Educating for Citizenship : Transformational Pedagogy in the Neoliberal University

Pye, Jane and Jackson, Carolyn and McArthur, Jan (2026) Educating for Citizenship : Transformational Pedagogy in the Neoliberal University. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

This study extends the research on relationships between pedagogy and transformational learning in the neoliberal university. I argue that whilst neoliberalism in higher education is a well-researched topic, the relationship between pedagogy and neoliberalism has received less focus. I contend that universities are places where a commitment to democratic citizenship can be fostered through appropriate pedagogy within student groups to support the collectivity required to address some of the very serious societal threats such as social injustice that we all face. In this project, I use a narrative methodology to generate data with 15 sociology students and recent graduates. I analyse this data thematically to create 4 themes which reflect how students position themselves in relation to a consumer and/or contributor identity, whether they have an individual and/or collective orientation to learning, whether they are motivated to learn by instrumental and/or self-development outcomes and whether they value objective and/or subjective knowledge. I analyse and use these themes using well-established understandings of critical pedagogy, but I develop the idea of ‘neoliberal pedagogy’ to capture and define the way that pedagogy can become infused with neoliberal characteristics. These characteristics are influenced by the technical-rationality of neoliberalism and include consumer-led, self-interested, measurable and auditable, outcome focused, competitive, objective understandings of knowledge and unquestioned reproduction of power in classroom settings whereas critical pedagogy encourages deep transformational learning by questioning power and inequalities. The findings contribute to knowledge by exploring the interrelationships between student positioning, pedagogy and transformational learning. They point especially to the significance of experiencing higher education individually and the importance of subjective emotional knowledge in transformational learning. They also add to arguments that critical pedagogy is required for transformational learning and suggest that pedagogy in universities is not currently dominated by neoliberal pedagogy despite the neoliberal context of higher education.