Vicky Duckworth

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. Keywords: Adult literacy, policy, democratic learning spaces, cultural dissonance, human capital, social capital.

The aim of this chapter is to document the history and significance of initiatives to develop such links in the United Kingdom. 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

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 philosophy. Rich empirical data from practice is probed to offer a justification to the recognition accorded the model. The analysis argues that a different value position to the dominant curriculum could yield a different approach to practice. This is illustrated with transformative and emancipatory literacy, which derives its values from a libertarian, equality and justice base. We expose how changes to policy and practice would inform and shape the literacy curriculum and indeed pedagogy, a central driver, we also suggest, being adult education/literacy dis-entangling itself from neo-liberal fusion and creating critical space for contextualised and emancipatory learning. Keywords: emancipatory learning empirical research literacy practice sociology of education transformative literacy.

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 notion of rupture and the ways in which existing relations of domination can be resisted. By exploring rupture/reproduction, I build on the concept of literacies to provide a way in which the enactment of creative literacies can rupture and reproduction can be grasped and new forms of curriculum made visible. The narratives of three generations of females in a family are illustrated, to provide a description of their engagement, directly or indirectly, with a transformative curriculum both to empower themselves and the local and wider community. The study draws from an overarching qualitative framework, whilst the research approach is based on a range of strategies which include participatory action research and a range of theoretical positions such as feminist standpoint theory. It also embraces life history, literacy studies and ethnographic approaches to exploring social practices. This is a reflection of one of the underpinning values held by the author which recognises the multiplicity of literacy event sites and the social dimension of literacy practices.

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 frustration at the lack of transformative opportunities in his learning programme, the other offers 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 requirements of transformative learning. Bourdieu’s concepts of field, capitals and habitus are applied; the critical elements of these concepts essentially being tools for consciousness raising and increasing the flow of capitals, including linguistic capital, which challenge the notion of spoilt identities based on neoliberal individual accountability which fails to address the structures and hierarchies of power

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 policy to previous and subsequent policies, we argue that this period saw the consolidation of the influence of the instrumental/human capital value position in adult literacy. Literacy is thus expressed, for example, as ‘functional’ skills and driven by the premise of a ‘knowledge economy’. Within this philosophical stance one of the most significant duties given to education is to provide a flexible, adaptable and skilled workforce to make countries competitive in the globalised economy. It focuses on education for work positions and education as a commodity and pays no regard to issues of economic, political and social equality.

he 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