89 research outputs found

    The Future is Unwritten: Democratic adult education against and beyond neoliberalism

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    The paper discusses the value of imagination in educational debate and makes an argument for Irish adult educators making space and time to envisage a range of possible futures for the field beyond the terms offered in current policy. It explores this topic in relation to neoliberal educational reform and the broader social context. The second half outlines one possible future- adult education for a participatory democracy and sketches out some of what this might entail both in principle and in practice

    Welcome to the knowledge factory? A study of working class experience, identity and learning in Irish Higher Education

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    This is a study of working class students’experience in Irish Higher Education. It is based on eighty one in-depth interviews with fifty one students of all ages between 2007 and 2012 gathered longitudinally in three different institutions of Higher Education in the Republic of Ireland. Using in-depth biographical interviews and grounded methods, within a critical and egalitarian theoretical framework, the main aim of the research is to offer a ‘thick’ account of working class students’ experience and, in particular, to document how they view and value education. The thesis analyses access and widening participation in Irish HE from the perspective of the interviewees. It documents that tertiary education is very highly valued and examines why this is the case through the participants’ life and learning stories. The research also explores the impact institutional differentiation is having on access and participation. The data also offer insight into the type of learning processes that are occuring in contemporary HE and elaborates a theory of reflexive learning through the interviews. This is framed within a critical synthesis of the work of Engestrom and Mezirow and a critique of the ‘reproduction and resistance’ debate as well as drawing on recent sociological work on the role of education in the making of contemporary biographies. The participants’ biographical accounts offer insight into working class experience inside and outside the walls of the university and the research suggests that shared experiences in community, family and work gives rise to distinct patterns of class (dis)identification. Based on the data and wideranging desk research-especially the work of Axel Honneth, Diane Reay, Henri Lefebvre, Andrew Sayer and Pierre Bourdieu- the thesis outlines a conceptual framework for analysing class inequality based on ownership, authority and legitimate cultural capital within a theory of social space. Furthermore, the biographical accounts of education and society gathered for the inquiry indicate that the politics of respect and recognition are crucial to understanding contemporary working class experience. A key argument of the thesis is that class analysis, social science and educational scholarship needs to develop a more sophisticated set of theoretical tools for exploring the normative nature of social practice and in particular the affective, embodied experience of class inequality inside and outside education

    Retention and Progression in Irish Higher Education. Paper read at Higher Education Authority of Ireland Launch of Retention and Progression in Higher Education in Ireland.

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    Paper presented at Irish Higher Education Authority Conference at launch of HEA Study of Progression in Irish Higher Education Keynote speaker Vincent Tinto October 28, 2010. Access and Retention: Experiences of Non-Traditional Learners in Higher Education [RANLHE funded by the EU Commission on Lifelong Learning Programme – Project 135230-LLP-1-2007-1-UK-KA1-KA1SCR]

    Óscar García Agustín & Martin Bak (eds) (2016) Solidarity Without Borders: Gramscian Perspectives on Migration and Civil Society Alliances

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    How can democratic and progressive movements build and sustain networks of solidarity and action that are effective on a transnational scale? This is a crucial question if we want to halt the rise of inequality, avoid an acceleration in climate change and find egalitarian solutions to global issues. Thus, I read Solidarity Across Borders, a new edited collection which explores how solidarity is being envisaged and acted upon in relation to migration, with keen interest.&nbsp

    “It’s all about moving forward”: An evaluation of student experience on the Inclusive Learning Initiative, Maynooth University.

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    The report was commissioned in order to document and explore the experiences and of the students who are currently participating in the Inclusive Learning Initiative (ILI) at Maynooth University. The ILI is a pilot project, launched in 2011, which is seeking to make higher education more accessible for students with intellectual disabilities. The study documents the challenges, supports and benefits of the ILI from the students’ point of view. The findings are based on qualitative research (in-depth semi-structured interviews with all the ILI students, observation in the field and desk research). The data was analysed in a series of stages using grounded methods and the findings detailed here emerged through the thematic coding of content and narrative analysis. This report is one component of a number of interconnected but distinct research projects evaluating the value and efficacy of the ILI project through consultation with MAYNOOTH UNIVERSITY and ILI staff, external stakeholders, ILI volunteers and the students

    Radical popular education today

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    Freire’s centenary was widely celebrated in 2021 and this led to extensive reflection, debate and discussion within adult education in many countries. This Special Issue on popular education builds on the celebration and discussion of Freire’s work while also extending the debate to focus on radical popular education today. This has provided the opportunity to reflect on the current state and future prospects of radical popular education in relation to theory, praxis and methodology.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

    Connecting Bourdieu, Winnicott, and Honneth: Understanding the experiences of non-traditional learners through an interdisciplinary lens

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    This paper connects Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, dispositions and capital with a psychosocial analysis of how Winnicott’s psychoanalysis and Honneth’s recognition theory can be of importance in understanding how and why non-traditional students remain in higher education. Understanding power relations in an interdisciplinary way makes connections – by highlighting intersubjectivity – between external social structures and subjective experiences in a biographical study of how non-traditional learner identities may be transformed through higher education in England and the Republic of Ireland

    Editorial: Capitalism(s) and the future of adult education policy

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    Characteristics of medical device software development

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    This paper aims to describe the software development settings of medical device domain focusing on the demands of the safety critical software processes. Medical device software developers have to adhere to a number of regulations and standards. This paper addresses the most important characteristics of a software development framework that could support medical device software developers in their efforts to comply with these regulations as well as to improve their software development processes

    Honneth and recognition as sensitizing concepts for narrative research

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    Over a number of years a number of questions in adult education have resisted a search for a more comprehensive answer. These concern, for example, the following. Firstly, adults who have returned to education frequently express their deep satisfaction with the learning experience and inform evaluators that their self-confidence and esteem has been greatly enhanced. What does this enhancement involve? Does this gain in sense of self reflect the increasing importance of credentials in the labour market, a successful adaptation to, often classed and gendered, social norms, a new form of reflexive individualism or provide more evidence of the pervasive use of therapeutic language in society ? The predominance of the theme of ‘self esteem’ in the interviews undertaken as part of an ongoing EU funded study of access and retention of non-traditional students in higher education (RANLHE, 2009) and the search for useful sensitising concepts for this research (SCUTREA, 2009) has forced us to reconsider what this refrain in student interviews might mean. With an interest in critical pedagogy we have been looking for ways of empirically deepening our understanding of what they mean when they make such observations. Secondly, having engaged in a study of the ideas of Jürgen Habermas (Fleming, 2009; Murphy & Fleming, 2006) and those of John Bowlby (2008a) we have intuitively grasped that there is a connection between Bowlby’s Attachment Theory (with the importance it gives to reciprocal and close relationships of care and security inducing attention) and Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action on the other hand (with its imperative of engaging in discourses that are egalitarian, free and democratic). How these might be connected is an ongoing project. Thirdly, there is an ongoing need to rescue the concept of lifelong learning (Field, 2007; Finnegan, 2008; Illeris, 2004) from domination by the one-dimensional economic (neo-liberal) version in command in many policy discourses and re-establish a critical theory of lifelong learning
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