The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate Archer's reflexive modalities in relation to Further Education (FE) students' higher education (HE) decision-making and choices. To do this, it draws on data from a qualitative, longitudinal narrative inquiry that explored how socioeconomically under-represented FE students made their HE…

This article is a reflection on the National Further Education and Training (FET) Learner Forum (NFLF). It uses the NFLF as an example of learner voice in practice, retracing the history of the NFLF as a means of reflecting on some of the benefits and challenges of bringing learner voice into public policy. The article outlines educational debates…

This biographical case study explores how two South Korean middle-aged married women have managed their career and their family commitments over the period of 9 years after their mature higher education. In doing this, this study focuses on the role of agency with reference to the structure of gender throughout these women's experiences.…

This article explores the efficacy and cost effectiveness of New Labour's skills-based policies to help low paid workers adjust to the pressures generated by globalisation, of which the leading example was Train to Gain (T2G). It also analyses the more general issue of how, why and under what circumstances education, training and skills can help…

Practitioners need to invest in professional development to enhance credibility, job security and employment prospects. Employer expectations of continuing development as a performance measure link to the notion of career capital; namely that knowledge competence influences job advancement. This study uses an interpretivist approach to explore…

This article offers a critical examination of the transformative approach to education for political citizenship. The argument offered here is that the transformative approaches lacks the capacity to fully acknowledge the asymmetries of political power and as a consequence, it promotes an idealised construct of political citizenship which does not…

In this special issue, we view the development of feminist community psychology (FCP) as an ongoing project that must be co-created. This is reflected in articles that focus on authors' unique social locations inside and outside organizations in which they work, critical reflections on their multilayered identities, feminist methodological and…

Over the past 40 years, the assessment and scientific study of capacity in older adults has emerged as a distinct field of clinical and research activity for psychologists. This new field reflects the convergence of several trends: the aging of American society, the growing incidence and prevalence of dementia, and the patient rights,…

Power and inequality are central concepts in feminist theory and practice. Yet, with a few notable exceptions, there is relatively little empirical research on gender and power within feminist psychology. A search of PsycINFO for articles published in "Psychology of Women Quarterly" for the years 2000-2011 yielded only 14 empirical articles with…

Practitioners who view intimate partner violence as a set of strategies aimed at maintaining positions of power and privilege often face an engagement dilemma when men at their first contact talk of themselves as disempowered by circumstances such as separation, loss of access to children, legal problems, substance abuse issues, and their own…

Ethical approaches to practice and research in counselling and arts/psychotherapies demand an urgent attention to body politics. Bodies are not neutral; gender, sexuality, ethnicity and class are socio-political aspects that shape our mental, emotional and physical selves and inform our ethical values. Drawing from the author's embodied practice…

In the United States, adult students of English as a second language (ESL) comprise both the majority and the fastest growing group of adult education students (Crandall & Sheppard, 2007). After ESL, many must seek higher education to earn a sustainable living wage (Wrigley, Richer, Martinson, Kubo, & Strawn, 2003). This study described…

One of the vexing ambiguities in the historiography of the civic republican tradition has been just when and how republicanism ended. The American Revolution itself, according to Gordon Wood and J. G. A. Pocock, was waged for republican principles, but the government established in its wake represented what Wood called "the end of classical…

Researchers have suggested that one function of touch in mixed-sex interactions is to exert influence over another person. Yet theories offer different explanations as to when women and men will use touch as an influence strategy. The gender politics hypothesis proposes that men touch more as a way to maintain inequalities present in society. In…

The majority of young married Americans lived with their spouses before the wedding, and many cohabited with partners they did not wed. Yet little is known about how cohabitating relationships progress or the role gender norms play in this process. This article explores how cohabiting partners negotiate relationship progression, focusing on…