A critical autoethnography concerned with attempting to foster transformative relationships in a neoliberal university

This research is an account the factors that support and/or impede a teacher’s (my) attempts to foster transformative relationships in the neoliberal higher education context. It is situated in a higher vocational education context within an inner-city university with a high proportion of non-traditional students. Central to the thesis is the idea that transformative relationships strengthen the conditions for transformative learning and that adopting a transformative approach to learning and teaching is essential to ensuring quality and equality in the context of the university at the centre of this study. The study employs autoethnography as a vehicle through which to study my experience within the newly-established vocational university and to view critically the personal and professional forces that influence my practice in this context. The voices of my colleagues are presented alongside my own in respect of the pressures emanating from the fee-paying students, the need to meet their expectations, increased accountability and the complex demographic of non-traditional students. The similarities and differences in our perceptions and experiences are drawn upon and provide a shared picture of the emerging culture of the university. Finally, I use my teaching reflections to narrate the process by which I seek to foster transformative relationships in the process of teaching itself, and I attempt to tease out the factors that support and/or impede my attempts to do so. The study’s findings prompt a series of proposals concerned with implementing measures that can support the development of teachers and which can help ensure quality through promoting equitable learning experiences for non-traditional students studying in this and similar such higher vocational education contexts