Learning My Living : Reflections on Teaching in Higher Education for Over Fifty Years

As the old saying goes, "If you are determined to learn, no-one can stop you." With a long and decorated career in higher education, there are few people who could claim to know that fact better than Dr Gaye Manwaring. In this book, Gaye reveals the many ways in which the world of education has changed and developed over the past few decades. Drawing on examples from her varied experiences in the field, she considers how approaches to learning have evolved by examining not just the education sector in the UK, but in several different countries across the world. From her own formative experiences in the British education system through to her award-winning university career, Gaye explains the vital importance of lifelong learning and explores the changing ways that education is continuing to empower lives and encourage exciting new approaches.

Dr Gaye Manwaring has recently retired from the University of Dundee where she was a Senior Lecturer in Education. She worked in higher education for fifty years and was awarded the MBE. Her academic interests were educational technology, curriculum development, evaluation, distance learning, mentoring and wellbeing. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (now Advance HE) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She has published 29 chapters and articles, acted as consultant on 6 other publications, created 18 educational packages, as well as numerous learning units and online modules as part of her normal teaching responsibilities. She took an honours degree in zoology at the University of Exeter followed by a PhD in biochemical genetics at the University of Edinburgh. She had a joint appointment in Zoology and Education at the University of Glasgow, designing self-study audio-visual learning materials for students. Twenty-five instructional packages on biology were published by Longmans. She moved to Dundee and taught many undergraduate and postgraduate courses, and supervised and examined doctoral students. Initially in the 1970s, Gaye ran the Postgraduate Diploma in Educational Technology for an international audience. Later this developed into a distance learning programme using a variety of media. In the 1980s and 90s Gaye was heavily involved in nationally funded staff development programmes for schoolteachers, social workers, doctors and community dentists. She was joint leader of a five-year project on Staff Development and Appraisal in which a team of thirty tutors designed training materials and delivered them to staff from every school in Scotland. As Director of the Open Learning Service for the Scottish Council for Postgraduate Medical and Dental Education she produced in-service packages that were sent to every general practice in Scotland. She designed training materials using print, audiotape, slides, CD-ROMs, video, websites and virtual learning modules. The topics included professional development, staff appraisal, health education, evaluation methods, teaching and learning, mentoring, Children's Panel, open, distance and work-based learning. She has worked extensively with international students and her academic career has taken her to Canada, USA, Poland, Eire, The Netherlands, Croatia, Thailand, Malaysia, Australia and Eritrea. She ran staff development courses for lecturers at the Universiti Sains in Penang in Malaysia, and took leave of absence to work for six months at Murdoch University in Australia. She taught for many years on the Teaching Qualification for Further Education Lecturers and on Dundee's courses for new university teachers. She joined a Continuing Education class on Creative Writing at the University of Dundee (the Nethergate Writers) and contributed short stories to their published anthologies, including one story about a WAAF stationed at Montrose during WW2. She is currently writing an educational autobiography provisionally entitled "Learning My Living" and a novel "Tadpoles and Fireworks". Her voluntary work has included CRUSE bereavement counselling, Victim Support, audio describing theatre performances in Perth and Dundee, and running wellbeing courses for Arthritis Care. During the coronavirus pandemic lockdown she delivered online courses on wellbeing for students. In the future she would like to spend more time motorhoming with her husband as well as continuing with voluntary work on wellbeing.