There have been numerous initiatives to increase access to higher education for those residing in marginalised locales in Wales. However, entrance in itself does not guarantee success and it is important for educators and policy makers to explore issues of retention. Classed and relational positionings often conflict with non-traditional students' education trajectories and sometimes contribute to their withdrawal from academia. In response to this challenge the current paper focuses on the accounts of non-traditional students in Communities First[1] areas who took (...) an undergraduate social science module with The Open University in Wales. Importantly, rather than reading these barriers to progression as students' individual difficulties, the paper considers how educational cultures can create and perpetuate disadvantage. Exploring students' accounts of pedagogy and administration, the paper focuses on online provision in distance learning and offers a range of strategies that could potentially improve the delivery of an Open University module and students' experiences in future presentations. (shrink)

In this paper I draw apart two different contexts of Freirean pedagogical practice that I label interactional and institutional. The interactional refers to the immediate learning environment with relation to the interaction between the students and the teacher. In contrast, the institutional refers to how the institutions of education are managed, constructed, and organised and how they relate to the individuals those institutions are composed of. I begin by presenting a brief overview of Freire’s argument in favour of a revolutionary (...) pedagogy. I then highlight how this project is represented at both interactional and institutional levels with a particular focus upon the practice of the revolutionary leaders and their role in the development of the humanisation of the oppressed. In presenting the interactional and institutional elements of Freire’s pedagogy separately the tension between the individual and the state is made plain and the limitations of his politico-educational project are drawn out. I argue that due to an inconsistent application of the relationship between means and ends in Freire’s politico-educational project an incoherence between the interactional and institutional levels of education is highlighted. In responding to this limitation of Freire’s politico-educational project with a thoroughly interconnected relationship of means and ends I show that there remains a necessary conflict between the interests of the individual and the state. As a result of this a door is opened for the development of an argument in favour of the disestablishment of education and state from a Freirean perspective. (shrink)