Vicky Duckworth

Extending the mentor role in initial teacher education: embracing social justice

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how mentors can act as change agents for social justice. It examines mentors’ roles in initial teacher education in the lifelong learning sector (LLS) and how critical spaces can be opened up to promote a flow of mentor, trainee teacher, learner and community empowerment. Design/methodology/approach – Two thematic literature reviews were undertaken: one of UK LLS ITE mentoring and the other an international review of social justice in relation to mentoring in ITE and the first year of teaching. Bourdieu’s concepts of capital, field and habitus (Bourdieu, 1986) are used as sensitising tools to explore LLS mentors’ practices and the possibilities for increasing the flow of “pedagogical capital” between mentors, trainee teachers, learners and communities, in such a way that would enable mentors to become agents for social justice. Findings – LLS mentors and trainee teachers are uncertain about their roles. In the UK and several countries, mentoring is dominat...

Teachers as advocates for widening participation

Abstract In England and Australia, higher education institutions (HEIs) are expected to widen participation (WP) in higher education (HE) to enhance social justice and improve individual and national economic returns. Furthermore, HEIs are the major providers of initial and in-service teacher education. This article surveys international literature to explore ways in which teacher education programmes could and do contribute to preparing teachers to advocate for WP, including drawing on learning from WP research that demonstrates the value of current HE students engaging young people in schools and colleges to support them in seriously considering progressing to HE. We conclude that teachers and pre-service teachers are well placed to be advocates for WP. In the majority of higher education institutions, however, WP and teacher education functions are not working collaboratively to embed advocacy for WP into teacher education programmes.

Literacy, learning and identity: challenging the neo-liberal agenda through literacies, everyday practices and empowerment

In the UK, further education (FE) colleges play a key role in providing literacy programmes. This article draws upon our research in FE, with a focus on literacy, learning and identity, to explore how different learners are positioned differently depending on the value of the literacy practices they bring with them from home. Indeed, it is generally considered that recognising the literacies that learners bring into the classroom is an effective strategy to teaching and learning because purposeful and meaningful learning builds and expands on learners’ prior knowledge and experience to shape and construct new knowledge rather than seeing the learner as an empty vessel ready to be filled by the tutor. Learning is seen as a social activity embedded in particular cultures and contexts where assessment is based on the learners demonstrating competence in achieving specific learning outcomes. The achievement of these learning outcomes is situated in the learners’ real life and everyday practices. The paper concludes that New Literacy Studies and critical approaches to education are important to challenging prescriptive pre-set curriculum literacies driven by a neoliberalism agenda and to empowering learners in and out of the classroom.

Spoilt for Choice, Spoilt by Choice: Long-Term Consequences of Limitations Imposed by Social Background.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the choices learners have in steering their way through the educational system in the UK.Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on data from two studies, one conducted in a state secondary school and the other in a Further Education College, both based in the north‐west of England. Both used interviews (either individual or focus‐group) to collect data, which were then analysed using a grounded approach.Findings – In linking the two studies the authors highlight how the impact of symbolic violence and the relations between groups and classes at school continue into the “choices” the learners make during adulthood and also into the learners working life, and that these “choices” are often a large‐scale consequence of many “micro‐choices” arising from day‐to‐day situations. The acts of symbolic violence described in the college group are not of themselves very different from those described by the school group, though the consequences for the school ...

Journey Through Transformation A Case Study of Two Literacy Learners

The study draws on life history, literacy studies, and ethnographic approaches to exploring social practices as a frame to explore the narratives of two UK adult literacy learners who provide a description of their engagement with a transformative curriculum and pedagogical approach. One of the learners reveals his frustration at the lack of transformative opportunities in his learning programme. The other offers an illustration of how transformative learning can be encouraged and how it can actually transform the life of its beneficiaries. In essence, both case studies highlight some of the characteristics of transformative learning. Bourdieu’s concepts of field, capitals, and habitus are applied. The critical elements of these concepts include tools for consciousness raising and increasing the flow of capital, and linguistic capital. The notion of spoilt identities based on neoliberal individual accountability, that fails to address the structures and hierarchies of power, is challenged.

