Understanding Learning: A Lifetime's Quest - Hardcover

Sparkes, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1841040517 ISBN 13: 9781841040516

Publisher: Memoir Club, 2003

Synopsis

There are few physicists who have experienced as varied a career as John Sparkes. It is this diversity that has led him to some significant conclusions regarding the nature of human learning and his opinions regarding current teaching methods, which he reveals within Understanding Learning.

He describes his attendance at the remarkable Bootham School in York, followed by periods of teaching in both public and private schools.

The author describes how a series of unexpected events led him to leave teaching and to work for ten years as a physicist in the Plessey Company, during which time he helped to advance our understanding of transistors. This enabled him to return to teaching, this time as a senior lecturer in electronics at Imperial College.

Two career moves, first to Essex University, where, during the student revolution of the late 1960s, he became Dean of Students. Secondly, he moved to the Open University, where as Dean of Technology he was able to help establish this ground-breaking University.

The book concludes with a description of a new teaching strategy called Learning-centred teaching in which teaching and learning methods are matched to different kinds of specified learning outcomes.

This is part ‘physical autobiography’ and part ‘mental autobiography’ describing the evolution of the author’s ideas on science and education.

About this title

Review

'Understanding Learning offers an accessible and thought-provoking insight into the evolution of the author's ideas on science and education' -- Imperial College Engineer

About the Author

After graduating with honours in physics from Manchester University his initial employment during the war was with the Admiralty Signal Establishment and then as a hospital physicist in Middlesex and St Mary's in London. After a period of school teaching he spent ten years as a physicist in the Plessey Company. This enabled him to continue his teaching career but in higher education, at Imperial College, Essex University, where he gained his PhD, and the Open University, where he was Professor of Electronics and Communications.

Edition details

• Publisher: Memoir Club
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1841040517
• ISBN 13: 9781841040516
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 224