The 2015 book, Further Education and the Twelve Dancing Princesses, sparked an interest in research from within the further education sector, which has resulted in practitioner-led projects, as well as fruitful - and equal - writing partnerships between FE and higher education.

Not only are we researching more, but we are also talking more about the research we do. Research meetings across England in the spring and summer of 2018 were energetic fire-starters, driving ideas and action, while also spreading the word via Twitter hashtags #FEResearchMeet and #pumpupthevolume.

And for the first time, FE is hosting a research party! The “Dancing Princesses” concept was all about educators who have not become cynical, and the new FE research movement is claiming spaces for them to dance.

Community education: an afterthought?

But when we say “further education”, what actually do we mean? The truth is, we tend to think of colleges and then, if we remember, add on a trail of other adult-learning contexts. Coming from a teaching background strongly influenced by community education, I always feel we are the elephant not in the room.

What’s referred to as community education in most of the English-speaking world is typically called adult and community learning in England. It is championed by Holex, which works mainly with the sector’s leaders. I doubt that most community-education tutors - many subsisting on arm’s-length, short-term or zero-hours contracts - have heard of Holex. Nor had I, until I got involved with policy work. We are a challenging sector to organise, traditionally hosted by local authorities; if we’re in unions at all, they tend to be broad-based public sector unions, not the University and College Union. The incomparable professional network Natecla, which campaigns, often successfully, for Esol (English for speakers of other languages), embracing all contexts for adult education, has no equal across the board.

Resistance to research

If there is a research culture in English community education, I haven’t found it, though traditions are stronger in Scotland (facing debilitating disinvestment) and in Ireland. During recent work with the MHFE crowd, surveying community education providers across England, we found a deep seam of research resistance. The reasons for this are common to FE as a whole: scarcity-thinking and precarious work make doing anything new feel risky. But where general FE is rejecting the burden of carrying a “poor relation” Cinderella metaphor, that image still seems internalised by community educators.

There is some growth in professional development. Professional exchanges nationwide are bringing together FE practitioners across different contexts. Attempts to establish third-sector professional exchanges - where much community education happens - have found less traction and the shrinking of community learning provision in local authorities means that many educators who outlast the cull of permanent contracts often become de facto middle managers, with little time to focus on anything but survival.

Community education is - almost by definition - localised, happening in under-networked and often underused spaces in communities marginalised by the rapid changes of the 21st century. Shiny new buildings erected during the patchy gravy-train of early noughties EU funding in England’s former industrial heartlands struggle for sustainability, as funding streams narrow.

Pockets of extraordinary work

Derided unfairly as ”leisure learning” by politicians who have never experienced that first step back into education for themselves, community ed has been forced into unnatural places to attract any funding at all. Yet, it occupies a landscape that other adult learning - not just FE but HE - fails to reach, especially following the closure of many college outreach and university lifelong-learning centres.

And there are pockets of extraordinary work, often intergenerational: combating loneliness and alienation, fostering belonging in (sometimes divided) communities, developing health literacy, happening in places where people have the least resources and least hope. This is an evidence base that gets overlooked because it remains unwritten.

At the start of the Dancing Princesses movement, FE researchers were encouraged to write by allies in HE, often fellow former FE travellers who had found universities to be more fertile places to inhabit. Writing was how we found our identity as researchers and we have gathered many fellow travellers over the past three years. Community educators are, I think, largely unaware of their voice, and no wonder, when no one has been listening for the longest time. It’s our turn, FE researchers, to give community ed a hand up now.

If you work in an FE college, take 10 minutes to find out who is working in community ed in your area, give them a call and meet as equals. It takes minutes to build enough of a relationship to deepen as you find common ground. Don’t stop there - who are the private training providers in your area? Who’s wanting to research in school sixth forms? In offender learning? Don’t leave it to beleaguered managers, whose boots are encased in performativity: the pay-offs are long term and it may never happen. Take the power into your own hands and invite your community-education colleagues to join the dance.

Lou Mycroft is an adult educator, facilitator, writer and public speaker