Learning by Doing: Experiential Learning in Criminal Justice

This article highlights the efforts of colleagues in a criminal justice department to offer experiential learning opportunities (ELOs) to undergraduate students. Operating within the framework of a liberal arts curriculum, we provide criminal justice majors with a range of opportunities that fall under the general rubric of “experiential learning”, including the following: internships, field trips, service-learning, and research projects. Our goal was to combine the academic rigors of traditional, classroom-based learning with exposure to hands-on, real-world, subject-based knowledge. We explain the multistage framework that is used to tie all of our ELOs together across the curriculum. Results from a senior and alumni survey indicate that experiential learning offers significant academic and professional benefits for students.     

A Framework for Transition: Supporting 'Learning to Learn' in Higher Education

In this paper, a framework for developing first‐year students' learning is proposed. Its aim is to increase university managers' and teachers' awareness of two issues: (1) that the currently predominant ‘skills’ approaches to the enhancement of student learning are based on a deficiency model and achieve little more than remedying the overt problems of individual students and (2) that a holistic, subject‐specific approach is needed to support all students in the complex process of learning to learn in higher education. The framework aims at facilitating transition to university by helping students to understand what is expected from them at university, by addressing their conceptions of learning and knowledge and by gradually developing their competence as independent learners as well as their competence in constructing knowledge in their discipline. Different contexts are used to apply complementary methods for the development of learning. As the framework relies on the engagement of academic teachers, it is critical that university managers and policy makers give appropriate recognition to effective teaching. This involves instigating changes in conceptions of teaching, providing opportunities for educational development and setting incentives for teachers' commitment to student learning.     

Combining ‘subject knowledge’ with ‘how to teach’: an exploratory study of new initial teacher education for teachers of adult literacy,numeracy and English for Speakers of other Languages

This paper is based on a research project that explored a UK Government initiative to improve the quality of teaching adults, numeracy, literacy and English as a second other language. The findings will be of interest to teacher educators generally and also to those involved in teaching adults, language, literacy and numeracy. The paper reports on the main findings of the research and sets the context for the presentation of models and concepts for rethinking how to meet the diverse prior experience and qualifications of those on teacher training programmes, as well as the challenges of relating a deeper understanding of ‘what you teach’ and ‘how you teach it’. Among the many issues raised by this paper, priority is given to the importance of the sequencing and organization of teacher training courses to meet the individual needs of trainees, who in the context of teaching adults in the UK have very different levels of teaching experience, prior subject knowledge and learning needs.