Teaching and Supporting Adult Learners

This publication enables those teaching adult learners to gain an understanding of the difficulties that students may experience while developing their own professional practice in order to create effective, focused and inclusive teaching strategies for this group.

Sue Wallace is the Professor of Continuing Education at Nottingham Trent University. Her particular interest is in mentoring and the ways in which a successful mentoring relationship can support personal and professional development. She has researched and published extensively on education, training and management of behaviour, and is a popular keynote speaker at conferences.

Jackie Scruton is a Senior Lecturer at Nottingham Trent University, and part of her role is to support adult learners on a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses. She has taught adult learners in a range of settings and on courses, such as Basic Skills and Degree programmes. She has a particular interest in working with learners for whom inclusion may be an issue, this includes, amongst others, adult learners This interest was developed as a result of not only working with such learners but also from her experience of ’finding’ education later in life.

Belinda Feruson is a Senior Lecturer in Education at Nottingham Trent University, currently teaching on part-time degrees and teacher training courses and previously having taught in FE for 10 years on professional courses and initial teacher training. She has worked with adult learners throughout her career, and has seen the challenges and pressures they face along with the pleasure of success and the opportunities created. As a former mature, post-graduate student she has an empathy for students who find themselves juggling childcare and work with their studies.