Abstraction,belonging and comfort in the prison classroom

Abstract

Prison education, at the institutional and policy level, is too often about the use value of qualifications, rather than the exchange value inherent in the experience of learning. This article explores how abstract discussion can be used to resolve this problem by facilitating the production and exchange of pedagogical capital in a prison classroom. The development of pedagogical capital, a form of symbolic capital related to learning, enhanced the sense of belonging and comfort experienced by students. The classroom comprised learners from university and prison, participating in informal discussion emanating from abstract questions. Based on interviews with, and feedback and reflections from, students participating in an eight-week course located in a higher security Category B training prison in the midlands of England (‘HMP Lifer’), we discuss how pedagogical capital was produced and maintained. Firstly, it supported teachers to create a trustworthy learning space to discuss abstracted concepts and challenge each other – at an appropriate construal distance – without the discussion becoming too emotionally charged or exposing potential vulnerabilities. Secondly, it enabled students to use their own historical knowledge and experiences (narratives), creating a more equitable contributory space and reducing the risk of judgement. Thirdly, these elements combined to facilitate an iterative process of dialogical investment and exchange. The findings strongly suggest that the pedagogical approach was crucially important in creating a safe, trustworthy, equitable learning space in which students felt sufficiently at ease to exchange their thoughts and ideas as part of group discussion. We conclude that this pedagogical approach has wider implications for enhancing student resources, and fostering a sense of belonging in other, non-penal contexts, including higher education institutions.

Introduction

I like to study as a student, not as a prisoner. It's a big difference I think (Diaz ¹ , student, HMP Lifer, 2019)

This article explores how ‘abstraction’, often associated with teaching philosophy (Szifris, 2021; West, 2022), is important for facilitating collaborative learning in a prison classroom. Abstraction refers to the use of concepts and theories to describe concrete activity in more general terms (Newmann, 1987). Here, it allowed university students and men serving long-term prison sentences to share and engage in educational processes in ways that mitigated against alienation, prioritising well-being and safety by creating a trustworthy learning space (Liebling, 2021; O’Neill, 2018). This process facilitated the production of what we refer to as pedagogical capital, and allowed tutors and learners to maintain that capital throughout the course duration. Pedagogical capital, a form of symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1986), refers to the accumulated resources that can be brought to initiate, facilitate, and maintain student participation in processes of learning (Henningsson-Yousif and Aasen, 2015). These resources, such as self-esteem, confidence, trust, and a sense of belonging, enable students to be ‘education ready’ (Bateman, 2016; Little, 2020), and experience the classroom as a trustworthy, equitable space in which they are recognised as learners. It may also refer to the consequences of that dialogic interaction, the exchange of ideas, and the symbolic value conferred on it by others. Therefore, mitigating the overwhelming and painful aspects of the prison environment – if only momentarily – within the classroom was essential in creating a more trustworthy space in which participants could engage in an iterative process of learning, investment and exchange.

Though there has been some recognition of the importance of human emotions, connection and relationships as a pre-requisite for engaging in education in prison (Coxhead et al., 2021), these resources have hitherto been neglected by research and policymakers. Yet, such pedagogical capital can be detected in the feedback and dispositions of students engaged in processes of learning. Here, we discuss how teaching staff (lecturer-facilitators), together with students, generated the conditions for creating and maintaining a learning space conducive to the exchange of knowledge and pedagogical capital in the prison classroom. We consider how prison students come to see themselves as learners within a ‘total institution’ (Goffman, 1961), characterised by the infliction of various psychological ‘pains’ (Crewe, 2011; Sykes, 1958) and associated low levels of trust (Ugelvik, 2022).

The conditions for educational exchange were established by creating a space in which learners felt at ease, sufficiently comfortable, and confident that they belonged there. A trustworthy, non-judgemental space where learners are valued for their contribution as learners (exchange value), rather than as students contributing towards institutional ends (use value). We conclude the paper by arguing that using abstract questions and discussion help establish appropriate, and perhaps necessary, conditions for pedagogical exchange in a restrictive and punitive environment that traditionally militates against it. Our discussion extends understandings of pedagogical capital, being explicit that it applies to learners in classroom spaces, in addition to its importance for teachers, administrators and managers. Finally, we argue that if we can move discussions of prison education from its current occupation with ‘use value’, and rather focus on the more developmental notion of ‘exchange value’ then we can create prison classrooms that are more welcoming, inclusive and trustworthy than they currently are.

Course context

The project on which this article is based was delivered in a large high security category B prison in the midlands of England between 2016 and 2019, developed as part of the ‘Learning Together’ network. The focus here is the 2019 iteration of the course between De Montfort University (DMU) and HMP Lifer, which was joint funded by these two institutions. The LT national network was characterised by heterogeneous and autonomous prison-university partnerships (Coates, 2016), each with bespoke course structure and content.

The pedagogical design of this course is characterised by its explicit intention to be exploratory and dialogical, including the use of abstract questions to frame the focus of each session. Examples of these abstract questions included What is knowledge? What is agnotology? How are prisons represented in media? How does racism impact the criminal justice system? Why do we punish? This approach derived from the realisation that there was little purpose in delivering a fully pre-determined, fixed curriculum, recognising the potential for students to play a role in producing the experience (Neary and Winn, 2009; Neary et al., 2014). Our particular andragogic approach sought to create an inclusive, interesting and engaging experience without pre-determining what students in prison, at various stages into a life sentence, should learn from it. Creating a democratic learning space was appropriate for the context. This also provided an opportunity for criminology students to experience learning differently to large group lectures and seminars, playing a key role in curating a classroom space inside an institution they were studying academically.

