Vicky Duckworth

• PhD Educational Research
• Professor at Edge Hill University

In Chapter 5, we address the contested meaning of social justice and go on to develop our thinking about transformative teaching and learning and how it connects with a range of connected issues. We explore how the academic/vocational divide in education feeds social division and inequality and further and adult education’s role in reifying as well...

Chapter 6 explores the implications of the research findings for the ways in which leadership and governance play out and are typically conceptualised in further (and to a lesser extent adult) education settings. As part of this, we critique the recent Area Reviews and discuss what they tell us about the breakdown of the architecture of further and...

After more than a decade of funding cuts and a never-ending stream of instrumentalist policy interventions, it’s time to re-evaluate the purpose of further and adult education. In England, there are two very different perspectives on this purpose. One view, held by government ministers, civil servants and policy makers, positions colleges and other...

At the heart of the book, Chapter 4 will present the voices of students and teachers from the research as they have recounted their experiences to us but also, where relevant, the voices of parents and employers that sometimes assume great importance within these narratives and the journeys they take both within and outside the classroom. For us, t...

Chapter 1 introduces the central focus of the book: the notion of transformative teaching and learning and its particular resonance in contemporary further and adult education contexts. We provide examples from our research to illustrate the breadth but also the layered aspects of our analysis. This opening chapter will also provide a policy frame...

Chapter 7 will revisit current theorisations of transformative teaching and learning and position our work within that field. Drawing on the heritage of the British adult education tradition, we flesh out a distinctive, contextualised theorisation of transformative education. We draw on a range of theoretical perspectives as we pull together the th...

The focus of Chapter 2 will be to provide detailed insights into how we carried out the research and the way we gathered additional material. The contextualisation of the research will be a key focus. The diversity of the participants necessitated an exploration of their views framed by a commentary on the wider educational landscape. Participants...

Chapter 3 will focus on our use of digital technologies when researching with a methodological approach centred on social justice and in the sharing of our participants’ stories. We provide an overview of the way the project used video (recording and editing), the website and a Twitter account to gather data but also to share it and to broaden the...

Chapter 8, the concluding chapter, suggests what needs to be done to build and strengthen transformative teaching and learning in further and adult education. It offers important re-imaginings of some of the major structural change that is necessary for the potential of post-schooling transformative education to be fully realised. It proposes the c...

This article explores the International Journal of Lifelong Education archives in the period 1982–2020. We analyse how the Journal engages with the issue of inequality. This is accomplished by systematically identifying relevant articles within the archives, and reviewing these whilst taking account of the societal, cultural and political or econom...

Teacher mentoring training offered by higher education institutions has the potential to expose critical spaces within which mentors can learn to play significant roles as advocates for social justice. Through taking on such roles mentors can empower their students to also become social justice advocates who in turn empower their own communities. D...

Introduction There are national and international concerns about equity in basic and postgraduate medical education, especially about differential rates of access and attainment across groups of learners. Qualitative research has been increasingly used to understand the factors that influence equity but there are potential limitations to this unde...

Introduction There are national and international concerns about equity in basic and postgraduate medical education, especially about differential rates of access and attainment across groups of learners. Qualitative research has been increasingly used to understand the factors that influence equity but there are potential limitations to this unde...

This paper draws on a longitudinal UCU research project: FE in England - Transforming Lives and Communities to explore transformative teaching and learning in adult literacy education and to argue for the place of research in affirming localised understandings of education that cut across the grain of contemporary educational reform. In the context...

Positioning literacy and hope In the UK and internationally, the current discourse around literacy is driven by international surveys that have become increasingly important over the last 25 years (for example, those produced for the Programme of International Assessment of Adult Competencies [PIAAC]). Produced and promoted by a range of agencies,...

Neoliberalism has been widely criticised because of its role in prioritising ‘free markets’ as the optimum way of solving problems and organising society. In the field of education, this leads to an emphasis on the knowledge economy that can reduce both persons and education to economic actors and be detrimental to wider social and ethical goals. D...

This paper draws on sociological and critical educational frames, particularly Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence, in order to contest the dominant model of literacy education that is driven by the premise of a ‘knowledge economy’. Instead it foregrounds the political, social, and economic factors that marginalise learners. Data from two proje...

In this chapter, a decade on from the financial crisis that heralded the introduction of austerity measures in the UK, we will outline our perspective on the impact of cuts on adult participation in further education.

This paper explores how the public domain of schooling has shaped a cohort of Adult Literacy learners in the North of England. It highlights the important role that education plays in providing cultural and social resources required to organise an upward mobility shift; just as it serves as a site in which the inequalities that already exist are re...

Drawing on a research project: ‘FE in England – Transforming lives and communities’ (sponsored by the University and College Union) to explore the intersection between women, literacy and adult education, this paper argues for the place of research in affirming localised understandings of education that cut across the grain of contemporary educatio...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore data from the University and College Union (UCU) Further Education in England: Transforming Lives and Communities research project and through this the paper develops a distinctive, theorised conceptualisation of transformative teaching and learning (TTL). Design/methodology/approach The research use...

In England many professional healthcare qualifications, including nursing, are only achievable through higher education, for which tuition fees are payable from this year (2017-18) onwards. This paper is concerned about maintaining both the number and diversity of healthcare professionals to meet the needs of a diverse and ageing population. It rev...

This article presents findings from research conducted into school disaffection in the north of England. Bourdieu's concept of capital is utilised to explore the perspectives of 14- to 16-year-old girls undertaking vocational learning as a strategy for re-engagement. Data emanate from semi-structured interviews in which social and linguistic capita...

Background: Widening participation into higher education is espoused within educational policy in the UK, and internationally, as a mechanism to promote equality and social mobility. As nurse education is located within higher education it has a responsibility to promote widening participation within pre-registration educational programmes. It cou...

