Digital research as a resource for reimagining Further Education

This paper draws on the project Further Education in England: transforming lives and communities. Data – comprising a series of narratives from learners, teachers, employers and learners’ family members – were video recorded and shared via a project website; an inter-related and multi-faceted digital platform. This catalysed what we describe as virtually enhanced engagement and constituted a ‘thirdspace’ (Soja, 1998) i.e. a space in which further and adult education could be reimagined, through a collective dialogical interaction of practitioners and students as more than the quantitatively–defined abstract space that current policy discourse reifies.