A further distinction of this prison-university partnership was its deliberate avoidance of claims to its ‘transformational’ efficacy (Ludlow and Armstrong, 2016). We sought to facilitate an educational opportunity; one that was not predicated on problematic notions of transformation or rehabilitation (Carlen, 2013; Ministry of Justice, 2021; Sim, 2009). Much previous research on education in prison contexts, particularly in the United States, focuses on utilitarian aims such as justifying engagement as a route to reducing ‘recidivism’ (Behan, 2007). However, as Behan notes, this generally fails to explicitly examine the barriers that may prevent successful implementation of effective prison education. We recognise that similar barriers exist here in the UK context, and that ascribing rehabilitative aims to educational courses or activities change their nature. Our course represented an opportunity to operate differently by providing a relatively informal learning space (Warr, 2016) that prioritises understanding educational experiences of the learners and the merits of relational approaches that facilitate encouragement and connection (Nichols, 2017). The approach counters institutional challenges to recognising the humanity of prisoners and their potential (Muñoz, 2009).

Pedagogy, abstraction and pedagogical capital

Pedagogy

Pedagogical resources are dynamic, and shaped profoundly by power relations (Burke et al., 2013). Our pedagogic approach and the facilitation of the learning space took account of the learners as much as the teachers by recognising aspects of ‘culture, structure and the mechanisms of social control’ (Alexander, 2009: 3). Especially significant was our appreciation of the symbolic power of ‘scriptural dominance’ (de Certeau, 1984; Warr, 2020) in prisons. This led us to favour a more informal, dialogic approach. We purposefully chose not to write records of activities more than was necessary for subsequent exploration; students were not required to submit written work, the facilitators did not do session notes or field notes in the classroom, and written reflections were voluntary. There were three reasons for this: to help promote trust, given how recorded information in prison tends to be used (Crewe, 2012); to maintain our focus on the classroom dynamics, and; to ensure our moral and ethical attention on the learners in the room (Liebling, 2021).

As lecturers in higher education, we are recognised as having expertise in relation to research and pedagogy. It was, though, important for us not to present ourselves as the sole source of knowledge in the classroom. Indeed, whilst we had a responsibility to create a learning space, we were also there to learn from the group, and the interactions in the classroom. The course sought to counter what Ball (2009) has described as academic staff operating as ‘public sector technicians’ increasingly alienated from students, losing creative control over what is taught, and the manner of its teaching.

Our pedagogy also embraces the idea of the ‘student as producer’, which encourages the development of collaborative relations between student and academic for the production of knowledge (Neary and Winn, 2009). This contemporary concept is inspired by Humboldt's (1810) ‘organic scholarship’, in which students are closely and directly engaged in the exploratory thinking with their tutors via Socratic dialogue. Students and facilitators alike are invited to work in communities with time for thinking and without practical obligations attached, nor restrictive assumptions about what will be learned, nor by whom. We encouraged students in dialogue to shape the sessions. To facilitate this, we did not impose learning outcomes, which contain power-laden assumptions about what should be learnt. There is also a risk that such procedures and practices come to dominate the learning experience with ‘criteria compliance’ replacing learning (Torrance, 2007). Instead, the choice that students had in their discussions allowed them to express the points they decided were pertinent to the outcomes of their discussion. This was to obfuscate and mitigate the power relations in the classroom. This resonates with Smith's approach in giving some of the dialogic power back to prison students he worked with (Smith, 2013). In working in this way, we appreciate that teaching cannot be removed from matters of values, norms, and power (Giroux, 2021).

Abstraction

Newmann (1987) describes abstraction as deriving from claims, concepts and theories on material activity presented in generalised language. He argues that abstraction helps to interpret, analyse and manipulate information because it can offer powerful insights into the nature of social experience. Newmann identifies abstraction as one of five main challenges for social studies teachers who emphasise critical thinking and challenging assumptions of learners. He explains that pedagogy in history and social sciences introduce abstractions unlikely to be encountered in other disciplines. Abstractions are often taught only didactically as vocabulary, and students are asked only to reproduce what has been communicated by a teacher or text. But when teacher-facilitators help students use abstractions to go beyond the information given to consider new problems, they promote what he refers to as ‘higher order’ thinking.

Abstracted learning and discussion (‘abstraction’) is associated with the pedagogy of philosophy (Szifris, 2021). O’Donnell (2015) similarly explains how her classes take the form of philosophical conversations that move between story, analysis and texts, with students encouraged to engage further if they choose to. Indeed, any discussion of ontological and epistemological issues necessarily involves the discussion of abstracted concepts (Smith, 2013; Szifris, 2021; West, 2022). Trope and Liberman (2010) argue that forming and comprehending abstract concepts enables people to mentally transcend the currently experienced object in time and space, integrate other social perspectives, and consider new and hypothetical examples.

Abstraction involves the removal of an element of proximity. One's proximal distance from any particular social phenomenon determines our relationship to, and our functional understanding of, it (Simmel, 1908, in Park and Burgess, 1921). This underpins later scholarship relating to construal level theory (CLT; Trope and Liberman, 2010) and specifically the notion of construal distance. The basic premise of CLT is that distance is linked to level of mental construal, such that more distant objects will be construed at a higher level, and high-level construal brings more distant objects to the fore. The different levels of construal serve to expand and contract one's mental horizons and thus ‘…mentally traverse psychological distances’ (Trope and Liberman, 2010: 442). This encourages students to travel some construal distance; the distance from the subject serves to minimise the likelihood of emotional interference. Creating a degree of construal distance helped to mitigate some of the distinct barriers to education and learning associated with the context, such as life-sentenced prisoners’ feelings of shame and stigma (Crewe et al., 2020; Goffman, 1986; Umamaheswar, 2021) and negative prior experiences of formal education (House of Commons Education Select Committee, 2022). Conversely, this also had a beneficial impact for the university students, with less clearly delineated student–teacher relationships.

