[6]. At this point it was decided that students
would keep the same peer coach throughout the
year to enable this relationship to develop. An
important part of peer coaching is that it is an on-
going process.
The students had the opportunity to work
together with their peer coaches during 8 college
sessions. These usually involved some discussion
guidelines to aid their conversations and help them
to progress their learning. This enabled them to
build a relationship with their peer coach before
starting their school placements. They were also
encouraged to meet during their self-study days
and outside of college, which many of them did.
One of the key discussion points of these
meetings was their school practice and how they
evidence their progress on course. This was crucial
as one of the worries student teachers have is about
all the paperwork they must submit to pass the
course. The opportunity to see what others on
course were doing and discuss any concerns was
an important step in building their confidence.
3.3. The Questionnaires
Students were given one interim questionnaire
after their first term and two questionnaires at the
end of their PGCE course. Questionnaires were
chosen as the research tool as they enabled us to
analyse responses from all the participants in the
study and obtain an overall picture of the process.
All three questionnaires consisted of short-answer
and open-ended questions to encourage a range of
responses. Opinion statements with a Likert scale
response with bipolar adjectives on an 8 point
scale were also used. The open-ended questions
were framed to elicit data on such things as
professional attributes while the Likert type
questions would provide quantitative data. The
first questionnaire was designed to gain interim
data on how the peer coaches had established their
relationships. The final two questionnaires were
designed to yield a more qualitative response with
open-ended questions about the process of both
being coached and coaching.