Bringing a lemon to a lifer: tutoring in prison

Abstract

This prison‐based research is grounded upon ‘reflection‐in‐action’, intertwining the accounts of a reflective prisoner and a reflective practitioner. Through use of ethnographic methods it seeks to make sense of the contradictions encountered while tutoring prisoners. The research story shows how meaning conflicts have been negotiated, not always successfully, and how prisoner choices, particularly those relating to education, are severely limited by incarceration. Taking a lemon into prison as a visual aid for a tutorial will serve to illustrate the intended (liberating) and unintended (damaging) consequences of an outsiders’ misunderstanding of the insiders’ contexts.

There is a dual purpose to this enquiry: it aims to provide a general insight into the value of prison education, and a specific insight, into a particular prisoner’s learning experiences. The methods used in this study have assembled stories, which become the ‘objects of reality’. These are not just a translation of the socio‐cultural experiences of the participants, but a ‘systemic’ meaning‐making exercise between both prisoner and researcher, creating co‐equal authorship.

Keywords:

• prison education
• reflective practice
• narrative analysis

Acknowledgements

To T, should you ever come to read this paper, you will, I trust, recognise yourself: please forgive the liberties.