Pedagogical capital

The concept of pedagogical capital is not new but may be relatively unfamiliar to many prison and educational scholars. It draws on Bourdieu's concepts of social capital and symbolic capital for locating people in social space, which are important for understanding the reproduction of the class system in educational settings. Bourdieu critiques the focus on monetary exchange regarding the reproduction of social relations, defining capital as ‘accumulated labour’ (1986: 241). He argued for understanding the ways in which different forms of capital (or power, which are effectively the same thing) transfer into one another. Henningsson-Yousif and Aasen (2015) use the concept of pedagogical capital to express the value of individual resources in a democratic society. They identify three dimensions of pedagogical capital: an experience content dimension (the experiences a person recounts and identifies with in pedagogical situations), an analysis dimension (a qualified judgement that includes both pulling factors apart and putting them together again in accordance with the individual's knowledge and perspective of the world), and; an acting dimension (stories, explanations and arguments for practical actions in educational situations were the focus).

Henningsson-Yousif and Aasen (2015) explore how students’ possession of pedagogical capital developed into a feature of a teacher education programme at Malmö University. They used sketching and stories as methods to make capital visible, and thus more amenable to exchange. Relatedly, we propose that pedagogical capital comprises resources that enable, facilitate and maintain students’ participation in processes of learning. Students’ sense of belonging has been associated with academic motivation, success and persistence (Freeman et al., 2007; Hausmann et al., 2007). Developing a sense of belonging is especially important, if challenging, for students from marginalised social groups (Hurtado and Carter, 1997; Maestas et al., 2007).

Little has been written about pedagogical capital and nothing published in a prison context. Munro (2007) argues that it is an essential concept and tool for schoolteachers and leaders. He identifies three inter-related types of school teacher knowledge: pedagogic practice (‘repertoires of teaching behaviours a teacher uses routinely and strategically to facilitate and support students' learning’ [2007: 2]); pedagogic knowledge (what a teacher knows about effective teaching and the learning, including curriculum and assessment, the topics they teach, the institution, system and community in which they teach, themselves as a teacher, their expectations of key stake holders and their ethics as a teacher), and; domain knowledge (what a teacher knows about a particular topic in ways that are unrelated to teaching and learning). Munro states that improving a school's pedagogic capital involves building its capacity as a professional learning community. However, he argues that professional learning frequently ignores the ‘…need to explicate, acknowledge and build on the earlier professional experiences of staff’ (2007: 11). During their careers, teachers store a bank of professional experiences – which include the events and emotions implicated and the resulting learning. The capital can be enhanced by these banks of personal professional knowledge (Munro, 2007). Similarly, we argue that students, particularly adult learners, bring with them a range of personal pedagogical experiences that inform and shape their subsequent interactions with education and learning.

We are extending and developing the ideas of Henningsson-Yousif and Aasen (2015) and Munro (2007) in relation to how they relate to learners and facilitators creating and maintaining a learning space conducive to the exchange of knowledge. In relation to direct learning experience, we add a fourth category here: participatory knowledge – what teachers (or facilitators) and students understand about how to be an interactive participant learner. We identify four primary interconnected elements of pedagogical capital in relation to the prison classroom context that go beyond those dimensions identified previously:

Pre-existing pedagogical capital brought to the classroom by students.

Developing pedagogical capital: resources or dispositions developed in the classroom space.

Maintaining pedagogical capital: resources or dispositions maintained in the classroom space.

Pedagogical capital operationalised beyond the classroom space.

Our discussion below focuses mainly on the second and third aspects of pedagogical capital: its production and maintenance in the classroom. We define pedagogical capital, in the form of knowledge, experiences, skills and dispositions as the symbolic resource that each individual brings to the room and uses for exchange in their interactions with others. New ideas, sentiments, skills and understandings result from, and only from, the process of interaction and exchange. The classroom space thus acts as a site of pedagogical exchange where the growth of pedagogical capital occurs.

We understood in advance there would be a range of different prior educational experiences and formal educational qualifications in the classroom, based on the age range of participants, the variation in their time since experiencing formal education and on information imparted through discussion with prison staff and prison students. For students on this course, of critical significance was their interaction with peers in exploring their sense of belonging (Pichon, 2016) in the prison classroom context. This also resonates with the work of Harris et al. (2017) and their exploration of the co-production of the pedagogical self. Like Henningsson-Yousif and Aasen (2015), we sought to operationalise this in our classroom space. This acknowledges that negative prior educational experiences can impact on the process of exchange, but that it is possible and feasible to mitigate that impact.

