What’s the difference between teaching and coaching?

Not all driving tuition in the UK is equal

I talk quite frequently about the state of our industry, because I’m passionate about what I do but also I’m concerned about things continuing as they are without change, because it’s not just an accident waiting to happen – it’s causing accidents to happen right now. That might sound dramatic, but hear me out.

Parents and people wanting to learn to drive aren’t quite sure what to look for when choosing a driving instructor (there’s a blog on this here, too) – one thing I’d strongly encourage is asking the instructor to describe their training style.

One of the key differences between the ‘good’ and ‘not so good’ instructors is how they impart their knowledge. There are people who teach, and people who coach. Knowing how to spot the difference will help you maximise your driver training, whether you are learning to drive or want to become a driving instructor.

What’s the difference between teaching and coaching?

Teaching is restrictive. It involves relaying information in a specific way for someone to remember and practice in that specific way.  It doesn’t leave room to think for yourself, or work out an answer that may deviate from the way you’ve been taught.

Remember when you were at school and had to memorise a bunch of facts for an exam? If you had a good memory, you could spew out those facts on the exam paper and get a good grade, even if you had little understanding of the philosophy or methodology behind them. That’s how most people learn to drive in the UK – and worryingly, how many instructors learn to train.

On the other hand, coaching encourages the person learning to think for themselves. It nurtures natural problem-solving abilities that enable you to react correctly and responsibly should any kind of unpredicted situation arise when you’re driving – which often happens on our busy roads. A great analogy I read recently describes coaching perfectly; when you have a baby, the parent doesn’t teach the toddler to walk.  They hold their hands, stand close and support them so that they learn how to walk themselves using their natural ability and through encountering challenges and making mistakes.

How does coaching vs teaching make a difference when it comes to driver training?

If you’ve been taught to drive (and most of us have if we passed our test 20, 30 years ago), your experience with an instructor will have gone something like this. The instructor will say ‘this is what we’re doing today’, they’ll cover the syllabus as gospel rather than as a guide. They’ll tell you which lane to go into and which way to turn the wheel (‘quarter of a steer here, half a steer there’), they’ll rinse the test routes until you know the way like the back of your hand and give you tips to help you pass – ‘if they take you this way, do this.’

This is the old-fashioned way of doing things. The focus is all about getting you to pass, just like in the school analogy, where the focus is getting you to pass the exam. The difference here is that whilst the education system is ideal, there can be no dangerous consequences of not having an in-depth handle on chemistry – but getting into a car without having the skills to take initiative yourself or problem-solve when faced with a new situation or when driving in an area you aren’t familiar with can have grave consequences.

Pass rate vs practice

These old-fashioned driving instructors are deceptively ‘good’. They tend to have an impressively high first time pass rate – but are those people on their pass list good drivers, or are they just good at copying instructions?

Where this poses a problem is in the real world when a situation arises that the new driver is not prepared for and has not been taught how to respond to. This is especially common in a new area – if you’ve been taught how to drive perfectly around several local circuits, what happens when you venture further afield and encounter different junctions, roadways and situations?

At first glance you’d look at this driving instructor or instructor trainer and think they’re great. Lots of parents just want their kids to pass, and I get that – but safety is really the most important thing at the end of the day.

People who are taught to drive learn the hard way afterwards out on our roads, without proper support or someone with them to help if they don’t know what to do. That’s why the accident and fatality rate for 18-24 year olds in this country is so high – and it needn’t be.

The real-world impact of this is that young people are dying and being harmed on UK roads – needlessly. That’s why it’s so important that we collectively make this change both when training instructors themselves, and learners.

Making the industry better

The first step to tackling this toxic teaching culture is to hold the industry accountable for it, which is what I try to do whenever possible. It’s easy, and lazy, to teach someone to drive. Coaching someone gives them a lifelong set of skills both practical and cognitive that allows them to take responsibility, think for themselves and work things out as and when situations arise, whether you’re prepared for them or not. When you develop these skills in a natural way on your own, it sticks.

The second step is creating change. This shift needs to start with the quality of our driving instructor training. If that’s the way they learn, it’s the way they’ll train. That’s why I champion coaching over teaching both as a driving instructor and as a driving instructor trainer.