Fiona Chapel

Position: Staff

Job title: Communities and Partnerships Manager, Lifelong Learning Centre

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My role

I manage the Lifelong Learning Centre's (LLC) Communities and Partnerships team, working to widen participation in Higher Education (HE) by adults from communities where HE is not the norm. Our community engagement activities include information giving and informal learning sessions using critical adult education perspectives.

My role includes working in partnership with a wide range of organisations in the city and region, across the voluntary, community and statutory sectors.

I co-coordinate a group of mature student ‘Learning Champions’ with my colleague Olivia Garvey. Our Learning Champions work with us by sharing their learning journeys to engage adults and encourage educational aspiration.

I am responsible for the LLC’s ‘JumpStart’ course which is a higher education level taster course for adults wanting to find out more about studying at university (the course runs twice a year).

Professional experience

My background is in adult education. I have taught adults in Adult and Community Education, Further Education and in the voluntary sector, covering a range of subject areas including ESOL, EFL, Family Learning and basic literacy and numeracy.

I have taught on HE-accredited modules in post-compulsory teacher training and am also involved with the LLC’s Preparation for Higher Education (PHE) course.

I am particularly interested in education for a social purpose and the promotion of critical thinking skills. I aim to embed these throughout my teaching and community engagement work. I am also interested in creative teaching methods and regularly use methods such as ‘photovoice’ with adult learners.

I have presented papers on the radical adult education tradition at the University of Leeds; the use of creative teaching methodology; how critical pedagogies can lead to transformative learning and the power of Learning Champion role models to raise adults’ aspirations to higher education.

I have presented papers most recently at the Standing Conference on University Teaching and Research in the Education of Adults (SCUTREA), the Universities’ Association for Lifelong Learning (UALL) Annual Conference and at a NEON symposium.

Qualifications

MA in Contemporary British History
PGCE in Post-compulsory Education and Training

Professional memberships

I am a member of the Association of Dyslexia Specialists in Higher Education (ADSHE) and a Higher Education Academy (HEA) Teaching Fellow.