Motivating Students ? Essentials of Mentoring, Coaching & Counseling: Operational Strategy

Mentoring, Coaching and Counseling are popular capacity -building tools, especially in the area of education. They are often mentioned in proposals and reviews as key elements of good capacity-building practice. Yet despite their current status, many of us are unclear what coaching, mentoring and counseling really involves, and where and when they work. We have a number of questions: What does a coach, mentor or a counselor actually do? Is there any real difference between them? Where have these approaches come from? Are they really relevant to student development? When are these approaches effective? When are they not appropriate? This paper addresses these questions to demystify the concepts and practices of coaching, mentoring and counselling and its contribution towards motivating students.