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Personal development in schools often gets squeezed between deadlines, duties and the relentless pace of the academic year. Many teachers want to grow, want to reflect and want to think more deeply about their practice, yet find themselves operating with a mind that feels overstretched and slightly foggy. This is not a lack of motivation. It is a lack of mental space. Coaching offers that space.

On Tuesday I had the absolute privilege of spending the day at the BRILLIANT Festival in Liverpool – this time not just as a wide-eyed delegate, but as a judge and a speaker. By the time I left the Exhibition Centre, my notebook was full, my brain was fizzing, and my heart felt… hopeful. Not “toxic positivity” hopeful, but the grounded sort that comes from seeing real people doing real things to make education better. This wasn’t a conference where you sit in the dark being t

If every student could plan for their obstacles instead of being surprised by them, how different would their progress look by summer? This simple but powerful question sits at the heart of WOOP, a cognitive science-based method for transforming wishful thinking into practical action. It’s not about positive thinking alone, it’s about mentally rehearsing reality.

Coaching is often described as a conversation that changes minds. Beneath that phrase lies a deeper truth: coaching is a process of cognitive restructuring, rooted in the science of how humans think, learn, and change. When we help someone reframe a problem, challenge a belief, or experiment with a new perspective, we’re not just talking - we’re engaging in applied cognitive science.

For centuries, reason and emotion have been cast as rivals. From Plato’s charioteer trying to control wild horses of passion to the Enlightenment ideal of the rational thinker, Western culture has long celebrated logic as superior to feeling. Yet neuroscience tells a very different story. Far from clouding our judgment, emotions are essential for making sense of the world, shaping memory, guiding decisions, and sustaining motivation. Emotion as the Architect of Thought Antoni

Failure carries a strange weight in education. It is the word students dread, the mark teachers try to mitigate, and the outcome parents hope never to see. Yet behavioural science suggests that how we respond to failure might matter more than whether we experience it. In fact, failure, when reframed, can be one of the most powerful teachers of all.

Self-belief is one of those quiet forces that shapes everything a learner does. It’s not about bravado or loud confidence. It’s the voice in a student’s head that says, “I can do this,” or the one that whispers, “Why bother?” The science of self-belief, known as self-efficacy, explains why two students of equal ability can perform so differently when facing the same challenge.

Creativity is often mistaken for a gift given to a select few. The truth is far more empowering. Creativity is not a mysterious force that visits in the night. It is a form of cognitive strength, a mental superpower that can be trained, refined, and channelled to solve complex problems. Whether you’re a musician shaping a melody, an athlete adjusting mid-play, or a coder debugging a stubborn program, you are drawing from the same creative neural circuitry.

When people set goals, they often assume success depends on motivation. We tell ourselves, "I just need to try harder". But as behavioural economists and cognitive scientists remind us, the structure around our choices, the architecture of decisions, often matters more than raw determination. As coaches, educators, or leaders, we have the privilege of helping others not just make decisions but design environments where the right decisions become the easy ones..

We tend to think that if people truly care about their goals, they will act on them. In coaching, we often assume that clarity creates momentum, that once someone knows what to do, they will naturally do it. Yet behavioural economics and cognitive psychology tell a different story. Motivation alone is rarely enough. The missing ingredient is friction.

For many teachers and students, the end of term is supposed to be a relief, a long exhale after the relentless pace of school life. But for some of us, the start of the holidays brings something very different: unease, restlessness, even a subtle sense of loss.

The Nudge Curriculum is a behavioural science-informed approach to teaching and learning that leverages small, intentional design features—nudges—to support executive functioning, personal effectiveness, and academic agility. Rather than overhauling what we teach, it enhances how students interact with their learning environment. It’s about designing for success, using the principles of behavioural economics to make desirable behaviours easier to start, sustain, and succeed a

In the overlapping worlds of sport and education, performance and support must go hand-in-hand. This is especially true for students with...

Teaching is a profession of purpose, but also one of pressure. Between deadlines, data, and daily demands, it’s easy to lose sight of why we began in the first place. That’s where educator self-coaching comes in.

In the heart of every meaningful coaching interaction lies a question of values. What drives this student? What matters most to them? Why do they care, or not care, about this goal, this subject, this moment in their learning? Educational coaching, when done well, is not just about performance. It’s about alignment. And to align learning with lived motivation, we must explore values. Schwartz’s theory of basic human values offers a robust psychological framework to do just th

In classrooms shaped by rigid routines and a one-size-fits-all approach, neurodivergent students often find themselves struggling not because they lack ability, but because the system wasn’t built with their needs in mind. Coaching offers an alternative lens; one rooted in empathy, autonomy, and growth. It shifts the focus from “fixing behaviour” to fostering self-understanding and self-efficacy.

As educators, we often focus on what students should do when revising: spaced practice, interleaving, retrieval, and reflection. But we often overlook how the physical, temporal, and psychological context shapes those choices. This is where choice architecture comes in.

In high-performance sport and elite business environments, coaching isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. It sharpens focus, aligns teams...

In an era where emotional intelligence, resilience, and executive functioning are just as vital as subject knowledge, classrooms must...

In traditional classrooms, teaching often begins with answers delivered through talk, PowerPoints, and prescribed tasks. Students are positioned as receivers of knowledge, expected to absorb and reproduce. But what if we flipped this dynamic? What if the classroom became a space where learning began with questions - authentic, open-ended, and co-created? Welcome to The Coaching Classroom.