Methods

This research comprises a participatory, qualitative approach to data generation. There are four main sources of data for building a picture of the pedagogical context. Firstly, discussion and observation notes were made reflecting on sessions. Secondly, 15 written reflective pieces by the prison and university student participants were submitted voluntarily towards the end of the course. Thirdly, reflective feedback sheets were completed by nearly all prison and university student participants at the end of the course. Fourthly, semi-structured interviews with an overall total of 20 interviewees ² were undertaken approximately two months after the eight-week course ended, comprising ten HMP Lifer students, and ten university students. The average interview duration was one hour. A reflective conversation between the lecturer-facilitators was also recorded. Before beginning the study, ethical approval was gained from the university, and permission to interview prison participants was provided by the prison governor. The project was commissioned by the prison as it supported their HMPPS business priorities and the evaluation upon which this article is based was an integral part of that commissioned project. Therefore, as per NRC guidelines, approval was received from the Governor, the prison's Head of Learning and Skills, and the Faculty Research and Ethics Committee at DMU. All interview participants gave their consent for comments to be included in subsequent publications.

Our methodology is an example of ‘participatory evaluative research’. Participatory because, as well as acting as facilitators of the classroom context, we participated in it (Cornwall and Jewkes, 1995). The research is evaluative because as researchers, we are in a position to frame, code and interpret the data that results (Cousins and Earl, 1992). We were participants in dialogue, we are researching the context, and this places us in a unique position as participatory evaluative researchers (Carlen, 2020; Flyvbjerg et al., 2012). The researcher is experiencing the classroom as an active participant within it, which has benefits, such as requiring researchers to be embedded in the activity under investigation and being sensitised to the experience of those whose perspectives we sought to represent, a valuable means for developing empathy and research skills (Probst, 2016). There are challenges for this dual position too; the facilitator role requires a lot of cognitive effort and energy to both be part of a context and seeking to understand its operation from different perspectives.

Positionality (reflexivity)

Our unique position as facilitator-researchers helped us ‘tune in’ to the ‘emotional ecology’ (Zembylas, 2007) of the classroom as a distinct ‘emotional zone’ (Crewe et al., 2013) and offered a lens through which we could interpret discussion amongst the group. What follows is a necessarily brief overview and we are planning a separate paper to reflect on our positions more fully.

Following each session, we discussed our reflections on what we felt went well in terms of the ‘sensory feel’ (Herrity et al., 2021) of the classroom, in relation to the quality and quantity of discussion, the strength of the responses elicited and the emotional (dis)comfort of participants. A number of personal characteristics undoubtedly influence our perspectives on prison life, including age, gender, social class, ethnicity, our time spent in and around prisons over a period of 25 years, and how people respond to these characteristics. The habitus (Bourdieu, 1990) of the prison educator was, to some extent, unfamiliar to both of us as facilitators. However, we had prior experience of developing a course in the same prison, and other courses in a nearby local prison. The second author was sentenced to life imprisonment when younger, serving some of his sentence in HMP Lifer. These experiences of prison life served to act as a mechanism for evoking, eliciting and understanding responses from the group.

In being invited into the prison by the Governor we risked becoming part of that infrastructure, or being seen to be part of it, particularly by prison students. As Sim (1990) argues, professional presence in institutions is a direct consequence of a burgeoning disciplinary infrastructure, associated with disciplinary capital (Warr, 2020). As well as individualising the prisoner, Sim (1990) notes that this also homogenises them into a single narrow ‘offender’ category denying the reality of individual and subjective experiences. We were determined not to replicate, nor fall into, this way of working. Our awareness of it, and our focus on creating a different space, involving students from beyond the prison walls and culture, helped to mitigate some of these risks.

Ethical considerations

There are important ethical considerations when undertaking work of this nature. Attendance in the prison classroom was voluntary for students. Likewise, all participants were invited to give their signed consent before engaging in recorded interviews; these too were voluntary. This information was included in the recruitment process and formed part of a pre-course information session provided to prison students. University students also attended an information session involving a member of prison staff prior to entering the prison. One prison student did not consent to interview, even when a peer offered to sit in on his interview, and it did not proceed. Whilst disappointing from a research perspective, the refusal demonstrated the voluntary nature of participation; there were no consequences for non-participation. We would have liked to interview this student, who had been a vocal contributor to classroom discussions, but respecting his decision was prioritised. Obtaining true informed consent from people in prison can be challenging, given the actual, and presumed, power imbalances (Wener, 2007). It is also essential for researchers not to manipulate or extend conditions that may be harmful (Fisher and Anushko, 2008). Interviewees were not offered a reward or incentive for participation and thus non-participation was not associated with reward withdrawal. This helped distance the pedagogy and the associated research from systems of reward and punishment, the omnipotent, omnipresent disciplinary apparatus of the prison institution (Drake, 2012; Warr, 2020).

Data analysis

A hybrid narrative-thematic form of analysis was applied to the data generated by the experiential reflections and feedback. Thematic analysis is ‘a method for identifying, analysing, and reporting patterns (themes) within data’ (Braun and Clarke, 2006: 6). Narrative analysis refers to the analysis of the stories that people tell about their lives and experiences (Sandberg and Ugelvik, 2016). Narrative is one of the most frequently occurring and ubiquitous forms of discourse (Cortazzi, 1994), helping individuals to make sense of their own lives and explain them to others. Significantly, we are not just passive consumers of stories; we interact with them and they act on us (Sandberg and Ugelvik, 2016).

Findings and discussion

Abstracted discussion aided the production and maintenance of participants’ pedagogical capital in three inter-related ways. Firstly, it supported teachers to create a trustworthy learning space to discuss abstracted concepts and challenge each other – at an appropriate construal distance – without the discussion becoming too emotionally charged or exposing potential vulnerabilities. Secondly, it enabled students to use their own historical knowledge and experiences (narratives), creating a more equitable contributory space and reducing the risk of judgement. Thirdly, these elements combined to facilitate an iterative process of dialogical investment and exchange. The use of abstract questions (e.g. ‘what is knowledge?’; ‘what is ignorance?’ etc.) invited an open dialogue in the space, encouraging students to listen to different interpretations and perspectives.

