Transforming Pedagogical Spaces: Knowledge, Becoming and Belonging

In her Keynote Presentation at The European Conference on Education 2014 (ECE2014) Professor Penny Jane Burke explores possibilities for developing “transformative pedagogies” in higher education.

Professor Penny Jane Burke explores possibilities for developing ‘transformative pedagogies’ in higher education. This is connected to a broader project of social justice in relation to the politics of knowledge, belonging and recognition. Transformative pedagogies understand curriculum and assessment as part of teaching and learning processes and frameworks, not as separate entities. Thus, transformative pedagogies are concerned not only with teaching and learning practices but also with the ways that certain forms of knowledge and identity are often privileged in higher education, whilst others are marginalised.

Professor Burke was a Keynote Speaker at The European Conference on Education 2014 (ECE2014) in Brighton, England.


Professor Penny Jane Burke

Penny Jane Burke is Professor of Education at Roehampton University, London, where she is co-Founder and Director of the Paulo Freire Institute-UK (PFI-UK). Previously she was Professor of Education, University of Sussex and Reader of Education; Head of School, Educational Foundations and Policy Studies; Chair of the Widening Participation Committee and Course Leader of the MA in Higher and Professional Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. As a sociologist of gender and education, she is particularly dedicated to the development of methodological and pedagogical frameworks that support critical and transformative levels of understanding of issues of access, equity and social justice in the field of higher education. She was awarded a full-time ESRC doctoral studentship from 1998-2001, which resulted in the publication of her book Accessing Education effectively widening participation (2002). Her most recent sole-authored book The Right to Higher Education: Beyond widening participation was published by Routledge in 2012. Her co-authored book Reconceptualising Lifelong Learning: Feminist Interventions (with Sue Jackson) was nominated for the 2008 Cyril O. Houle World Award for Outstanding Literature in Adult Education. Penny was recipient of the Higher Education Academy’s prestigious National Teaching Fellowship award in 2008 and is the Access and Widening Participation Network co-Convenor for the Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE). She is an Executive Editor of Teaching in Higher Education, on the editorial board of Gender and Education and is a member of SRHE’s Governing Council and Publication Committee.

Posted by IAFOR