Hayley Seward had always planned to be a teacher but, as she progressed through her teens, the reason for her ambition became more profound. “I lost my brother when I was 15; he was 17,” she says. “He got in with a bad crowd. He’d given up on education and what I witnessed was that [teachers] gave up on him. He was rowdy and very clever, but got bored in class and started messing about. I want to help young people find the right path through education. I want to break that chain.”

Seward did not immediately follow her calling. After completing university, she began her career at South Yorkshire Police, eventually moving from a strategic logistical role into operational police training.

She was teaching everything concerning the practical aspects of the law, working with existing officers of all ranks on subjects such as street skills and public protection, as well as managing practical assessments.

After three years in that role, and having gained an in-service postgraduate certificate of education at the University of Hull along the way, Seward joined the public-services team at Chesterfield College as lecturer of public services and criminology, finally reaching her long-held goal of teaching teenagers.

The department at that time was going through a period of transition. Though Seward stresses that “the teachers who were still there were doing the very best they could in very difficult circumstances”, the groups she took on had already been passed between numerous lecturers. The result of this inconsistency was extreme disengagement and a range of behavioural issues.

“The problem was that the learners weren’t interested. They weren’t enjoying it,” she explains. “So, how could we get them back on board and thinking this is a great course? As well as consistency, they needed energy. The energy from someone who really loves public services.”

When she took over the public-services classes, teaching various groups working at all stages between level 2 and level 5, she decided to transfer the same techniques she had used when teaching young police officers that had proven so successful - every recruit she had taught at South Yorkshire Police “passed out” at the end of the course.

Playing cops and robbers

The first step was getting to know the students. After a holistic diagnostic quiz, where values and ambitions were prioritised, she had one-to-one meetings with each student, planning the journey towards their individual goals as a collaboration. “It was important that the plan was an ‘us’ approach, not just left to them,” she says.

Then she moved the core learning of the curriculum away from the purely theoretical “workbook” style of teaching that had previously been favoured, to a more immersive experiential method akin to the pragmatist theories of Dewey and those of constructivist thinkers Piaget and Vygotsky.

A key element of experiential learning in operational police training was role playing, used as part of an immersive learning approach. The College of Policing describes immersive learning as “creating dilemma” and then providing “a chance to make considered decisions without any real-world consequences”. This is then followed by the police recruits being given the opportunity to “discuss those decisions with their peers and consider other avenues and possibilities”.

Role play doesn’t only feature in police training. Part of the application process to become a police officer involves role play, designed with the purpose of testing how the candidate would perform in a typical day-to-day scenario. The assessment is split into two sections: the preparation phase, in which the scenario is described in writing and the candidate is given five minutes to consider their response, followed by an activity phase, in which the candidate will respond to an actor. A scenario example might be interviewing the relative of an elderly person with dementia who has gone missing while shopping.

Many students in Seward’s groups at Chesterfield College have ambitions to join the police force, so live role playing was a relevant preparatory method as well as an engaging one.

However, the immersive approach was just as valuable as a method to consolidate previous learning for those planning to progress in other directions within the public-services professions.

Red paint and incident response

Taking the police training method and transplanting it into the college, though, was not going to be easy. And while there were more resources within the police to simulate environments - as well as a pool of role players available - Seward felt there was room for far more creativity when using immersive learning at the college.

As a result, the approach she has adopted is inspired by that of the police training, rather than simply transferred.

“We were watching for specific things in the training and making sure skills were carried out lawfully,” she explains. “But here, we can create that immersive feel but also let the students lead the way a little bit with the learning.”

The immersive activities that Seward has used to teach her students have been wide ranging. In crime scenes and forensics sessions, blood-spatter analysis is not only discussed but is also considered from a practical angle. “I get red paint and flip-chart paper and we try it out from different heights and different angles, so that when we’re talking about it, or when they’re writing their assignments, they can picture what might have happened,” she says.

When teaching lessons on the different badges of rank and the importance of respecting the chain of command, an exercise was constructed to demonstrate accurate transfer of information, following orders and employing teamwork to complete a task. It was also a competitive exercise.

“The inspector would pass an order to the sergeant, who would pass it down to the police constables, who would perform that task correctly,” Seward says. “The task that they were doing was constructing an ice cream sundae. Different messages were sent down through the chain with very different results.”

Meanwhile, in an assessment based on responding to incidents, Seward’s experiences as an operational police trainer and as a further education lecturer were blended more tangibly. The chosen incident was a riot.

Students were provided with an outline of the “real-world” event and given 20 minutes to plan how they would react. They could work in groups or individually.

Rather than interview each student on how they would react under such circumstances, Seward created a similarly urgent and stressful environment with loud, real-life riot footage projected on to big screens in the room and blue flashing lights on smaller screens.

“I ramped it up a bit,” she explains. “I got another teacher involved and said, ‘After five minutes, I want you to bang on the wall and shout “pig”.’”

She showed maps to the students to inform them of the area where the incident was taking place, and asked what they would do to make sure that people were kept safe.

It all sounds fun and exciting, but did her students really learn anything?

Of the 21 learners taking part in live learning, assessment outcomes evidenced clear progress. In the assessment prior to the introduction of an experiential approach, no learners received distinctions. Since the change in approach, this has risen to 15 distinctions as well as a marked improvement in behaviour and attendance.

While this type of learning appeals to most students who are on public-services courses, Seward recognises that it does not suit all learners, so roles are created to ensure that the learning is inclusive. “Someone can take notes, someone will be placed with a partner and will be manning the laptop, or we’ll sort out a different type of role that they are comfortable with,” she explains.

Such has been the success of the use of immersive learning that the department is planning to incorporate it across its curricula. But the real feedback Seward thrives upon comes from the students themselves: “Lots of learners have told me they didn’t know how much they knew until they were put into a ‘real-life’ situation.”

Sarah Simons works in colleges and adult community education in the East Midlands and is the director of UKFEchat. She tweets @MrsSarahSimons

This article originally appeared in the 8 November 2019 issue under the headline “Immersive public services course is a riot for students”