This thesis examines emotional experiences in second-chance education contexts of teen parent education, alternative education, and in the provision of foundation education in Corrections facilities in Aotearoa, New Zealand. It asks what emotions are experienced and what that experience is like, what emotions have the potential to influence transformations and what are the implications of understanding emotions for enhancing the provision of second-chance education.

The qualitative methodology of autoethnography, presented as a story, is used. Data are drawn from the lived experiences of the author working in the three contexts of second-chance education. These stories within the story are positioned as intra-actions that encompass multiple human and non- human components. Emotional experiences from these intra-actions are interpreted using the methodologies of diffraction and existential thematic analysis.

This thesis finds links between emotional experiences in second-chance education and experiences of bias and unfairness in a system of education with colonial roots. A range of strongly felt emotions including anger, pride, love, and hope emerge in the stories explored. They appear in all three contexts and are experienced by kaiako or tauira. Experiences of these and other emotions have influence on transformations, but questions emerge around the sustainability of those transformations where externally enforced practices of material and discursive deficit impose limitations.

This thesis finds that improved understanding of emotional experiences in second-chance education has implications for practice and policy. It emphasises the need to make emotional experiences and the work of emotions explicit within second-chance education contexts and presents a pedagogy of emotion, kare ā roto, for this purpose. This thesis also calls attention to the lack of regard for emotion and the emotional experiences of kaiako and tauira in current education policy and concludes with an assertion to address this deficiency in the current reform of education.