Teaching under constraint: exploring adult educators’ pedagogical practices in correctional settings in Sweden

This article examines how adult educators approach and adapt their pedagogical practices in correctional settings. Semi-structured interviews with 14 teachers working in Swedish prisons were analysed using qualitative content analysis and the theory of practice architectures. The findings show that education in prison is not simply adult education delivered under constraints, but a distinct practice shaped by institutional rules, security routines, and students’ diverse educational backgrounds, which influences how adult educators approach their teaching. Their prison pedagogy centres around establishing trust, promoting responsibility, and fostering empowerment, aiming at the students’ holistic development. In this way, adult education in correctional settings emerges as a relational and morally engaged practice in which tensions among care and control, autonomy and coercion, and trust and vigilance are negotiated to make learning possible.