Radical: Free or Token? Darren McGarvey (2022) The Social Distance Between Us. London: Ebury Press, hardback, 400 pp., ISBN 9781529104080

IntroductionFew other recent events encapsulate the gulf between the ruling class and disenfranchised more fully than the Grenfell Fire of 2017. Tantamount to social murder rather than disaster, the litany is now well known: a rentier class fat on public contracts and cost-cutting on basic safety measures, with the full knowledge of a Chelsea and Kensington Council more concerned with generating commercial income from the sale of public assets, and a Prime Minister unwilling or afraid to console survivors. Even the Editorial Board (2017) of the New York Times saw that a British state “infatuated with austerity and deregulation” had “gone too far in shedding its fundamental duties to protect public health and safety”

Exploring the Impact of the Glory and Dismay Football Literacies Programme on Hard-to-Reach Adult Learners

This thesis aims to contribute to the field of New Literacy Studies by giving voice to the experience of learners involved in a situated pedagogy, namely the Glory and Dismay Football Literacy Programme (GDFLP). This programme evinces the view that reluctant adult learners will engage in literacy learning programmes if such programmes have a direct bearing on learners' interests, concerns and lives. The thesis describes the nature of the specific GDFLP programme and explores the impact of this programme on learners' lives and literacy practices. As the coordinator and a tutor on the GDFLP, this thesis also reflects some of the complexity I experienced in managing a combined teacher and academic researcher positioning. My key research question is 'what are the learners' experiences of the GDFLP?', underpinned by a set of sub questions including one which is at the centre of much debate around literacy teaching, that is, 'what is the impact of the GDFLP on adult learners' functional and critical literacy acquisition?' To answer these research questions I adopt a qualitative case study approach. Primary data includes semi-structured interviews and participant observations recorded over a period of 12 weeks. Secondary data includes existing material generated by the GDFLP. The key findings presented in the thesis are in the form of six case studies at the centre of which are learners' narratives about their learning and literacy experiences and which are complemented by understandings drawn from my participant observations and engagement with academic literature. The representational aim is to 'give voice' to the learners' educational and literacy journey, particularly their engagement with the GDFLP. I draw on critical discourse analysis, literacy studies and some aspects of narrative analysis and sociolinguistics. The case study approach provides a framework to explore how learners are subjected to a discursive formation that suffuses working-class Scottish football culture. This thesis explores how learners are made 'subjects', investigating how learners 'partially consent' to the interests of others with much more power. As an educator working for Community Learning and Development, City of Edinburgh Council with the Adult Learning Project (ALP) in Edinburgh, influenced by Paulo Freire, I examine how critical literacy pedagogy, enacted in the GDFLP, seeks to and succeeds in addressing such inequities. This thesis is motivated by a desire to do something about the structural inequalities to which the learners are subjected and to provide academic evidence for the social practice approach to adult literacy teaching currently advocated by the Scottish Government

'Slamdance the cosmopolis': Political Discourses around Drugs and Alcohol

My name is John Player, like the cigarettes. Some readers won’t have heard of these odious cigarettes. My grandfather, also called John Player, died of lung cancer and is buried in a grave in Glasgow. His gravestone looks like the John Player Special (JPS) packet - gold lettering on a matte black background. He died of lung cancer at 55. This was, and remains, around the age that so many men die in Glasgow and the West of Scotland. I never met him, so this is personal. The tobacco companies knew they were using the most addictive substance known to humankind to create one of the most successful capitalist commodities. They were also well aware, from the 1960s on, of the causality between smoking and early deaths due to lung cancer though this knowledge was suppressed for decades. In turns out that the tobacco companies were experts in semiotics: the study of signs deployed in advertising, for instance. The John Player Navy Cut signage of the dependable sailor was 'interpellated' (see Althusser 2001) in my grandfather's consciousness. He was 'hailed' by the tobacco companies shouting 'Hey, you there!' My grandfather turned around answered the call! Like so many others, he became their addicted 'subject'

Experiencing dependance on drugs and alcohol and homelessness in a Pandemic

I work as a relief Support Worker at a Homeless Hostel, in Edinburgh. Along with a committed staff team, I support those people experiencing dependence on drugs and alcohol and are homeless. The agency I work for is at this time rewriting their approach to such a cohort in, what I consider to be, a very enlightened, progressive and compassionate way

Easter Rising Dublin 1916: Learning the Legacy of a Revolutionary Moment as a Subjugated Discourse in Scotland

This paper is the start of a larger work in progress, and is based on personal experience, professional experience as an adult educator, and ongoing investigative research.  It argues that the historic events in Ireland in Easter 1916 were overtly and covertly subjugated as a discourse in Scotland; brought under the yoke and made subservient to dominant discourses of the British State. With the linguistics of the actual 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic in mind, I place emphasis on a key and insightful definition of discourse by Edwards & Usher (1994: 08): ‘discourse defines what can be said, which is based on what cannot be said, on what is marginalised and repressed.’ The paper, then, is the result of semi-structured interviews and recordings of lectures that dealt with, in the main, the relationship between Scotland, the Irish in Scotland and the Rising in Dublin in 1916. 