Abstraction, trust and construal distance

The pedagogical capital generated in the classroom depended to a considerable extent on the learners’ sense of trust and the way in which the initial social distance between classroom students reduced quickly.

…sometimes when you put a group of people that ain’t been together, it's hard to gain trust, confidence and respect, and in this course that's what you need, that's how people start opening up. (Ash, HMP Lifer, 2019)

Even the most outwardly cynical participant at the beginning, Duncan, noticed his cynicism disappearing swiftly. On being asked why, he explained:

Because you get a feel for people and when you’re talking and you realise that the subject that you’re talking about is the subject that you’re supposed to be studying, and you’re not trying to sneak anything else into it…It put me at ease very quickly. (Duncan, HMP Lifer student, 2019)

The sense of feeling ‘at ease’ was commonly expressed in feedback and interviews with students. This is closely connected with a sense of trust and trustworthiness in the space. There is no clear consensus as to what trust actually is and how it comes to be, although theoretical and empirical literature on trust is rich, diverse and growing (Ugelvik, 2022: 3), indicating its contemporary importance. For human collectives, trust can be seen as a form of bridging social capital (Putnam, 2000), which makes cooperative and coordinated action possible. As with societies, we can expect high-trust classrooms to run more smoothly and efficiently than their low-trust counterparts. Upon entering a context where mistrust is so common (Ugelvik, 2022), it was important for students to have confidence in us and our intentions. We could not act in any way that threatened the trust placed in us. The student above described his initial concern that the course was designed to study the men more closely, as a test of their rehabilitative progress:

Cynical by nature, I genuinely thought that it may have been a way of enticing inmates into being surreptitiously evaluated or secretly being used as test subjects for university or even Government research and analysis. I was wrong and am delighted to admit I was. (Duncan, HMP Lifer student, written reflection, 2019)

Prisons and punishment can be emotive topics, particularly when one is personally closely affected. Living with a life sentence can be emotionally profound (Crewe et al., 2020; Liebling and Arnold, 2004). Emotion work is thus inherent to prison work (Nylander et al., 2011; Walsh, 2009). We thus made use of abstraction to help manage what could become emotionally charged discussions if they became focused on individuals and their particular life circumstances. Using abstraction enabled us to manage the ‘construal distance’ between students and the themes under discussion. In using abstract concepts and discussion, we required students to travel some mental (construal) distance to help equalise the learning experience. Higher levels of abstraction contain fewer concrete details about specific actions performed, objects involved, and the immediate context and more information about the general meaning of the object or action (Liberman et al., 2007).

When considering social distance in terms of CLT, a third-person perspective imposes more distance than a first-person perspective, inducing a higher level of construal. Research across diverse domains of evolution, history and child development points to the idea that transcending the present requires, and is enabled by, the human capacity for abstract mental representation (Liberman and Trope, 2008). In practice, there is a balance to strike. Ultimately, if the abstract idea used is too distant from the individual learner, it is too difficult for them to engage meaningfully in discussion. If the idea is too close to a learner's reality, then the learning context can be affected by personalised, emotional recall. A teacher-facilitator is thus interested to find a ‘Goldilocks’ construal distance that facilitates engagement by a group of learners that is ‘just right’, without evoking personal emotions to such an extent that these detract from the wider discussion. De-personalising the learning experience thus had a pedagogical value for students.

…once you actually strip it all back and you realise that you are just students and you are just all learning and you are sat there and you are all equal at that point you completely forget about any of these peoples past, whatever has gone on. (Lizzy, DMU student, 2019)

It created conversation and that was interesting…it created really interesting discussions and it was just nice to be able to talk about stuff that wasn’t prison related… (Duncan, HMP Lifer, 2019)

Abstraction and reducing the risk of judgement

As noted above, students commonly referred to a sense of being at ease in what could have been an alienating space. This was experienced as something educationally new and different for both sets of students. Indeed, feeling comfortable is a particular challenge for the prison students because of the inherent wariness, or diffidence (Crewe et al., 2013: 3) brought about by living every day within a disciplinary infused environment in which ‘performances of self’ (Goffman, 1959) are recorded by staff with potential implications for official perceptions of ‘rehabilitation’ (Crewe, 2009). The risk of judgement – together with the power of the official, institutional word (De Certeau, 1984) – was felt profoundly as prisoners were regularly required to perform their rehabilitation, to prove their fitness for future release one day. The course offered a temporary reprieve from this weight (Crewe, 2011).

…we had a chance to speak out and be honest and be ourselves … You don’t know how much that's worth in prison. You don’t get a voice in prison, you don’t get a chance to speak your mind. You do behind your door to your mates but you don’t feel like a person and doing a course like that you felt that you had an opinion, you felt you could speak. (Duncan, HMP Lifer student, 2019)

Because you are not a threat…people talk to you as they would talk to someone that is their friend…Because other prisoners you have to be careful what you talk to them about…So, its almost like you haven't had no one to talk to…some people have not been able to talk to people about just normal little things…you don't want to say the wrong thing so you would rather not say nothing… (Laeon, HMP Lifer Student, 2019)

Using abstract questions in a space rendered trustworthy, invited contributions, encouraged active listening and provoked thoughtful responses. This is reflective of what Henningsson-Yousif and Aasen (2015) refer to as aspects of ‘experience content’ and ‘acting’ dimensions. This was a novel way of thinking and learning for the students, liberating the conversation so that it could be taken in different directions. Students tended not to identify the use of abstract questions directly, instead describing the effects of their use.

