Pride, frustration, anger, hope 鈥 these are emotions that second-chance learners experience, often intensely, that impact on their chances of success.
Dr Brice鈥檚 thesis 鈥Loving Learning? Emotional Experiences of Second-chance in Teaching and Learning鈥 should empower educators and make policymakers sit up and take notice.
Failing to finish secondary school has been linked to poverty, crime, low-paid employment, benefit dependence and teenage pregnancy. Of the 6000-7000 young people who leave school early each year in Aotearoa New Zealand, 40% will not return to education, nor to any training, or won鈥檛 ever have a job.
Some will re-engage with learning during their lives and they will need particular support, however, 鈥渓ittle attention is paid, in policy, to the emotional needs or experiences of these tauira [learners] when they seek opportunities to re-engage in learning鈥, Dr Brice says.
Second-chance learners often bring negative memories of their school experiences to subsequent education, even in different educational contexts. These are stories of humiliation, frustration and even terror, often in a context of discrimination, marginalisation and disadvantage. Throughout her career, Dr Brice has worked with learners in a variety of these contexts, and has witnessed and experienced many intense emotional events.
In her thesis, she shares the story of a young mother who flies into a rage in her office, reacting in the way that has been modelled to her all her life. She later apologises in a letter that is heart-breaking in its honesty and regret. Handled with awareness and honesty, the shared experience of intense emotion brings the potential for transformations in her learning and life. 听
Many moving stories make up the core of this thesis.
There鈥檚 an essay by a young M膩ori mother, 鈥楾amara鈥, which captures her thoughts and feelings around enrolling in second-chance education. She eventually signs up because she doesn鈥檛 鈥渨ant to be sitting on my bottom or working a job that doesn鈥檛 earn enough to support me and my family. I have done right; my girls will have the start in life some children will never have the opportunity to have. And I am proud.鈥
One second-chance learner is 64 years old and serving time in prison before he is able to engage with education again. Another has been released from prison and reflects on the power of the learning he was able to achieve while incarcerated.
Emotions have taken a backseat in Western thinking and culture, Dr Brice says, and they need to be reclaimed.
鈥淲hen I started on this journey I thought of emotions as separate to cognition and I felt that education pays most attention in its research and theory to cognition, however I found they are not binary opposites. You can鈥檛 have one without the other,鈥 she says.
鈥淚n education, we recognise the importance of thinking and we teach thinking skills, but we don鈥檛 pay the same attention to the emotional side of the body and mind.鈥
Working with a cultural advisor, Dr Brice found that in matauranga M膩ori (world view), emotions are treated far more holistically, both within the individual and within a collective social context, and they are valued as potentially transformative forces.听
Influenced by this, Dr Brice says: 鈥淲hat I tried to do in this work was to understand emotion through feeling emotion, as well as through cognition. It鈥檚 challenging to get that into a doctoral thesis, which is all about analysis. However, it was important to me to be authentic and to explore emotions through lived experience rather than theory. For me, research needs to have real-world application, to be practical and useful to others.鈥
The storytelling and careful documenting of emotions adds valuable insight and depth. Dr Brice also offers a model, 鈥淜are 膩 roto鈥 for working with emotions in second-chance teaching and learning contexts. 鈥淚t is about emphasising the emotions that lead to transformation; uncovering and enabling hope.鈥
Dr Brice is one of the first graduates of UC鈥檚 Education doctorate, completing her thesis over four years while working full-time at the Open Polytechnic in Wellington.
The structure of the new Education doctorate suited her, she says, for her own journey as a second-chance learner, which was quite different to the second-chance learners in her thesis. 听
鈥淚 enjoyed the first two years meeting regularly with a cohort while we firmed up our research proposals. Having contact with others on the same journey helped reduce those feelings of isolation and uncertainty that make the first years of undertaking a doctorate challenging.鈥
Dr Brice valued the support of her UC supervisors听Associate Professor Annelies Kamp听and听Dr Veronica O鈥橳oole.
鈥淚 appreciated their guidance and their ability to allow me to be a bit unconventional and experimental in the way I approached this work.
鈥淢y focus is always on how to make things better for learners and teachers and I know my doctoral studies have informed not only my work but everything in my world view. It has allowed me to be comfortable with the complexity that is bound up in all aspects of education; the deeply personal emotional context of each individual navigating the vast machinery of policy and practice.鈥
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