Pedagogies of hope and drug-related deaths in Scotland

The incidence of drug-related deaths in Scotland has reached crisis proportions. Comparable only to the rust belt States in the US these figures point to the impact of the rapid scale of deindustrialisation and a global neoliberal economy, based on austerity, deepening class divisions and a return to a more naked form of capitalism. The question is, does a critical pedagogy have a role to play in understanding and addressing the challenges involved? In other words, how can a practice of such a pedagogy allow participants to deconstruct and decode the structures of domination that oppress and divide them/us? Such pedagogy has undergone differing degrees of reassessment as it no longer serves as an ‘adequate platform from which to mount a vigorous challenge to the current social division of labour’. However, the need for a critical pedagogy, rooted in a Freirean notion of hope, for such communities has never been more apparent. This article will attempt to resolve the extent to which such a pedagogy translate from its esoteric detachment to one rooted in history, place and practices, and one capable of engaging with the most disadvantaged, and colonialised fraction of the Scottish society

The 8th International Conference of the Popular Education Network (PEN) Goedgedacht, Riebeek Kasteel, South Africa 26th-29th June 2018

Review: The 8th International Conference of the Popular Education Network (PEN) Goedgedacht, Riebeek Kasteel, South Africa 26th-29th June 201

The Case for Left Wing Nationalism by Stephen Maxwell

The educator, according to Paulo Freire, cannot claim neutrality – to do so is both deceitful and to side with the oppressor. Personally, I am partisan about the progressive socialist possibilities presented by the forthcoming Referendum on Scottish Independence. I feel Stephen Maxwell’s posthumous collection of political and cultural essays is a necessary, valuable and exciting contribution to the current debate.  Maxwell is, I think, determinedly radical in attempting to create a rupture that might ensure the break-up of the archaic, imperialist British State. Not only does his book display Gramscian analytical insight, it is also a manifesto, and indeed a curriculum, to base a popular educational dialogue around a vision for a new Scotland. I believe it provides the missing key for the strategic journey the left has been trying to navigate since 1979. It is difficult to conceive of anything more potentially revolutionary - certainly in my lifetime

Ruth Wodak (2015) The Politics of Fear: What Right-wing Populist Discourses Mean

Review of Ruth Wodak (2015) The Politics of Fear: What Right-wing Populist Discourses Mea

Proceedings of the SAB'06 Workshop on Adaptive Approaches for Optimizing Player Satisfaction in Computer and Physical Games

These proceedings contain the papers presented at the Workshop on Adaptive approaches for Optimizing Player Satisfaction in Computer and Physical Games held at the Ninth international conference on the Simulation of Adaptive Behavior (SAB’06): From Animals to Animats 9 in Rome, Italy on 1 October 2006. We were motivated by the current state-of-the-art in intelligent game design using adaptive approaches. Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques are mainly focused on generating human-like and intelligent character behaviors. Meanwhile there is generally little further analysis of whether these behaviors contribute to the satisfaction of the player. The implicit hypothesis motivating this research is that intelligent opponent behaviors enable the player to gain more satisfaction from the game. This hypothesis may well be true; however, since no notion of entertainment or enjoyment is explicitly defined, there is therefore little evidence that a specific character behavior generates enjoyable games. Our objective for holding this workshop was to encourage the study, development, integration, and evaluation of adaptive methodologies based on richer forms of humanmachine interaction for augmenting gameplay experiences for the player. We wanted to encourage a dialogue among researchers in AI, human-computer interaction and psychology disciplines who investigate dissimilar methodologies for improving gameplay experiences. We expected that this workshop would yield an understanding of state-ofthe- art approaches for capturing and augmenting player satisfaction in interactive systems such as computer games. Our invited speaker was Hakon Steinø, Technical Producer of IO-Interactive, who discussed applied AI research at IO-Interactive, portrayed the future trends of AI in computer game industry and debated the use of academic-oriented methodologies for augmenting player satisfaction. The sessions of presentations and discussions where classified into three themes: Adaptive Learning, Examples of Adaptive Games and Player Modeling. The Workshop Committee did a great job in providing suggestions and informative reviews for the submissions; thank you! This workshop was in part supported by the Danish National Research Council (project no: 274-05-0511). Finally, thanks to all the participants; we hope you found this to be useful!peer-reviewe