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ScalingHESD

Continuous student coaching and guidance

Continuous coaching and mentoring across entire study programmes supports students' reflection on learning goals - a building block of institutional support systems for HESD.

Continuous student coaching and guidance
Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com M / Unsplash
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This example is part of the Scaling HESD Innovations Series. In this series, we explore practices that already exist in the niches of Higher Education for Sustainable Development (HESD) and that could plausibly be scaled to the regime level of higher education. Each example describes the practice itself, the landscape pressures ( ⇓ ) it speaks to, the crack in regime practices ( ◊ ) it exposes, and pathways for scaling it ( ⇑ ).

The practice
For students, the continuous reflection on their learning goals, their progress in achieving these goals, and the barriers to implementing them is a central aspect of Higher Education for Sustainable Development (HESD). Supporting these reflection processes through continuous coaching and mentoring programmes can play an important role in the institutional support systems of higher education institutions. In particular, long-term one-to-one coaching with professional coaches can be especially beneficial for students (Campbell & Mogashana, 2025). In addition, teachers and peers can take on coaching and mentoring roles (Nuis et al., 2023) and benefit from tailored support and training for these roles.

The landscape pressures it speaks to
The practice addresses three pressures. Study programmes supplemented with coaching, mentoring, and other guidance mechanisms can respond to scepticism about higher education’s relevance ( ⇓ ), by better preparing students to deal with the challenges they encounter when applying their learning in practice. This form of support can also help address concerns about the inadequacy of existing approaches to increasing student diversity ( ⇓ ), as it enables more tailored support for individual students. In addition, the practice can enhance the attractiveness and relevance of higher education, which is increasingly being questioned in the context of demographic change and the economisation of societal structures ( ⇓ ). The crack in the regime practice ( ◊ ) it exposes is the default of treating guidance as a peripheral, crisis-driven service that leaves responsibility for learning trajectories to the individual student, rather than as a continuous, structurally supported dimension of study programmes.

From niche to regime
Scaling this practice from niche to regime includes several processes:

  • Anchoring ( ⇑ ): Guidance and coaching need to be formally integrated into study programmes and financially supported through institutional structures such as colleges and graduate schools.
  • Coalition-building ( ⇑ ): Support structures should be co-developed with students, teachers as well as graduate schools and stakeholders responsible for study programme development.
  • Diffusion ( ⇑ ): The support programmes should be accompanied by corresponding empirical research to evaluate and further develop their effectiveness and strengthen their legitimacy.

References:
Campbell, A. L., & Mogashana, D. (2025). Assessing the effectiveness of academic coaching interventions for student success in higher education: A systematic review. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 62(4), 1325–1347. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2024.2417173

Nuis, W., Segers, M., & Beausaert, S. (2023). Conceptualizing mentoring in higher education: A systematic literature review. Educational Research Review, 41, 100565. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2023.100565

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The Scaling HESD Innovations collection is open — you are invited to contribute your own example.