Students’ perceptions of an executive coaching intervention: a case study of an enabling education programme

The purpose of this study is to examine the perceived impact of executive coaching upon students in an enabling education programme at CQUniversity, Queensland. While there are shared philosophical underpinnings for enabling education and executive coaching, there are also clear distinctions between the two, which have ramifications for the type of support offered to improve student performance and retention rates. This is a mixed methods case study involving six enabling students who each underwent five individual coaching sessions in one term of their programme of university study. Semi-structured interviews, surveys and triangulation with nominated critical friends were the methods used to collect perceptions of the impact of coaching. The implications of this study are that coaching does provide a positive and effective form of support for enabling education students that is distinct from the support already provided by lecturers and counsellors to improve student performance and retention. © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group