ABSTRACT: This article investigates the experience of individual learners who have been allocated learning support in the further education system in England. The particular focus is on interviewees’ constructions of their emotional and psychic experiences. Through the adoption of a psycho-social perspective, learners’ tendency to ‘idealise’ their learning support workers is understood as a strategy for coping with the anxiety generated by a range of previous experiences. The implications for policy-makers are discussed.

In this paper, I argue that focusing on resilience education fails to appropriately reflect the socio-political nature of character. I define protective epistemic character traits (PECTs) as epistemic character traits which aid students in avoiding, limiting or mitigating harm in the classroom. I argue that the relationship between epistemic character and protection in hostile classrooms is importantly influenced by context in two main ways: (1) the exercise and development of some PECTs may carry significant cost for some students and (2) (...) social and developmental factors may promote or obstruct the development of virtuous PECTs for individual students. I employ two principles from Ian James Kidd’s Critical Character Epistemology – aetiological sensitivity and normative contextualism – and propose a revised approach to resilience education. I argue that this revision requires an increased focus on changing underlying structures of oppression and cautions against teaching a standardised list of epistemic virtues. (shrink)