Education in prisons: Generating hope, escaping stereotypes

Research Intelligence issue 164

The UK sends more people to prison than any other European country and for longer. Nearly 70 per cent of people sent to prison are assessed on entry as having levels of numeracy and literacy roughly equivalent to somebody leaving primary school. The failing prison system appears stuffed with people failed by education, health and social care systems.

This issue, guest edited by Rod Earle, Bill Davies, Eira Patterson and Runa H. Jenssen, seeks to explore education in prison and how people might be encouraged to feel differently about it and prison as an institution.

Contributions to this issue:

• The first article, by Jo, shows her prison education journey which can be read as a success story, but note her final remark: ‘The qualifications I got in prison themselves didn’t help me’
• Abdulhaq Al-Wazeer provides another first-person account of his bumpy journey from Hackney’s troubled estates to prison and out the other side
• Eira Patterson, staff tutor for the Open University (OU), consolidates these student perspectives with an account from a student offered ‘in the hope that it will encourage others to engage in education in prison’
• Simon Riley, learning and skills manager at His Majesty’s Prison (HMP) Full Sutton, reports on the award of a PhD to a prisoner there
• Cassie Edmiston from the Prisoners Education Trust (PET) considers the impact of distance learning and effective support on people who engage in prison education
• His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons, Charlie Taylor, analyses ‘What is going wrong with education in prison?’
• Neil Wallace and Kristie Mortimer consider the growing role of voluntary arts education in prison-based rehabilitation in Aotearoa New Zealand
• Runa Hestad Jenssen shows how the arts and listening can challenge assumptions and foster belonging in education
• Sharon Davidson, an OU tutor in prisons and UK regional co-ordinator of the European Prison Education Association, looks at the lived experiences of tutors within prisons and uses the term andragogy to delineate adult learning from childhood education in several specific ways
• Cormac Behan, an internationally recognised expert on education in prison, offers a snapshot of education in Ireland’s prisons.

Elsewhere in this issue:

• TEAN (Teacher Education Advancement Network) joins BERA – a move that secures TEAN’s future and allows its important work to grow within BERA’s wider community
• BERA Council has reviewed and updated the BERA Artificial Intelligence (AI) Statement 
• BERA’s Research Ethics Case Studies series is now complete, following the addition of ‘The ethics of research involving artificial intelligence and education’
• Marlon Lee Moncrieffe, Chantelle Haughton and Rhianna Murphy report on seminar 3 in the BERA presidential seminar series 2024–2026: Anti-racism & education in Wales
• The winner of the BERA Public Engagement & Impact Award 2024, the initiative #BeeWell, write an article on young people’s wellbeing 
• Lyle C. May has been on death row in the U.S. for more than 20 years. His book, The Transformative Journey of Higher Education in Prison: A Class of One, is reviewed in this issue’s book feature
• Update from BERA’s Publications Committee Chair, Ros Mclellan
• Kulwinder Maude, from the Teacher Network, asks whether an intervention based on self-determination theory can improve teacher wellbeing
• Lisa Reed, from the ECR Network, considers the role of reflexivity when considering research ethics.

This issue can be viewed as a Flipbook or downloaded as a PDF below. Please sign in to your BERA account to gain access.