…we all felt so comfortable and I think it was because we were all able to speak on like equal levels as well. I don’t know how, it's so weird, I don’t know to explain it. (Alanis, DMU student, 2019)

They described feeling comfortable in the space, challenged pedagogically, and not judged:

…if you’re comfortable you’re just comfortable…at first I thought it was going to be awkward, but once you got in…then you like just engage in conversation. So that kind of thing was like, OK, these guys, although they listen as well, they’re actually going to talk. So I feel like that kind of helps just get comfortable as well. (Toni, DMU student, 2019)

Beginning with an abstract question helped to ‘level the playing field’ in a classroom comprising students of different ages, with different formal educational qualifications, gained at different times, and different associated learner identities (Tett et al., 2012). The approach promotes dialogue, encourages contributions and invites ideas about how to define concepts, which opened the space, contributing to a more equitable tone.

So, we’d have a discussion and then have a question, a theme, discuss and then put forward into the bigger discussion, and then it would be challenged and no-one was ever shut down, everyone's viewpoint was given equal value… (Diaz, HMP Lifer student, 2019)

The use of abstract discussion also provided a degree of flexibility in how the question was addressed, with student contributions framing and shaping the dialogue, deciding what was important in its interpretation.

… that's one of the most important things because if you make it rigid where it's you that comes in with the control and it's you that's saying - this is what you need to learn, this is what we are going to do, this is what we are going to do - already you are taking that openness in a slightly different way from everyone. (Laeon, HMP Lifer, 2019)

This, in effect, transferred some of the power for the session, encouraging students to produce the session (Neary and Winn, 2009) dispersing responsibility amongst the group and providing a stake in discussion:

So, you giving people some part of it is almost like you are giving them a percentage of the shares, ownership that you are in it together, we are all in this together – it's all about us and we have all got a stake in it. And it gives you that confidence and openness to now be a bit more involved and talk a lot more…And then everyone is able to learn so much more. (Laeon, HMP Lifer, 2019)

Using abstracted questions then helped to disperse the discursive power (Foucault, cited by Hall, 1997) in the prison classroom, contributing to its equitable tone and a sense that student views are valuable and are welcome in the space. As Laeon noted ‘…it gives you that sense of responsibility and sense of belonging which you don't get in the prison’ (HMP Lifer student, 2019). There is value in asking students to address an abstract question, in their own way, with other people giving their time to listen. The sense of belonging referred to (Bennallick, 2019) would be lost in a more didactic pedagogical approach. Indeed, in reflecting on what they had learnt from the course, an aspect identified by both prison and university students was how the approach encouraged listening to classroom contributions without pre-judging the speaker. The creation of a non-judgemental space was fundamental to maintaining pedagogical capital:

…what I learnt was how to listen to other people and what they think even if what they think is different to what I think. You know, when it comes to what is right and what's wrong, it's nice to hear someone else's opinion without being judgemental about it (Marley, DMU student, 2019).

This helped create the pedagogic conditions – associated with trust, confidence and belonging – in which students were able to participate in ways they were not previously accustomed to. The prison students were doing this in a classroom space they had previously experienced as alienating. Indeed, this approach was consistently contrasted with the existing educational offer in the prison, which was described as disrespectful, disempowering and infantilising:

…when you learn you have to be comfortable, you have to feel relaxed, you have to feel you want to engage and that's when you take things in. If you’re constantly being told what to do or monitored, or it's regimented, you just switch off basically, which a lot of the guys do. (Diaz, HMP student, 2019)

Students’ sense of belonging in the classroom space was thus vital. Relatedly, research by Harris et al. (2017) found three themes working together to co-produce the pedagogical self: the central role of lecturers, time for dialogical encounters with peers and the creation of an institutional safe space. Our findings are consistent with these insights, and highlight the role of abstraction in helping lecturer-facilitators to encourage students to think critically, in conversation with each other (see also O’Donnell, 2015).

Abstraction, dialogical investment and exchange

The use of abstraction enabled students to engage in pedagogical processes of reflexive interrogation (Gonzales and Satterfield, 2013). This allowed students to invest in knowledge exchange, whilst relations in the room were open, convivial and equitable, relieving the potentially emotive weight of the context and subjects under discussion. This resonates with O’Donnell's approach, which highlights the importance of ‘curriculum as conversation’ in creating spaces that allow for dissent and disagreement asking students to think critically about their own positions, whilst ‘…remaining open to…different perspectives while having the integrity and courage to disagree and the ability to explain why’ (2015: 488). Asking questions such as ‘What is knowledge?’ and ‘What is agnotology and the production of ignorance?’ invited questions about how we understand the world around us, enabling contributions from anyone in the room. These questions segued into subsequent discussions about representations of prison in media and film, processes associated with ‘rehabilitation’ and racism in the criminal justice system.

