The Lancaster University Teach-Outs: Experiments in Radical Pedagogies and Reimagining the University

Abstract

This article examines the teach-outs organised by staff and students at Lancaster University during the 2021-22 UCU strike. Guided by a critical discourse analysis of blog posts co-produced by staff and students during the strike and teach-outs, this article will examine how the teach-outs developed an education programme critiquing the neoliberal university and 'student as consumer' discourse, exploring forms of resistance, and creating radical pedagogical alternatives. Drawing on Mike Neary's Student as Producer, this article argues the teach-outs were experiments in knowledge co-production and democratic decision-making that aimed to develop a collective capacity for resistive politics. Student as Producer was also visible in the overlapping discourses that explored worker-student forms of association and the critical-practical necessity of confronting academic capitalism. This article concludes that while the teach-outs demonstrated the possibility of an alternative to the neoliberal university, the struggle for the abolition of the neoliberal university is inextricably bound to the struggle against capitalism itself.