Mal Leicester

Equal Opportunities and University Practice; Race, Gender and Disability: A Comparative Perspective

Summary This paper provides a comparative analysis of data arising from three recent surveys of equal opportunity practice in relation to race, gender and disability. The surveys gathered information from a range of university departments and included questions about departmental structures and organisation as well as curriculum development. Instances of good practice are described, and some implications explored for the further development of equal opportunities in higher education.

Disability Voice: Educational experience and disability

ABSTRACT Lightly structured, in-depth interviews of 30 adults with disabilities and parents of disabled children, probing their educational experiences, yielded rich autobiographical data. The interview transcripts were analysed in terms of the significant patterns of experience which emerged. That particular experiences were shared was clear from frequency of mention, and our claim that these were significant experiences is based on both their subjective intensity and on their impact on the lives of our respondents. In this paper we discuss the most widely shared of these school and post-school experiences and the educational opinions they have generated. We include illuminitive extracts from a small number of the interviews. Finally, we draw some general conclusions supporting the need for educational change towards a more enabling education.

Cognitive Development, Self Knowledge and Moral Education

Abstract This paper rejects the notion of moral education in adulthood as merely remedial, i.e. as providing a second chance to learn that which should have been learned in school, or as merely compensatory, i.e. as making up for the waning of our cognitive abilities which (stereotypically) occurs with age. Rather, it advocates a conception of lifelong moral education which presupposes that there are social and cognitive features of maturity which have the potential to generate some worthwhile learning which can therefore only be acquired in adulthood. First the theoretical issues associated with this presupposition will be outlined and the notions of dialectical/relativistic and eclectic/synthesising forms of thinking, as adult stages of thinking, will be explored in the context of moral development and education. Secondly, reference will be made to some relatively recent research undertaken (at the Department of Continuing Education, University of Warwick) into the impact of liberal adult education cert...

Anti‐racist post‐initial education: Reform after the Act

Abstract There has been much discussion about what the Education Reform Act (ERA) means for racial equality in schools. This article explores the Acts consequences for post‐initial education and training, including its implications for anti‐racist education, and reflects on possible anti‐racist responses and strategies to it. Though broadly inequalitarian, ERAs provisions unwittingly contain some progressive potential, both for further education and local authority adult education. More general problems and dilemmas of post‐initial educational reform are briefly discussed.