Women, adult literacy education and transformative bonds of care

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 educational reform. In the context of the increasing dominance of a ‘skills’ discourse in education in the UK and reductions in funding targeted at adult education, this research project exposed how further education can still challenge and address hurt and often spoiled learning identities and counteract the objectification of the skills discourse through creating catalysing bridging bonds of care. The research data illustrate that further education offers organic transformative tools for consciousness-raising (Freire 1995) and a caring space where hope can act as a change agent that fuels women learners’ lives and teachers’ practice (Duckworth 2013; Duckworth and Smith 2017, 2018b). To support the discussion, our paper draws on a range of learners and teachers’ narratives to expand on the conceptualisation of adult education as a bridging space for a curriculum informed by an ethic of what we term dialogic caring. We also develop a theoretical position that anchors the research in learners and practitioners’ experience as an empirical antidote to the simulations (Baudrillard 1994, Lefebvre 2004) conjured up by the decontextualised knowledge production activities that marketization has imposed on educational institutions. We position education research as having an important role to play in revealing powerful often hidden social practices and lived human experience beneath the neoliberal, globalised ‘grand narratives’ of international competition. To that end, we mobilise the term transformative teaching and learning to signify educational experiences that are not only student-centred, but which defy, counteract and work against the neoliberal educational imaginary. We align our research approach with adult literacy education and critical pedagogy as working towards social justice and against deficit generating educational structures that marginalise women, their families and communities

What is protective space? Reconsidering niches in transitions to sustainability

The transitions literature emphasises the role of niches, defined as a protective space for path-breaking innovations. Surprisingly, the concept of protection has not been systematically interrogated. Our analysis identifies protection as having three functions in wider transition processes: shielding, nurturing and empowerment. Empowerment, understood as processes and mechanisms that contribute to changes in mainstream selection environments in ways favourable to the path-breaking innovation, is considered the least developed in current niche development literature. We argue that these properties need to be understood from an agency perspective, with attention for the politics involved in their realisation. The paper ends with an outlook upon two promising research avenues: 1) the reconstruction of niche development pathways in light of the present framework; 2) analyses of the diverse (political) narratives seeking to empower niches across time and space.transitions, sustainability, niches

Limelight: Cardiff Contemporary & Llangattock Lime Kiln

Limelight (2016-20) aims to establish terms through which limestone as a geological material with industrial application, presents and holds agency. It aims to determine how exposures of limestone’s material agency are intrinsic to understanding the representations and experiences of its landscapes. It considers this in relation to the transforming phases of industrial limestone landscapes in the UK. Limelight (Cardiff Contemporary & Llangattock Lime Kiln) was one of ten commissioned exhibitions for Cardiff Contemporary, a biennial of contemporary art. It was funded by PEAK and Cardiff Contemporary, and developed and delivered in partnership with the BBC and Arts Alive Wales through a Digital Innovation Fund For Arts In Wales and NESTA grant. A limelight illumination, at a restored lime kiln at Llangattock in the Black Mountains Welsh National Park, using an apparatus developed by the artists, was broadcast by the BBC through the internet and into an exhibition space in Cardiff. The duration of the limelight illumination at Llangattock was contingent to the material behaviour of quicklime as it was heated to temperatures in excess of 2000ºc emitting a bright white light. The limelight illumination in Llangattock provided a real-time base for a performance event in Cardiff. The two artists live-mixed pre-recorded video and sound from extraction and industrial infrastructure limestone sites in the Black Mountains, and two performers projected and moved these images around the space and through the audience through rehearsed choreography. A film work of the live event was presented for the remainder of the exhibition

Breaking the Triple Lock: Further education and transformative teaching and learning

Purpose This paper explores data from the UCU Further Education in England: Transforming Lives & Communities research project and through this develops a distinctive, theorised conceptualisation of transformative teaching and learning (TTL). Design/methodology/approach The research used an approach grounded in critical pedagogy utilising digital methods, including video’d interviews, to collect narratives from learners, teachers, family members and their communities from colleges across Britain. Findings Within a context in which there are structural pressures militating in favour of instrumentalising students in further education, TTL offers a way of theorising it as a transformative critical space that restores students’ hope and agency. The research provides evidence of how further education offers this “differential space” (Lefebvre 1991) and subverts the prescriptive, linear spaces of compulsory education. While productivist approaches to vocational education and training support ideologies that legitimate prescribed knowledge, reproducing inequality and injustice through the practices employed (Ade-Ojo and Duckworth 2016, Duckworth and Smith 2017b), TTL shifts to a more holistic approach, achieving a different level of engagement with learners. Practical implications The findings suggest that the TTL lens is a way of focusing on the dignity, needs and agency of further education students. The lens allows us also to identify how the existing structures associated with funding and marketisation can undermine the potential of TTL to activate students’ agency through education. Originality/value (mandatory) Extending on existing literature around transformative learning, and drawing on a range of theoretical frameworks, the article formulates a new, contextually specific conceptualisation of transformative teaching and learning

Synthesis and cellular penetration properties of new phosphonium based cationic amphiphilic peptides

A new category of phosphonium based cationic amphiphilic peptides has been developed and evaluated as potential antimicrobial peptides and cell penetrating peptides. The required building blocks were conveniently accessible from cysteine and could be applied in a solid phase peptide synthesis protocol for incorporation into peptide sequences. Evaluation of the antimicrobial properties and cellular toxicity of these phosphonium based peptides showed that these “soft” cationic side-chain containing peptides have poor antimicrobial properties and most of them were virtually non toxic (on HEK cells tested at 256 and 512 μM) and non-haemolytic (on horse erythrocytes tested at 512 μM), hinting at an interesting potential application as cell penetrating peptides. This possibility was evaluated using fluorescent peptide derivatives and showed that these phosphonium based peptide derivatives were capable of entering HEK cells and depending on the sequence confined to specific cellular areas