Brendon Harvey - Creative Teaching Approaches in the Lifelong Learning Sector

Creative Teaching Approaches
in the Lifelong Learning Sector

Creative Teaching Approaches in the Lifelong Learning Sector

Brendon Harvey and Josie Harvey Open University

Open University Press
McGraw-Hill Education
McGraw-Hill House
Shoppenhangers Road
Maidenhead
Berkshire
England
SL6 2QL

email:
world wide web: www.openup.co.uk

and Two Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121-2289, USA

First published 2013

Copyright Brendon Harvey and Josie Harvey 2013

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency Limited. Details of such licences (for reprographic reproduction) may be obtained from the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd of Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London, EC1N 8TS.

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN-13: 9780335246304 (pb)
ISBN-10: 0335246303 (pb)
e-ISBN: 9780335246311

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
CIP data has been applied for

Typeset by Aptara Inc., India
Printed in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire

Fictitious names of companies, products, people, characters and/or data that may be used herein (in case studies or in examples) are not intended to represent any real individual, company, product or event.

For all the faces in all our spaces at all our places public and private this is for you

Praise for this book

So much more than a manual or menu of how to bring creativity into teaching, this book will be refreshing for experienced lecturers, trainers and teachers, and an inspirational as well as reassuring font of ideas for those new to the role.

In addition to presenting practical ideas for individuals to use, Brendon Harvey and Josie Harvey's book is uniquely valuable in addressing institutional challenges that can face those introducing new creative ways of working, as well as providing counsel on how the lecturer/trainer/teacher can protect their own well-being when stepping into creative territory.

Dr Clare Rigg, Head of Department of Business, Hotel, Catering & Tourism, Institute of Technology Tralee, County Kerry, Ireland

Brendon and Josie have drawn on their wealth of experience to co-author a practical teaching guide to meet the needs of 21st century learners in the Lifelong Learning Sector.

This is an excellent guide for both those new to teaching and also those seeking to meet the challenges of becoming more creative and using new technologies and social media more effectively in their professional practise. For the new teacher, there is a welcoming section addressing some of the anxieties which may be present before and during the early stages of practise as well as great examples of what to include in a creative session without breaking the bank!

The final section focuses on creativity within the organisational context and introduces us to the Trojan Mouse and the benefits of action research.

This is a recommended read for anyone looking to update their practise.

Debbie Fletcher, Vice Principal of Leeds City College

Drawing on their own experiences, as shared with us in the stories of their respective journeys from the world of traditional teaching and training methods and environments to that of creative active engagement of and with learners, the Harveys provide valuable insights into and a practical guide for learning facilitators in a variety of contexts to take or enhance their own journeys into the use of Creative Approaches in the Lifelong Learning Sector. Complete with stories, cases, and examples supported by provocative thinking points and activities and exercises for learning facilitators, this is a must-have resource. Consistent with their message, this is a creatively written and presented practical guide that inspires outside-the-box thought and action eschewing any attempts to provide recipes but rather championing the need for diversity of methods and approaches based on learners, setting, context, and other variables.

Tony G. LeTrent-Jones, Adjunct Professor, University of North Carolina, USA, and Elon University, USA

Brendon Harveys involvement with education, research, and young people stretches back to his first teaching post in a Leeds school in 1980. Since then, he has taught in further education colleges, been a senior lecturer in three universities, and a post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Inclusion and Diversity at the University of Bradford. In 1994, he started his own business, Aspects Associates, specializing in action learning and creativity for the public, private, and voluntary sectors. In 2005, he gained his PhD, a critical study of empowerment. Brendons practice is split between consultancy/research, writing, and teaching. He is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Inclusion and Diversity at the University of Bradford, as well as an associate lecturer for Huddersfield Universitys School of Education and Professional Development in the UK and China.

Josie Harvey is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education and Professional Development at the University of Huddersfield. She has taught on the full-time PGCE (Lifelong Learning) programme in the Post-Compulsory Education and Training (PCET) Department for the last five years, and has also been the TQEF leader for the Creativity and Innovation in Teaching in Higher Education project. She originally trained as an accountant before working in further and higher education, where she has acquired nearly 30 years of teaching experience across all levels and ages. She has also had 16 years experience as a Senior Curriculum Manager in Business Studies in a large further education college, gaining extensive experience in staff development, curriculum design, and operations. She is also a co-author of the textbook A Toolkit for Creative Teaching in Post Compulsory Education (Eastwood et al., 2009).

The two of us were sat in a caf in Leeds a couple of years ago, and over coffee started to recount some of the rich stories we had experienced in our collective sixty years of teaching. More and more, we realized we had a lot to offer new and existing teachers around creative teaching approaches and ways to engage students (as well as being able to identify the pitfalls) in many different sectors and organizations. We made a decision to capture this in a practical book for other teachers and trainers to use and adapt.

To set the backdrop to this book, we both felt it was valuable to share our own stories in teaching and creativity (or lack of it), so the reader can sense our passion and enthusiasm for these approaches in our teaching today.

Josies story

My story begins with training as a chartered accountant back in the early 1980s. I remember many long days sitting in a lecture room being talked at and being crammed full of facts and exam techniques to pass the various professional papers in accountancy. At the time, I remembered what I needed to pass the exams by rote, but none of it made much sense that came much later when I was actually preparing clients accounts for real. I learnt my accountancy skills on the job, and might as well have skipped all those hours of frustration in a classroom for the amount of good it did me. After a few years in accountancy practice, I realized that it wasnt the profession for me and retrained as a teacher in the post-compulsory sector. I believed I could put my accounting knowledge to good use, giving my own students a very different classroom experience from my own. I certainly appreciated how difficult it was to make the subject accessible to all.