Learners were able to shape the course by deciding two topics for the group to discuss in Weeks 5 and 6. This provided an explicit opportunity to co-produce content, establishing the groundwork for individual and collective investment. The group chose to focus on ‘rehabilitation’ and ‘race and ethnicity’ in prisons, indicating a willingness to engage in such sensitive discussions in an ethnically diverse prison classroom context. It is important that students were able to participate to the extent that they felt comfortable. As noted by Rhys, this is the type of discussion that could not have reasonably taken place before a certain level of trustworthiness had developed: ‘…it was good that people could express what they wanted comfortably in that situation. I think if that had happened at the start of the course maybe people wouldn't have been as open…’ (Rhys, HMP Lifer student, 2019). University students, such as Toni, expressed similar sentiments:

The topic is kind of hard, so you need people to kind of feel comfortable enough to say their own opinions. So, it made sense to do it towards the end, rather than doing it in week two, when everyone's thinking, OK, I don’t really know these people, how are they going to take my opinions and that kind of stuff. (Toni, DMU student, 2019)

The session on race and ethnicity is a particularly good example of where trust, co-production, investment, listening and exchange were explicitly evident. It indicated we had found an appropriate construal distance in which such a discussion could take place. Indeed, students interviewed tended to comment on this session as the one in which most people contributed, particularly prison students and particularly Black prison students;

I really enjoyed that session. I think that was one of the best in terms of the fact that a lot more people were more passionate and wanted to engage and it felt like it was a competition to speak because everybody wanted to speak … (Misha, DMU student, 2019)

This same student reflected that, as someone with parents of different ethnicities, she did not often find opportunities to speak openly about race and ethnicity in other parts of her life:

I don’t get to speak to a lot of people about race…So it was nice because obviously a lot of the group were mixed race and different ethnicities… (Misha, DMU student, 2019)

Some white students, who did not feel they could contribute to the session with personal experiences of racism, could nonetheless participate through active listening (Rogers and Farson, 1957), which helps to increase empathy and demonstrate that what was being said had value:

I enjoyed the week that we spoke about race. I kind of felt like …. I couldn't really input as much as other people…for me that session was much more like sitting back and understanding and listening to the issues that people had faced. Because I do live every day with a white privilege I don't experience those sorts of things. It was interesting to hear what other people thought white privilege was. It was interesting to hear what other people thought institutional racism was. Because for me that week was just about learning and understanding and getting somebody else's view on the situation. (Lizzy, DMU student, 2019)

This is the type of discussion that could have quickly become intensely personal and emotive. Instead, there was sufficient construal distance that the personal exchange did not become overwhelming for contributors or listeners. The result was an exchange of knowledge, perspective and experiences and this represented a value to learners in the group. This is not to say there was not discomfort, or to deny different interpretations of, and feelings about, the discussion. But the session did not become overheated or disrespectful. Furthermore, the nature of the discussion encouraged further contributions.

We sought to create the conditions in which people could participate as learners equitably, and be recognised as contributors with value as speakers and/or active listeners (hooks, 2003). Prison students had exposed themselves to potential feelings of pedagogic discomfort such as ‘being stupid’, not ‘keeping up’ or not ‘holding their own’ in discussions and debates (Dave, written reflection, HMP Lifer student, 2019). They were willing and able to do this because of the value in being part of a meaningful discussion. Their interactions as ‘normal human beings’ (Laeon, HMP Lifer student, 2019) impacted positively on their sense of belonging in the classroom. This sentiment was typical of the reflections towards the end of the course:

I can hold my own in a room with academics/intellectuals and not come across I would say “stupid”…I’ve learnt that other people out there apart from my friends and family do see prisoners in a positive way meaning we are not all criminals. (Dave, HMP Lifer written reflection, 2019)

Other prison students alluded to the symbolic connotation of feeling like a learner, being capable of learning, and being recognised as such by others (Hooks, 2003). Some admitted to feeling insecure about their pedagogical capital, about what they could bring to the class, or whether this would be recognised by others. This insecurity derived from discussing topics they might not be familiar with, in ways they’re not used to and with people they’re unfamiliar with. There is a connection here with the concept of epistemic injustice (Fricker, 2007) and the hermeneutical marginalisation it leads to, characterised by an uneven distribution of resources such as concepts, credibility and knowledge (McKinnon, 2016). For example, on learning about the work of Paulo Freire, Dwight expressed a combination of delight and relief, writing:

I had never heard of this great man before but I have always known that since I left primary school, I have been ‘taught at’ or spoken down to; I have been experiencing the ‘banking method’ of teaching. This resonated with me because I know from first-hand what he meant… (written reflection)

Without this pedagogical framing device, Dwight recognised he had been living in a position of epistemic injustice. Feeling like a learner, and being ‘…treated like an adult’ (Dwight, HMP Lifer written reflection) helped alleviate this. Enabling his pedagogical capital, in order to contribute as a student, also helped to alleviate some of the weight of institutional disciplinary labels (Crewe, 2011). The prison students perceived a value in experiencing learning for the sake of learning (Warr, 2016), of being part of, and contributing to, intellectual discussions. The shared prison classroom space offered a different form of opportunity and experience, enabling a lighter, less oppressive, less tight (Crewe, 2011) form of interaction. This enabled the chance to breathe and communicate something of an alternative version of themselves, their thoughts and opinions in the context of abstracted discussions. The experience offered some respite, however briefly, from some of the pains associated with imprisonment (Crewe, 2011; Sykes, 1958).

There were further implications for some students, enhancing their approach to studying and learning. For example, Diaz explains how he felt himself becoming more critically reflexive as a result of the experience:

I’m more I think critical of when I’m reading now. So even in studying with my textbooks and stuff. Because at the end of the day it's an opinion, it's a theory of someone being put forward, it's not gospel in that sense. So it's open to criticism, it's open to interpretation, it's open for discussion, and you balance it with other opinions, other things. So you don’t take it for granted what you’re reading, you analyse it more, you’re more critical. (Diaz, HMP Lifer student, 2019)

Abstracted questions and discussion helped him engage as a student and enhance his approach to learning. At its heart, this encapsulates much of what we argue about producing and maintaining the pedagogical capital of a diverse group of students in the prison classroom. The use of abstraction helped students feel like they could participate meaningfully, that they had something of value to contribute, that others would listen to them, without judgement, thus encouraging further exchange. It had the effect of producing a learner identity, enhancing their confidence. This can be seen as something of a virtuous cycle, in which the development/exchange of pedagogical capital enhances belonging and comfort. These aspects of learning processes are often overlooked, and the effect was profound for some students.

