Participants As Texts: the critical consciousness development of informal learning facilitators

Rawlings, Lee

Abstract

In any meaningful form, critical literacy is absent in the neoliberal formal education system offered to the working class. This, at a time of austerity, growing inequalities, multiple news sources and fake news, is when critical literacy is needed the most. What this study set out to investigate are the possibilities of broader critical literacy learning in informal learning settings, in communities and public spaces, away from government intervention and prescriptive curriculums. As an ethnographic study, this thesis explores critical literacy learning amongst a range of informal learning groups from a northern working-class urban area known as Sanford and was conducted from September 2019 – until March 2020 (until Covid-19 intervened).
The key learning from this study is a previously unreported phenomenon in critical literacy research: the way people themselves may be read as texts. The thesis conceptualises the Participants as Texts (PAT) model demonstrating how this works in the context of informal learning. Here, facilitators of informal learning groups unconsciously read their group participants with results comparable to reading conventional text types, such as newspapers, posters, films in critical literacy education. This reading of participants exposes facilitators to hidden power inequalities they were previously unaware of, akin to critical literacy text reading in practice that disrupts the facilitators’ worldview initiating the journey of critical consciousness development. The Participants as Texts Conceptual Model (PCM), developed within the thesis, details and explains this process, from the initial PAT reading onwards as learning thresholds and liminal spaces are navigated and transform how facilitators read and see the world.
This study also contributes to understanding how respite and solidarity play an important role within these groups situated in communities beset by austerity and spiralling inequality, as well as exploring the wider role they may have in the face of a changing adult education provision.

Citation

Rawlings, L. (2023). Participants As Texts: the critical consciousness development of informal learning facilitators. (Thesis). University of Hull. Retrieved from https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4625377

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Apr 15, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: May 1, 2024
• Keywords: Critical literacy; Critical consciousness; Informal learning groups; Communities; Adult learning
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4625377
• Additional Information: School of Education; University of Hull
• Award Date: Mar 14, 2024