Here is an extract from Professor Frank Coffield’s keynote address to a teaching and learning event at Success North held in association with LSIS in December 2010. The event was well attended and Professor Coffield’s talk was particularly well received. He challenged all those present, from management to tutors posing questions rather than giving answers. Are we creating independant critical learners? Do we work in colleges of further education or of further employability studies? Is what we do only about being an efficient business? In today’s knowledge economy teaching is a noble and essential profession and we need to defend learning and teaching.
Frank Coffield is Emeritus Professor of Education at the Institute of Education, University of London, and Visiting Professor at the University of Sunderland. He retired at the end of 2007 after 42 years in education, having worked in the universities of Keele, Durham and Newcastle in England; and at a comprehensive school, an Approved School and Jordanhill College of Education in Scotland.
In 2008 he wrote Just suppose teaching and learning became the first priority…, and in 2009 All you ever wanted to know about learning and teaching but were too cool to ask, both of which were published by LSN and can be downloaded from the LSN website free of charge.
