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Responding to Educational Need: Learnings from Time to Think

Our purpose is to explore institutional learning from teaching in prisons during the conflict in Northern Ireland, in particular, how The Open University responded at that time to an immediate and emerging educational and social need. This scholarship research draws on The Open University Time to Think archive as a case study*. 

Our focus is to identify learnings from this case study in Northern Ireland about how new ways of teaching and working were pioneered between individuals, communities, and educators in this particular context of social and political conflict.  For example: 

Institutionally 

  • Developing a pilot project of new level one OU courses with internees held in the Long Kesh internment camp in 1972. This was in response to pressing social needs as 1000s of people many of whom were young, were held in internment camps without trial. 

  • Working with OU management, academic staff, and tutors to secure funding to introduce this pilot programme and to produce high quality teaching material delivered by skilled educators 

  • Responding to a changing political landscape in which the British state now had an obligation to provide education for those sentenced under terrorism legislation, many of whom were young with poor educational backgrounds and with ongoing educational needs 

  • Developing the pilot into a sustainable programme of higher education to those who were sentenced for their role in the conflict in the Maze and Long Kesh – the most secure environment in Europe at that time and to Armagh women’s prison. 

  • Extending education provision to prison staff including governors to defuse some of the hostility amongst staff to the provision of prisoner education 

  • Continuing adaptation including the development of this provision across the border to Portlaoise Gaol in the Republic of Ireland in response to demand by politically motivated prisoners which ultimately led to provision to all prisoners and prison staff 

Teaching and tutors 

  • The experience of tutors pioneering this education provision in response to an urgent social need, working with both prisoners, and prison staff independently to introduce education (hinting at a model of co-education) 

  • Early experiences of tutoring with internees and then with sentenced prisoners living in a chaotic and hostile environment (and in the case of internees, with those living with ongoing uncertainty) amidst tensions and violence between those imprisoned, the prison authorities and the British army 

  • Tutors developing new ways of working in the H Blocks of The Maze and Long Kesh, another deeply hostile environment, under conditions of state censorship and control and where rioting and violence was commonplace. 

  • Tutors pioneering childcare courses, community education courses and later women’s studies with men and women in these contested spaces, working in collaboration with students. 

  • Tutoring effectively across divides including class and politics to deliver high quality education in 

  • Understanding Issues of safety and security and working through a range of dilemmas including ethical and moral as tutors in this context Tutor reflections on what worked and why from delivering OU education through distance learning and face to face teaching within this most highly politicised and hostile context, and changing political landscape, over a 30-year period from the height of the conflict to the unfolding peace process 

From this case study we aim to explore the applicability of these learnings (in the form of principles, values, practices) to pioneering OU education in overlooked or under-served areas and communities facing pressing social challenges today, to continue to meet The Open University’s social mission. 

For example: to help OU staff identify new opportunities for educational interventions or to support ongoing work on widening participation today in communities and areas of social and political contestation and/or with high levels of deprivation and low educational attainment. 

For example, this scholarship research could complement the upcoming work of OU Ireland on widening participation through pioneering community education provision, equally it could support the work of OU staff interested in teaching interventions in contexts of social and political contestation locally such as with migrant and asylum-seeking communities, including those in detention centres (this could compliment the work currently underway on the OU becoming a University of Sanctuary). Learnings could also contribute to ongoing work of the OU’s SISE team in secure environments. Findings may also be useful for OU colleagues in Geography and development, working on education provision in conflict contexts internationally. Finally, these findings would support tutors working in these diverse and complex contexts. (see dissemination section). 

This scholarship research would further support and compliment the model of teaching and Knowledge Exchange we are developing through the Time to Think project. This involves co-production approaches and responsive praxis to be able to respond to new or urgent social and educational needs. For example, through the Coping in Isolation Open Learn course, through our current project work with archive participants and local communities in areas of low educational attainment and with grassroots led international peacebuilding NGO to co-produce learning materials. 

As a starting point this scholarship research will draw from literature on the geography of higher education (Taylor, 2009; Cresswell, 2004) and widening participation in higher education, including in contested places and spaces (see for example Millican 2018; Milton and Barakat, 2017) . We also consider the work of the OECD’s Geography of Higher Education which explores ‘place-responsiveness’  within Higher education. 

We are also interested in the experiences of tutors working in these physical locations and contexts. For this aspect of the scholarship project, we will work with an insider researcher, an experienced Associate Lecturer, who taught in prisons during the conflict to bring their own insights as a tutor to the project and to draw out learnings from other tutors who worked in these sites of contestation. If appropriate, we may draw on literature around Freire’s (1970) approach to emancipatory education, as Freire was highly influential amongst tutors and students in this case study. But again, this will be determined at a later point, by the research team. 

Our two research questions: 

  • What can The Open University learn as an institution from this case study in Northern Ireland about responding to urgent educational needs and opportunities today? 

  • What can we learn from the experience of tutors who taught physically in these contested spaces relevant to tutors today? 

Objectives: 

  • To determine what principles, processes and values can be identified through this case study to inform pioneering education to respond to needs today. 

  • To support tutors working in or responding to needs in contexts today. 

Outputs: 

  • A draft framework (mapping principles, values, processes) for responsive educational interventions in complex, political or conflict contexts – the format will be determined by the findings, but we see this as being a visual representation of process and practices that would be included in our research report. This could become part of a ‘Pioneering educational interventions toolkit’ at a later point (NB: we feel this is too much to attempt to produce in this first scholarship project) 

  • A research report to be shared internally providing insights from this scholarship project. 

* Time to Think (TTT) is an Open University (OU) in Ireland oral history archive and an ongoing collaboration between the Open University (OU Ireland, the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) and the OU Library) and people and communities who participated in the Time to Think archive.  The TTT archive contains over 120 interviews of the educational journeys of Open University tutors, prison and education staff and students from different political affiliations who studied with the Open University in British and Irish prisons, during the years of conflict in and about Northern Ireland. 

References: 

Cresswell, T(2004) Place: A Short introduction. Oxford Blackwell 

Millican, (2018) Universities and Conflict: The Role of Higher Education in Peacebuilding and Resistance. Routledge Press. 

Milton, S & Barakat, S (2016) Higher education as the catalyst of recovery in conflict-affected societies, Globalisation, Societies and Education, 14:3, 403-421 

Taylor, C (2009) Towards a geography of education, Oxford Review of Education, 35:5, 651-669 

OECD, GoHE Geography of Higher Education [online] https://www.oecd.org/cfe/smes/geo-higher-education.htm. Accessed June 1st 2021