Learning Through Self-discipline and Personal Growth, Facilitated by Coaching

Abstract

The overall objective of the present project is to utilize knowledge and skills in social work, psychology and other social sciences to motivate and guide students learn better through self-discipline and personal growth, facilitated by coaching. 1. Self-discipline entails a code of behavioral ethics that is adaptive to university life and ultimately beneficial to self (and others) both in the short- and longer-term. It comprises the good practices of punctuality; preparation for, attentiveness and participation in class; intellectually honest conduct, time-management, and so forth. 2. Personal growth for students is primarily cognitive, which includes such meta-cognitive competence as self-reflexive and -discovery skills, the ability to think laterally and to imagine, and the wisdom of integrating and managing knowledge from diverse areas of scholarship. In addition, as most students are at the stage of emergent adulthood development, social-relational intelligence and professional/vocational preparedness are just as important, and these require much greater social connectedness and co-curricular enrichment than the cognitive strand of personal growth. 3. By taking into account students' varying degrees of preparedness (e.g., LASSI profiles), self-discipline and personal growth coached from an early stage would help them catch up or further stretch themselves, as their case may be, in their journey toward ideal graduates.