5.9    Experience-led learning on the City and Guilds 730

City and Guilds 730 is an initial training course for teachers in adult and further education. This case study concerns one term of this course consisting of nine three-hour sessions. The constraints faced by this course were considerable and might in some circumstances have deterred innovation:

• City and Guilds specifies a syllabus in some detail.
• There were 55 teachers on the course: a large group with which to use experiential methods.
• The teachers came from very varied backgrounds and had a wide range of qualifications. Some had no experience of teaching whilst others had been teaching for a number of years. They taught a wide variety of subjects, from computing to karate, and those they taught had a wide range of abilities and needs.
• The classroom available was not conducive to learning: gloomy, scruffy and depressing with broken furniture and shabby old posters on the walls.
• The course ran in the evening from 6pm - 9pm after the teachers and their tutors had already completed a day's work.

Conventional didactic knowledge-centred methods were useless in this context: the variations in background knowledge, skills and interests of the learners were too great, and the motivation problems too acute. An experience-based programme was devised to tackle these constraints which involved active learning and a clear link between what took place on the course and the teachers' teaching experiences during the week between sessions. Six elements of this course are described here:

• The explicit use of the experiential learning cycle to sequence course elements.
• The use of learning logs for teachers to record their reflections on teaching-based tasks.
• The use of experiential methods during classroom sessions.
• The use of problem groups.
• The use of a learning review at the end of the course.
• Evaluation evidence concerning the outcomes of the course.

Use of the experiential learning cycle

At the first session experiential learning theory was introduced to the group. They completed a learning styles inventory to identify their own preferred learning style (see Section 3). It was stressed that the most important learning opportunities would take place not on the course but in their everyday teaching, and that the course was designed to help them to make the best use of this opportunity by:

• helping them to identify their own learning needs, to reflect upon their practice and increase awareness of their experience;
• helping them to share experiences and make sense of them;
• supporting risk taking and experimentation, including creating a supportive climate;
• offering new concepts with which to analyse their teaching and new methods to try out in their teaching.

The main process of the course was explained to them using the diagram below.

At several points in each session the group were reminded which stage they were currently at on the cycle and what the next steps would involve.

The use of learning logs

The teachers were each given a ring binder for their handouts and notes. Each week the class-based exercises were supported by worksheets and checklists which the teachers filled in and added to their ring binder. Each week they devised for themselves an action plan, based on the concepts introduced that week, which involved them trying out something in their teaching and/or reflecting upon what happened in one of their classes. Their notes on this reflection also went into their ring binder which built up into a learning log. The log became a record of their thoughts and feelings and a resource for future development of their teaching. The teachers handed in their learning log for assessment at the end of term: the logs provided the best indication of the quality of the teachers' engagement with the course.

Observation and reflection tasks were undertaken in sessions in order to develop the skills necessary for similar observations and reflections outside the class. For example, the first activity for the learning log involved watching a short video of a lecturer giving a conventional lesson. An observation sheet asked the teachers to identify helpful things the lecturer has probably done in preparation for this lesson, and helpful things the lecturer did during the lesson. Small group discussion and a brief plenary session illustrated the range of things which could be observed and thought about and provided a model for the teaching-based activity to be undertaken over the following week. This involved a handout with instructions and headings as in the example below.

At the start of the next week's session the teachers met in small groups (the same groups each week in order to build up trust) to share and discuss the outcomes of this activity in their learning logs.

This activity may seem rather simple and lacking in theoretical content, but the teachers were quite unused to observing themselves and reflecting on their own teaching and some found even this activity difficult. As the course progressed the teaching based activities became more demanding, the observations more specific and subtle, and the reflections more sophisticated and analytical, based more closely on conceptual frameworks offered during the sessions.

The use of experiential methods in sessions

Even when the content of the course might normally have been handled in a didactic way, experiential methods were employed in order to involve the teachers actively and operationalise the ideas involved. For example:

• A session on demonstration involved a tutor showing one of the teachers how to use a polaroid camera whilst the whole class observed and took notes on the methods used. They then compared notes, discussed demonstration techniques in general, and selected a technique they could use in their own teaching.
• A session on motor skill training involved dividing the class into threes. One person taught a second how to do half knots and flat knots in macrame whilst the third person observed using a brief checklist (see Section 4.1.4 for an example of an observation checklist). The observers then reported back to the whole group on what they had seen and which training techniques seemed successful.
• A session on games and simulations involved all the teachers playing a simulation game called 'San Leona' which was used to illustrate many of the design features of games and to demonstrate their capacity for intense involvement of learners.

Learning activities, games, demonstrations, videos and exercises were used at every opportunity. These activities were followed by reflection, analysis and the planning of application of the ideas to the teachers' own teaching, rather than expecting learning to take place on the basis of abstract conceptualisation alone.

The use of problem groups

Two weeks of the course were devoted to problem solving in groups . The teachers identified problems in their own teaching which they wanted help with and formed groups. The groups then used a technique called 'thirty second theatre' to tackle each teaching problem in turn. The problem solving involved structured discussion, brainstorming and role play. Thirty second theatre is described in Section 5.5.

The use of a learning review

The last task the teachers were set outside the sessions was to review their learning logs, reflect on their teaching since the course started and to write down at least three statements to complete the sentence:

"What I have learnt about teaching and learning is....... "

The last session of the course was held in a room where flip chart paper had been stuck up all round the walls. The teachers were asked to write up their three statements on these posters. They were then asked to go round and read all the statements made by others in silent reflection. They could make written comments, write questions, respond to others' questions in writing, but not speak. This reflective review of what had been learnt was an intense experience for many and generated an enormous number of thoughtful and revealing statements and some interesting written 'debates' about unresolved issues. There was no attempt by the tutors to summarise the course for the teachers, which would have indicated a lack of respect for the teachers' unique personal summaries. Instead the tutors joined in as equal participants and added their own learning statements and commented on others' statements.

Evaluation evidence

Evaluation evidence was obtained by questionnaire, by open-ended written feedback and through interviewing.

The questionnaire showed the extent to which the teachers had taken on board the basic principles of experiential learning. A section of the questionnaire results is reproduced below.

Data from the questionnaires also revealed that while all the teaching and learning methods used gained good ratings, the teachers felt they had learnt least from lectures and presentations, and most from the group problem solving, the exercises and activities, the discussion of teaching with other teachers and the activities undertaken during the week between sessions.