International Women's Day provides the opportunity to reinforce the importance of women's access to further education and its impact on their well-being, their families, the local and wider community. The UCU Transforming Lives and Communities research project offers an illuminating and powerful lens to expose and share the experiences of female fu...

The further education sector in England has been acknowledged by government as a vital sector for the future success of the UK, particularly in achieving a prosperous post-Brexit economy. The harsh reality is that central government policy interventions and cuts to public funding have resulted in the closure of courses, the loss of over a million a...

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...

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...

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 clai...

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...

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 the value or otherwise of their engagement with a transformative curriculum and pedagogical approach. Whilst one of the learners reveals his...

The past decade has witnessed rapid policy change and reformulation which has impacted upon learners’ and workers’ choice/s or lack of choice/s in the public and private domains of their lives which includes practices and trajectories within education, training and employment. As a truth regime these practices have the capacity to constitute and po...

This paper examines the power of creative literacies, when used as a critical tool to challenge inequality and work towards a model of social justice in and out of the classroom. The interplay between literacy practices that challenge existing patterns and activity which reproduces existing relations of domination are considered, exploring the noti...

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 d...

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...

This chapter examines the learners’ experience of childhood violence and trauma in the domain of family and home, and the impact this had on their education. On tracing the impact of violence and trauma enacted on the learners by their family, I will show how their experiences are classed and gendered. Bourdieu’s theory offers socio-cultural explan...

This chapter draws on empirical research, which includes rich data from interviews with members of a policy development committee to identify the underpinning value positions that drove the Moser Report, one of the major policy initiatives in the field of adult literacy in the past decade. Moving from the central Skills for Life (SfL) policy to pre...

This chapter explores the potential alternatives to the dominant philosophy, policy and practice. Informed by sociological and critical educational frames that recognise the political, social and economic factors that conspire to marginalise learners, it offers a transformative approach to adult literacy whilst locating the model in an underpinning...

This chapter critically engages with the philosophical drivers of education and considers how they inform and shape educational polices and specifically adult literacy. Value positions are exposed through the prism of two broad educational philosophical constructs of instrumentalism and libertarianism. In this context, specific attention is paid to...

This chapter critically engages with the philosophical drivers of education and considers how they inform and shape educational polices and specifically adult literacy. Value positions are exposed through the prism of two broad educational philosophical constructs of instrumentalism and libertarianism. In this context, specific attention is paid to...

This chapter critically engages with the philosophical drivers of education and considers how they inform and shape educational polices and specifically adult literacy. Value positions are explored through the prism of two broad educational philosophical constructs of instrumentalism and libertarianism. We relate this to ideas and debates within th...

This book explores the gradual evolution of Adult literacy policy from the 1970s using philosophical, sociological and economic frames of reference from a range of perspectives to highlight how priorities have changed. Underpinned by rich empirical and theoretical research, it locates the concept of instrumentalism within the framework of an overar...

earning Trajectories, Violence and Empowerment amongst Adult Basic Skills Learners offers deep insights into the lives of marginalised communities and the link between learning, literacy and violence, not previously carried out in-depth in a small scale study. It breaks the negative stereo-types of adults who struggle to read and write, who are oft...

Book Flyer for monograph: Landscapes of Specific Literacies in Contemporary SocietyThis volume makes a timely contribution to our understanding of literacy as a multi-faceted, complexly situated activity. Each chapter provides the reader with a fresh perspective into a different site for literate behaviour, approaches, design and relationships, and...

Basic skills provision is a powerful tool for challenging inequality and empowering learners, their families and their communities, writes

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/approac...

Abstract 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...

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 generall...

Drawing on philosophical, sociological and economic lenses, this chapter tracks the value positions that could be associated with the changing policies and events in the field of adult literacy in the United Kingdom over the past four decades. We commence the analysis of policy evolution from the 1970s, largely because this was the period when adul...

New Literacy Studies and critical approaches to education, offer a potential space for transformation whereby basic skills learners can explore their narratives and society around them. This shifts from a traditional, competency based approach to curriculum design to a culturally relevant, learner driven, and socially empowering model (Freire, 1993...

Literacy for all is a global issue which transcends geographical and economic boundaries. Literacy education has been shown to enhance confidence, contribute to personal development, promote health, social and political participation, social justice and gender equity.

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Applying a feminist, qualitative, longitudinal, ethnographic and participatory approach, the book offers a critical perspective, drawing on Bourdieu's work as the theoretical framework, as well as using a range of feminist, sociologists of education, literature on the ethics of care and critical literacy pedagogy, including the New Literacy Studies...

Learning Trajectories, Violence and Empowerment amongst Adult Basic Skills Learners offers deep insights into the lives of marginalised communities and the link between learning, literacy and violence, not previously carried out in-depth in a small scale study. It breaks the negative stereo-types of adults who struggle to read and write, who are of...

How to be a Brilliant FE Teacher is a straightforward, friendly guide to being an effective and innovative teacher in post-compulsory education. Focussing on practical advice drawn from the author’s extensive and successful personal experience of both teaching and training teachers, it offers sound guidance, underpinned by the latest research, theo...

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 in...

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 explo...

bstract In England and Australia, higher education institutions (HEIs) are expected towiden participation (WP) in higher education (HE) to enhance social justice andimprove individual and national economic returns. Furthermore, HEIs are themajor providers of initial and in‐service teacher education. This article surveysinternational literature to...

This case study explores the organisational culture at Edge Hill University (EHU), seeking to identify how practitioners operate to provide equitable opportunities for access and participation in community engagement and higher education. EHU works within a governance model, where there is shared responsibility for the widening participation (WP) a...