Brett Heasman
This year Brett was nominated by his department for the Class Teacher Award and by his students for the ‘mentoring and personal development’ LSE Student Union Award.
What tips do you have for engaging students and ensuring everyone participates in class?
LSE is great as it’s an international institution so there’s lots of diversity. However, as a teacher you have to be sensitive to the fact that people from different backgrounds have different ways of learning and collaborating in the classroom. I always encourage students to bring their culture as well as their intellectual interpretations to discussions as this is a valuable way of involving everyone and hearing all perspectives.
On a practical level, I print out the students’ faces and names before term and try to learn these so I can address them all personally. I know when I was a student, I would pay much more attention in class when teachers did this! It helps you to build rapport and feel part of a discussion rather than just being talked at.
How do you help students integrate with each other and the university and why do you think it’s important?
Students come to university to learn things but also to belong to something – and as a GTA you have a special role bridging faculty and students. One way of helping students integrate is ensuring their first experience together is hugely positive.
With this in mind, for my first class I designed a series of activities including puzzles, riddles and role playing games so the students could explore ideas about communication and build rapport with me and each other.
For example, at one point I had two students pretending to be honeybees trying to communicate the location of some hypothetical pollen through the medium of dance!
It was hilarious and they didn’t forget it, which is what you want – for students to remember these powerful moments where they connect and come together as a group.
I find when you do these kinds of activities, students get to know each other faster, they socialise faster, they build study groups faster – it has a cascading effect on their student experience.
How has your experience as an LSE student helped you as a teacher?
As a former LSE student, I’m aware that what happens in the classroom is just the tip of the iceberg so last year I asked the students to have their lunch in the department. This way I could chat to them informally about what was going on – I know that asking for help isn’t easy.
I find these impromptu meetings helpful as they allow students to express things they never would in the formal setting of the classroom.
How have you supported career development of your students?
Another PhD student (Mark Noort) and I organised an “Impact Challenge” session for the students last year where we invited a professional from the crisis communications industry to share a real-world problem he had encountered.
We then split the students into groups and they had to pitch a solution Dragons Den style. The winning team then had their article published in a leading industry magazine which goes to companies around the world.
It was great for the students to get some practical experience and hear from a different side as the professional gave everyone feedback on their presentations.
That said, I think it’s really important to tell students that learning is not confined to the classroom or purely intellectual knowledge – it’s important to see learning as a continual enhancement across all aspects of life not just as something you do to pass exams.
How do you separate your teaching and research and ensure you have time for both?
For me, being a teacher and being a researcher are the same thing. It’s important to ensure that whatever knowledge you create is accessible and that only happens if you find ways of communicating it to stakeholders.
For example, I do research on autism and have turned my publication into an animation because this is one way of making it accessible to autistic people and I want them to read it and be involved in shaping future knowledge.
So teaching and research are a cyclical process.
What makes a good teacher?
Before doing my degree, I was a carer for an autistic man with severe learning difficulties and this has hugely shaped my teaching.
I learned that you can never assume you know what other people are thinking. My first job is to understand how my students think because everyone learns differently. If I can understand where they’re coming from, I can communicate my ideas more effectivity.
My second job is teaching your students how to understand their own minds. How they organise knowledge, how they evaluate problems, how they come up with ideas. If you can teach them to be their own teachers, you’re giving them the tools to do anything in life not just excel in exams.
Personally, I wasn’t that great academically when I was at school. I didn’t have a very positive image of my own intellectual abilities and didn’t really know what I could achieve but once I figured out how my mind worked and how I learned, my abilities changed.
If I can teach people to do that too, then that’s really satisfying.
Have you used any unusual or innovative teaching methods?
The link between art and science is important. Earlier this year I organised a photography exhibition in the Atrium at LSE designed to promote the voices of autistic people which need more platforms to be heard in society.
I asked my students to be involved in the opening reception so they could see first-hand why I do research and why I’m a social scientist. They were surprised you could do so much within the confines of a PhD and it showed them they can do the same in their studies.
You can follow Brett on @Brett_Heasman