Book Review: Coaching and Mentoring for Academic Development by Kay Guccione and Steve Hutchinson In Coaching and Mentoring for Academic Development, Kay Guccione and Steve Hutchinson make the case for mentoring and coaching as key to building a learning culture in higher education, exploring how coaching and mentoring programmes can be embedded to provide learning opportunities as well as support and growth for academic and research staff. Jo Collins welcomes this invaluable and timely book for offering tools, clarity and a framework for those supporting mentoring programmes to develop practice and experiment. Coaching and Mentoring for Academic Development. Kay Guccione and Steve Hutchinson. Emerald Publishing. 2021. Find this book (affiliate link): Kay Guccione and Steve Hutchinson’s Coaching and Mentoring for Academic Development stakes a claim for mentoring and coaching as key to building a learning culture in higher education. This is vital, the authors point out, as academics and researchers experience persistent precarity. Researchers, many of whom are on fixed term contracts at the start of their career (21), are buffeted by ‘macropolitical and economic factors’ (18), expected to over-perform (24) and to move institutions (21), all of which variously disrupt autonomy, progression and potentially work-life stability. Furthermore, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the informal learning opportunities that arise from impromptu conversations in corridors, kitchens and so forth are no longer happening. This is a very timely book, because it asserts that coaching and mentoring programmes should and can be embedded in higher education to provide learning opportunities as well as support and growth for academic and research staff, precisely when these staff are most at risk of becoming atomised. The authors assert that this hope for a learning culture within higher education avoids a ‘deficit approach’ to mentorship. They reject the notion that coaching and mentoring should be introduced merely to solve problems (32), or with the aim of addressing ‘weaknesses’ of those being mentored (13). This deficit model of mentoring and coaching sits alongside an engrained narrative within academia that ‘if you need training, you are failing’ (32), highlighting a suspicion of programmes of skills and development perceived to be bureaucratic and antithetical to research (95). Contrary to this, the authors assert an ethos of coaching and mentoring that empowers the mentee, leading to self-reliance and authentic development rather than instructed solutions (33). These educational aims and ethos are developed throughout the book, which is brimming with useful tools on topics such as difficult conversations, coaching through change and coaching for efficacy, mentoring agreements and evaluating programmes. The book is structured neatly, and is an easy read the whole way through or for dipping in and out of sections. The initial section explores where to start with mentoring and how to understand the context of higher education; a second section illustrates practices, concepts and tools; and a third section directs readers towards enhancing the value and reputation of mentoring at programme level. Here the authors give the tools to develop a learning culture, and also to embed it institutionally. Within their educational aim, the authors also seek to reframe the perception that mentoring is ‘giving advice’, moving instead towards a coaching approach which centres on the mentee’s experiences. Indeed, this might seem somewhat contradictory in a book which advocates mentors building ‘repertoires of practice beyond advice’ (34), whilst itself seemingly giving advice. Yet, Guccione and Hutchinson carefully and steadily tread the fine line between offering advice and encouraging the reader to explore further, to reflect on their own personal and institutional situations and to customise the resources offered for their specific needs. LSE Review of Books: Book Review: Coaching and Mentoring for Academic Development by Kay Guccione and Steve Hutchinson Page 1 of 3 Date originally posted: 2021-03-19 Permalink: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2021/03/19/book-review-coaching-and-mentoring-for-academic-development-by-kay-guccione-and-steve-hutchinson/ Blog homepage: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/