AT STUDENTS' SERVICE - TUTORING AND COACHING AS INNOVATIVE METHODS OF ACADEMIC EDUCATION IN POLAND

A proposed paper presents academic Tutoring and Coaching as innovative methods of personalized teaching and learning, aimed at maintaining/preserving and developing high quality education at the contemporary university. Both methods constitute a didactic offer which apparently seems contradictory with the assumptions of Higher Education (HE) reforms, conducted recently in Poland and in Europe and directed at marketisation and commodification of education. This impression might be caused by the fact that Tutoring and Coaching refer back to the rooted in the Anglo-Saxon tradition of individualized teaching by a Tutor or Coach, who cares for a complex intellectual, cognitive and psycho-social (i. e. also emotional) development of his/her student. The idea of re-introducing elements of personalized education in the formula of Tutoring, Coaching and even Mentoring occur in progressive academic milieus as an alternative to purely pragmatic and depersonalized relationship between students and teachers. They evoke curiosity among academic researchers, as they assume unique, slightly forgotten in the contemporary practice of mass education ties between Master and Pupil, being per se a primary form of reciprocal stimulation of passion, interests and exchange of knowledge between two Subjects. As both discussed methods are directed at raising the efficacy of a teaching/learning process, they shall also be analyzed in the context of restructuring educational systems and changing requirements as for human/intellectual capital, driven by the processes of Europeanization and globalization of university/tertiary education. When professionally applied, Tutoring and Coaching stand a chance to become the best, if not the only tools to preserve the elite level of HE for those individuals (both teachers and students) who are ready to face an intellectual challenge, and who want to continue their personal development instead of only getting a diploma to fit the labor market. In this approach, Tutoring and Coaching turn into the measurable/institutionalized instruments to raise the quality of HE, and their application can be viewed as a factor which decides about the Institution's competitiveness. In the proposed article, general features of Tutoring as an academic method shall be enlisted alongside the assumptions of Coaching, the objective of which is, as it shall be argued, deepening of personalized teaching efficiency. The purpose of this juxtaposition shall be highlighting the points at which both approaches complement each other in order to provide a student with optimal conditions not only to widen his declarative or pragmatic knowledge, but also to develop his/her cognitive and emotional attitudes. The latter constitute the basis for successful learning and knowledge processing (re.: S. Krashen's Emotional Filter Hypothesis). Thus, Coaching shall be presented as an effective way of drawing students to their highest cognitive potentials by means of awakening their self-reflection over own goals, aptitudes and weaknesses meaningful to their learning process. Reaching this level of reflectivity is indispensable to successively build their knowledge capital, which in turn takes place in the personalized didactic dialogue with a Tutor: a leader, a coordinator and a source of professional knowledge in one. The authors also assume that combining Tutoring and Coaching as methods of teaching constitutes a highly competitive offer for HE pushed into the frames of European Qualification Framework. The objective will be to insert a postulated didactic approach in the administrative triple division of educational goals and effects formulated as knowledge, skills and attitudes (social skills). Accordingly, it shall be argued that personalized education may go in line with administrative rules of democratic education, and simultaneously serve the individual, autonomous student.