Educational support strategies compared: mentoring, tutoring, coaching and counselling

The paper explores different strategies of educational accompaniment, reflecting on their particularities, similarities and differences. Specifically, the practices of tutoring, mentoring, coaching and counselling in the educational field are analysed. Through a non-systematic literature review, the processes and the formative impact of each strategy are initially described. This is followed by a reflection about similarities and differences between the various approaches, reflecting on aspects such as etymology, the type of educational relationship, duration, methodologies, training and experience of the figures involved. Very often, the words “tutoring, mentoring, coaching and counselling” are used as synonyms, or without really knowing their particularities and differences. The proposed reflection helps to shed light on these related but unique strategies of educational accompaniment, encouraging a conscious and coherent use of the terms and a recognition of these fundamental educational practices.