Forms of institutionalised symbolic violence and resistance in the journey of a cohort of adult literacy learners

Abstract This paper explores how the public domain of schooling has shaped a cohort of Adult Literacy learners in the North of England. It highlights the important role that education plays in providing cultural and social resources required to organise an upward mobility shift; just as it serves as a site in which the inequalities that already exist are reproduced. The study explores the forms in which Bourdieu’s symbolic violence was visited on the cohort and how they resisted. It demonstrates the importance of offering learners, who do not fit with dominant ideologies a voice and a validation of their literacies, leading to the development of knowledge and the creation of a critical space for curriculum development, learner transformation and consciousness-raising.