Concluding comments: Producing and maintaining pedagogical capital

Prison classrooms suffer from being located within institutions in which power is wielded in particular ways to inflict punishment on people. It is well established that this punishment is experienced as painful in numerous ways. The depth, weight and tightness of this pain varies over time, differs between individuals, and differs according to the emotional zone in which it occurs; and context is thus one in which trust and trustworthiness are not easily produced or maintained. Thus, prison classrooms are commonly experienced as unsafe or alienating. We used abstract discussion as a way of levelling the field between the two groups of students, and teaching staff, minimising the impact of (negative) prior experiences of education. This reduced the emotional ‘weight’ (Crewe, 2011) associated with prison students’ experience of their prison sentence (Umamaheshwar, 2021).

The mitigation of painful aspects of the prison environment within the classroom created a more trustworthy, safer learning space in which learners could engage in an iterative process of investment and exchange (pedagogical capital) which then fostered a sense of belonging and comfort. We did this by using abstract questions and discussion, which invited continual contributions, encouraged active listening and allowed students to manage construal distance. This helped to depersonalise topics as an aid to discussion in the context; to help us navigate the distinct emotional geography of the prison classroom, mitigating some of the potential emotional consequences of discussing certain topics in that space.

The use of abstraction also helped mitigate the impact of prior educational experiences, encouraging a less judgemental form of exchange and enabling all students to contribute. In this way, prison-based students experienced the classroom as more equitable, valued as humans and fellow learners for their experiences and insights, rather than sensational storytellers. Giving over time and space for interactive discussion emphasised the significance of what we can learn from each other, that what students already know is valuable and that they have an important role to play in producing the learning space. Students felt sufficiently ‘at ease’ to dip their toe in the conversational water without risking too much personally. This approach appreciates that what students have learnt previously can be their best asset. They can be encouraged to re-visit prior assumptions, rather than being forced into a process of ‘unlearning’. This demanded less expenditure of emotional capital (Zembylas, 2007) from students; when their contributions were met with non-judgemental responses, they felt safer and more able to engage with peers. When they discovered their point of view was valued, further interaction was encouraged. This created the conditions for the development of pedagogical capital and the recognition of the value of learning. This exchange dynamic fostered a sense of belonging and therefore comfort in the space.

The collaborative aspect of our endeavour to create a space with learners from inside and outside a prison is an exploratory, yet significant, contribution to the pedagogical literature and to prisons research. Our discussion extends the concept of pedagogical capital, as expounded by Henningsson-Yousif and Aasen (2015) and Munro (2007). At its heart, the concept helps acknowledge, recognise and uncover the resources and dispositions involved in enabling students to be ‘learning ready’, to participate in pedagogical dialogue, and to develop a sense of belonging in the classroom. Learning is understood in a broad sense, as understood by the students; not prescribed in advance by lecturer-facilitators, nor by disciplinary institutional logics. This has relevance beyond the penal context for other target-driven educational spaces. Especially at a time when there are questions about university students’ connection with, and sense of belonging to, higher education institutions (Thomas, 2012). This pedagogical approach may have wider implications for how we enhance student resources and foster a sense of belonging. Social belonging and identity safety have been found to have an impact on student academic achievement in the United States (Student Experience Project, 2022). This collaborative student project found that student experience has important implications for educational equity, and that efforts to improve it can also enhance teacher belonging and job satisfaction. Together with our findings, it suggests that further attention on the resources, the pedagogical capital, that permits a sense of belonging to be produced is required.

Through this pedagogical praxis, we understand more about how the students prison classroom navigated various ‘hierarchies of belonging’ (O’Donnell, 2015). Indeed, facilitating an enhanced sense of belonging is a key motivation for utilising abstraction. In seeking to develop students’ pedagogical capital, part of our purpose is to divorce the topic of conversation from the immediate circumstances of long-term incarceration (Crewe et al., 2020). The university students, with less experience of life in general and prison in particular, were still able to participate by listening and by exchanging their own perspectives and interpretations. They reported learning in very different ways about their subject to those they had been accustomed to on university campus. This was a fundamentally different learning space that they experienced as dynamic, energising and powerful.

Prison education, at the institutional and policy level, is too often about use value, rather than exchange value. For example, attempts at improving prison educational provision tend to emphasise the ‘use value’ of basic skills (e.g. literacy, numeracy) and vocational qualifications (e.g. becoming a chef, cleaner or railway operative) through innovations such as ‘OLASS’ contracts. The language of the Prisons Strategy White Paper (Ministry of Justice, 2021) is similar in its stated intention to make people ‘useful’ beyond prison. By contrast, the focus of the approach here is the value of the educational exchange itself, not the utility that supposedly derives from it. Taking care not to assume a use value also encourages a non-judgemental space. This has implications for the way we conceptualise the utility of education in prison if we move from a use-value model to a more developmental ‘exchange value’ model. It also allows us to consider ways in which that use value model of prison education, with its overt disciplinary focus, paradoxically, militates against the very institutional utility that it attempts to achieve.