50 Teaching and Learning Approaches: Simple, easy and effective ways to engage learners and measure their progress is fresh and modern look at teaching methods for all educators, from teachers and lecturers to staff training a PPD deliverers. Written by Sharron Mansell, Assistant Principal of Quality at the White Rose Beauty Colleges, which is recognised as the UKs largest beauty therapy training provider and recipient of an outstanding OFSTED inspection report and edited by educational training consultant, Ann Gravells. 50 Teaching and Learning Approaches is a fresh and modern way to look at teaching. Each entry has examples, links to academic styles and is augmented by a quirky illustration.
We were lucky enough to have a chat with designer and lecturer, Andrew Hampel who provided the illustrations for the book.
Andrew. Thanks for agreeing to talk to us. Firstly, how did you become involved with the book in the first place?
My pleasure. Thank you for having me. I was approached by Sharron who I’ve known for a great many years who was playing around with ideas for a different sort of academic book. She wanted it to have a fast and inclusive feel, and to be accessible by as many different people in the world of education as possible. The idea she had was that if you liked to read structured example, each method would have a description, if you want to see a more methodical approach there is a table of how it fits into a teaching session, and if you’re visually minded it also features a drawing, which is where I come in.
Did Sharron give you a strict brief for the project, or was there room for you to be quite flexible?
Well one of the reasons Sharron approached me, was because I work in education myself. As a lecturer I understand the language and the ideas Sharron is putting across. I’d already provided Sharron with a character drawing for a previous project which she liked as it had no gender, so I made this the starting point for a set of rules I had to govern the direction of the piece.
Can you elaborate what you mean by a set of rules?
Sure. Well it’s one of the key rules of design for me, always have a concept. So I came up with a set of boundaries or constraints that would help to give the world a constancy.
Can you tell us the rules?
We had non gender specific characters, I tried to bring in different body shapes and physical attributes, the screens on their faces only included symbols, never faces or expressions, there is no written language or letters – the images have to speak for themselves. The general feel I had in my head was an academic Mr Men book – a self-contained world within the book that linked to ours.
What was behind the idea of the screen on the faces?
It was a way of putting across information that enhanced the message of the chapter really. It describes what’s going on in a visual subtitle. Very much like an emoji.
Some of the images are very much direct interpretations of the activity the chapter is describing, but others seem to go off in a slightly humorous direction. I’m thinking of the Rapper for example, and I think there was a pirate.
Yes, that’s right. Well I think teaching generally has to be a mix of humor, direct reference and activity which is really what the book does. It would also be very easy to interpret any teaching method as sitting at a computer or listening to teacher, when in reality all of these methods can be delivered in many exciting and vibrant ways and it was important to me that we put this across in the drawings.
I must admit 50 drawings is quite an achievement.
It’s actually more now, as we’ve just finished work on the second book which is 50 Assessment Approaches which will be out early next year I think and then we’ll be starting on the third book 50 Quality Assurance approaches
Andrew. Thank you for taking time to talk to us.
Thank you.
The book 50 Teaching and Learning Approaches: Simple, easy and effective ways to engage learners and measure their progress published by Sage is available now from https://amzn.to/33jEPOu in paperback and kindle editions.
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