Creating feminised critical spaces and co-caring communities of practice outside patriarchal managerial landscapes

ABSTRACT The experiences of five female lecturers working in higher education in the UK are explored as they engage in the search for a feminised critical space as a refuge from the masculinised culture of performativity in which they feel constrained and devalued. Email exchanges were used as a form of narrative enquiry that provided opportunity and space to negotiate identities and make meaning from experiences. The exchanges provided a critical space, characterised by trust, honesty and care for the self and for each other, that enabled a sharing of authentic voices and a reaffirming of identities that were made vulnerable through the exposing of the self as an emotional, politicised subject. Drawing on existing theoretical understandings of critical feminised spaces enabled us to create a pedagogical framework for work with students in further developing caring and co-caring communities of practice that are not alternative to, but are outside the performativity landscape of education.

Of cultural dissonance: the UK’s adult literacy policies and the creation of democratic learning spaces

Abstract The broad aim of this paper is to track the evolution of adult literacy policy in the UK across three decades, highlighting convergences between policy phases and the promotion of democratic learning spaces. It is anchored onto the argument that, although it is generally accepted that democratic learning spaces are perceived as beneficial to adult literacy learners, policy has often deterred its promotion and, therefore, implementation. The paper identifies three block phases of adult literacy development: the seventies to mid-eighties, the mid-eighties to mid-nineties and the mid-nineties to the Moser Committees. The features of each of these phases are highlighted to map out convergences and divergences to the ethos of democratic learning spaces. The paper argues that, with the evolution of policy in adult literacy, the ethos of democratic learning space continuously diminished, such that as policy evolved year on year, the principle of democratic learning space found itself at counterpoint to policy. We draw on two theoretical frameworks, the NLS view of literacy and Bourdieu’s capital framework to explain these divergences and conclude that the dominant perception of literacy and the prioritised capital in the context of policy appear to limit the vestiges of democratic learning spaces.

The moral frontiers of English education policy governmentality and ethics within an alternative provision free school

Abstract This article is a critical poststructuralist analysis of Conservative led free school policy in England focussing on claims made by the New Schools Network and in the 2010 White Paper that free school provision promotes social justice. The article presents an empirical study of an alternative provision free school as a lens through which these claims can be interrogated. Drawing from Foucault’s concept of governmentality the article analyses the narratives of teachers working in the school in order to gain insights into the microphysics of the policy rationalities mobilised within the discursive site of the free school and claims that such provision promotes social justice. The teachers interviewed demonstrate a strong alignment to free school policy discourse, but also a blurring of pastoral and disciplinary rationalities expressed in terms of the rehabilitation of students on the educational boundaries of the “normal”. The article concludes that the school is a tactical move within neoliberal education policy in which the state responsibilises a new polity of actors, including teachers, sponsors and communities contracting out its interventions in order to govern the ungovernable. The article calls for further empirical research of free school provision in order to contest neoliberal discourses which obfuscate complex systemic failure and the social reality of intergenerational unemployment and disadvantage.

Joining the dots between teacher education and widening participation in higher education

Abstract In England and Australia, higher education institutions are required to widen participation in higher education by including students from under-represented and non-traditional groups. Widening participation is most effective when it starts early – during compulsory education and other forms of pre-tertiary education. Higher education institutions are providers of pre-service and in-service teacher education, and therefore have the potential to ‘join the dots’ between teacher education and widening participation. Two approaches are identified: recruiting more diverse cohorts of students to teacher education through targeted, relevant and engaging pre-entry experiences in schools and communities with low rates of progression to higher education, and preparing all teachers to better support the tenets of widening participation through their professional roles in schools, colleges and communities. This paper focuses on the former, using a structural theoretical lens to understand low participation by particular groups of students. This framework is used to analyse two empirical examples, one from Australia and one from England. The paper concludes by recommending a more systemic approach to widening participation through teacher education, and makes practical suggestions informed by theory, practice and research.

The Significance of Research and Practice in Adult Literacy in the UK

The aim of this chapter is to document the history and significance of initiatives to develop such links in the United Kingdom (UK). In it we describe a range of initiatives and networks that have aimed to support practitioners to access and to carry out their own research and also ways of linking research and practice through formal professional development in initial teacher training, Masters level courses and research degrees. We explain and evaluate the development of these activities in relation to the broader context of lifelong learning and adult literacy in the countries of the UK. We argue that the idea of reflective practice prevalent in professional development is based on the belief that learning and teaching are inseparable aspects of good educational practice and that practitioner involvement in research activities can support this goal. However, we also note that linking research and practice is not always easy to achieve nor is the outcome always empowering to teachers and learners. There are many factors, both practical and ideological that mitigate against authentic and widespread opportunities for practitioner engagement with research.