environment. These practices enable students to make sense of their learning, challenges and opportunities differently and question their predispositions (Mezirow, 1991). 

Coaching and mentoring, a more tailored way of student support

Reflecting on our coaching and mentoring practices, we have realised that academic success extends beyond teaching and learning. Students’ outcomes are shaped by intersecting factors such as mental health, financial pressures, caregiving responsibilities, ethnicity and social background (Alzen et al., 2021; Nwosu, 2024) and traditional academic support often overlooks these complexities. 

At NBS, we adopt a humanistic approach (Garvey, 2011; Rogers, 2012), recognising the whole person and the social nature of learning. For instance, Reuben (pseudonym), facing personal hardship in their final year, was at risk of withdrawal. Through tailored, empathetic coaching and mentoring, sometimes offering academic guidance, other times simply listening, we helped them re-engage and ultimately graduate with first-class honours. While we do not attribute his success solely to coaching and mentoring, it exemplifies how relational, non-judgemental support can be transformative. 

Grounded in our experience and research, we see coaching and mentoring, which involves students experiencing authentic support, unique to their circumstances as vital to fostering self-directed learners who thrive beyond academia (Mezirow, 1991; Nabi et al., 2021) by adopting the following approaches: 

• Personalisation: effective coaching and mentoring starts with understanding the uniqueness of the student, and tailoring support (Friend, 2021). Improving our relationship with students is vital here. At NBS, personalisation has become a lived praxis, integrated in the fabric of learning and teaching. Such institutional support is indispensable in realising the true potential of coaching and mentoring in academia.
• Consistency: students benefit most when support is ongoing rather than sporadic. Consistent engagement builds trust and allows deeper issues to surface and be addressed (Gamage et al., 2021). Therefore, assurance that you are there and able to support has influence on how often students seek support. We have built-in personalised support for students from day one of their learning journey at NBS. This facilitates readiness of both staff and students to engage in a coaching and mentoring way, leading to said success.
• Holistic support: coaching that integrates emotional and psychological dimensions helps students stay engaged and focused, even when facing personal difficulties (Alzen et al., 2021). Therefore, as we empathise, understand and hold space for them, the support becomes more holistic as student-led inquiry leads to self-initiated actions. In doing so, acknowledging that students are socially and culturally immersed ‘whole human beings’ helps in recognising the complexities that hinder/support their learning.
• Encourage critical reflective and reflexive practice:coaching and mentoring encourage students to be critically reflexive and reflective. According to Mezirow (1991), such practices align withtransformative learning. While encouraging the students to be critical and reflective, we, the academics should reflect on our practices, and continuously improve (Jones and Smith, 2022).

Rethinking support: moving from a reactive to a proactive approach

Informed by our practice and research, we position coaching and mentoring as a unique student learning and development approach. 

We recognise that adopting proactive coaching and mentoring practices requires a significant commitment of resources from all involved. Thus, introducing such practices can be challenging as it requires strategic investments in policy and practice. Despite the challenges it presents, we are confident that proactive research and practice into coaching and mentoring have the potential to create a lasting impact on student learning and development.  Therefore, we encourage HE institutions to reflect on how to facilitate/introduce coaching and mentoring practices more proactively into the curriculum. This requires institutions to challenge their ontological and epistemological views on teaching, learning and student support rather than privileging their current practices. For this, we should continue to question our practices and encourage innovative approaches to research. 

 

Tolulope Fadipe, PhD is Programme Lead for Business Management and Human Resources at Nottingham Business School. He leads a team dedicated to students’ learning through coaching and mentoring. His research explores organisational learning, knowledge management, and people performance. He is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE and Academic Member of CIPD. 

Duminda Rajasinghe, PhD is a senior lecturer in HRM and OB at Nottingham Trent University. Duminda’s research interest lies in coaching and adult learning. He works as an academic mentor and an executive coach at Nottingham Business school. He is a Senior Fellow of the AdvancedHE (SFHEA), Academic Member of CIPD and the Chair of external relations committee of University Forum of HRD.

References  

Alzen, J., Douglass, K. and Robison, R. (2021) Holistic academic mentoring: A model for supporting student success. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 43(5), pp. 465–480.   

Bradley, S., Ahmed, R. and Khatun, S. (2024) From Surviving to Thriving: Reimagining Student Support in UK Universities. London: HE Policy Press.   

Friend, D. (2021) Coaching for Academic Success: Strategies to Empower Students in Higher Education. Oxford: Academic Insights.   

Friend, K. L. (2021). The creation of social networks: Social capital and the experiences of widening participation students at three elite institutions in the US, England, and Scotland. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 29(3), 359–377. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2020.1735496   

Gamage, D., Fullerton, R. and Lewis, S. (2021) ‘Personalised academic interventions in UK higher education: A review of impact and implementation’, Studies in Higher Education, 46(7), pp. 1429–1443.   

Garvey, R., 2011. A very short, interesting and reasonably cheap book about coaching and mentoring. London, Sage.  

Huong-Giang Le, M., Tran, T., and Ashworth, P. (2024) ‘Mentoring matters: Uncovering hidden barriers in student success’, Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, (29), pp. 1–18.   

Jones, T. and Smith, L. (2022) ‘Support at a distance: Rethinking student services in the post-pandemic HE landscapes’, British Journal of Educational Studies, 70(4), pp. 489–506.   

Knowles, M.S., Holton III, E.F. and Swanson, R.A., 2014. The adult learner: The definitive classic in adult education and human resource development. Routledge. 

Mezirow, J., 1991. Transformative dimensions of adult learning. Jossey-Bass, 350 Sansome Street, San Francisco, CA 94104-1310.  

Nabi, G., Walmsley, A. and Akhtar, I., 2021. Mentoring functions and entrepreneur development in the early years of university. Studies in Higher Education, 46(6), pp.1159-1174.  

Nwosu, C. (2024). Outcomes of a mentoring scheme to improve career engagement in academia among students from minority ethnic groups. Frontiers in Education, 9, 1472953. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2024.1472953 (Accessed on 09/06/25).   

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