Creating spaces for learning in prison: developing a pedagogical framework

• In Event: PWG - Prison education: Pedagogical approaches and outcomes

Abstract

This paper brings together the work of four academics whose research covers a range of educational contexts in prison settings, spanning the education department (Nichols, 2021), the prison library (Finlay and Bates, 2019), the prison wing (Bennallick, 2019), and prison-university partnerships (Little, 2024; Nichols et al, 2019; Zampini et al, 2019). Following a form of cross-institutional collaborative autoethnography (Rolinska et. al., 2021), we propose a framework of pedagogical considerations for education in prison.

Unlike educational spaces elsewhere - such as schools, universities and mainstream colleges - the value of learning in prison is often assessed by its ability to impact the future offending of the student. This reductionist perspective tends to shape the curriculum, the pedagogy and the metrics by which such provision is deemed a worthwhile investment. Through this narrow lens, the focus can inadvertently fall to the wider criminal justice agendas of reducing reoffending and increasing employability, leading to a preoccupation with low-level qualifications and a restrictive curriculum (Little and Warr, 2022).

In this paper we shift the lens away from the content, curriculum and purpose of education in prison and instead focus on the nature of the spaces, processes and relationships that facilitate adult education in prison. We take as our starting point the distinct ‘emotional geography’ that characterise learning spaces in prisons (Crewe et al, 2014), developing our framework to articulate the shared dynamics that we have identified across a range of prison-based learning spaces. We articulate three pedagogical themes - Autonomy, Co-production and Trust - nested within an overarching theme of Power.

This presentation explores these themes and expands our discussion by considering what future direction this framework might take. We intend this framework to be the start of an iterative process of evolving pedagogical reflection on prison-based education.

Authors

• Morwenna Bennallick, University of Westminster

• Ross E Little, De Montfort University

• Helen Nichols, University of Hull