Employing Community-Based Experiential Learning in Teacher Education

Gary Harfitt is the Associate Dean for Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong with specific responsibility for Experiential Learning at UG and PGDE levels. He has won multiple awards for teaching excellence at HKU and is an educator with almost 30 years of experience of teaching in local schools and preparing teachers in Hong Kong.  His work with undergraduate and postgraduate teachers at the university has included teaching multiple Experiential Learning projects and he draws on this experience through the proposed book. Jessie Chow, as a registered educational psychologist, worked closely with in-service teachers and families with different special educational needs for a decade before joining the University of Hong Kong to support experiential learning programmes. She has been instrumental setting up EL projects across undergraduate and postgraduate levels that explore key aspects of the field’s development in Asia and has also published an online guidebook for EL facilitators to promote EL to a wider audience.

• Chapter 1: Concepts and Context.- Chapter 2: Transforming Initial Teacher Education through Community-based Experiential Learning: An Overview.- Chapter 3: Getting started: Designing your own Community-based Experiential Learning (CBEL) Initiatives.- Chapter 4: CBEL in Practice: Case Study 1.- Chapter 5:  CBEL in Practice: Case Study 2.- Chapter 6:  CBEL in Practice: Case Study 3.- Chapter 7: CBEL in Practice: Case Study 4.- Chapter 8: CBEL in Practice: Case Study 5.- Chapter 9: Counter-stories: Lessons learned from Community-based experiential learning projects.- Chapter 10: Designing and facilitating ‘reflection-on-action’ and ‘reflection-in-action’ in Community-based EL.- Chapter 11: Some final thoughts.