Welcome

Welcome to the Web version of the Northern College's guide to good practice in Teaching and Learning.

The Northern College is an adult residential college that has worked for many years in the area of widening participation and lifelong learning. The College is one of six long-term residential colleges in England and offers full and part-time programmes of study that help to fulfil the College’s mission which is build around engaging adult learners who have “had little or no opportunity to pursue education or training since leaving school. We assist the realisation of their personal and intellectual potential as individuals, in groups and in communities and thereby to further the development of their skills, competencies and educational achievements.”

The College is situated in the heart of a region that manifests significant areas of social and economic deprivation in which levels of educational attainment and qualification fall far below the national average. As such the College regards itself as an important contributor to the social and economic regeneration of the area and seeks to play a major role in the community development of the region.

The Purpose of this Guide

The culture of the College is such that the induction process for staff coming to work here for the first time can be prolonged and the culture shift difficult to absorb. In addition, as the agenda of central government becomes more focused on widening participation and lifelong learning, we feel that this guide serves not only to help new staff relate to the way we work but also to reinforce good practice with existing staff and help practitioners in other institutions deal with some of the issues raised by the widening participation agenda.

We do not claim to have all the right answers and this guide will, at times, appear contradictory. This will be true for any organisation dealing with a disparate group of learners who have a multiplicity of social, economic and educational needs. These contradictions are at the heart of a responsive organisation that attempts to deal with people as individuals.

The points we make are often aspiration and we cannot claim that we are wholly successful in addressing all facets of good practice all the time - however we must attempt the journey on the road to excellence in teaching and learning.

More formally the purpose of this Guide is thus to: