News from Austria, Germany and Switzerland.
We are happy to announce fantastic news about a research project in Europe that won substantial funding to study the topic of QUESTIONING SEQUENCES IN EXECUTIVE COACHING.
The cross-border cooperation on this project will be carried out by two linguists (Eva-Maria Graf, University of Klagenfurt, Austria, Thomas Spranz-Fogasy, Leibnitz-Institute of the German Language, Germany) and a psychologist (Hansjörg Künzli, Zürcher Hochschule of Applied Sciences, Switzerland). In addition, there will be three PhD students, two project members and various student assistants working on the project.
Although coaching is widely practiced, its academic foundation is still underdeveloped. Questioning practices, considered as a crucial intervention, represent a principal research gap. This project analyzes questioning practices in what can be observed in systemic-solution oriented, work-related coaching. Research questions and objectives include:
- Which kinds of questioning sequences (i.e. coaches’ questions, clients’ responses and coaches’ follow-up turns) occur across a coaching process?
- What are their coaching-specific functions?
- How frequent are the various types of questioning sequences?
- What relationship exists between the frequency of successful or unsuccessful sequences and the local and global effectiveness of coaching?
The project aims to develop a coaching-specific typology of questioning sequences and to investigate their coaching-specific change potential. The study uses authentic, video-taped and linguistically transcribed processes from systemic-solution oriented coaching. It brings together qualitative linguistic methods (Conversation Analysis, Gesprächsanalyse) and qualitative/quantitative psychological methods (Qualitative Content Analysis, Descriptive Statistics) in a mixed-methods research design.
The project will enrich our understanding of questioning as a central intervention in the helping professions. The study breaks new methodological grounds for its interdisciplinary approach and mixed methods research design that allow for bringing together sequentially organized coaching interaction and phases of change. By drawing on Austrian, German and Swiss data, it covers the entire German-speaking coaching market.
The project starts March 1, 2021 and will run for 36 months.
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