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The advantages of deep learning over surface learning are well known. This article suggests that students can achieve deep learning effectively by using a dialectical approach. The Web provides a means of developing resources that will enable this goal to be achieved in a variety of ways. For part-time students lack of access and lack of tutor involvement in their work are common problems. The discussion in this article illustrates how a group of part-time postgraduate students achieved such goals in a social theory course. The article shows how dialectical thinking can operate and suggests ways by which larger groups of undergraduate students can benefit from such developments.

An account of a young person undertaking a vocational preparation course is given. This young person was described as a fantasist by his foster mother, and the staff who ran the vocational course came to a similar view. These various narratives are examined to show how the categorisation of fantasist was created and maintained. The case study shows how the young person used fantasy to achieve particular ends. There is a power relation existing between the contrasting narratives and the categorization fantasist belongs to a sanctioned and powerful discourse. Thus `my research' as well as this article and the other narratives it discusses should be subject to a similar analysis as that attached to this case study itself.

Youth worker training has existed on a formal basis for many years but the training programme can be seen as conventional. There is an emphasis on participative activity where students are encouraged to work in groups, to develop learning opportunities and to use contracts to regulate their experience. A case‐study of a part‐time training route provides the focus for the paper. J‐F. Lyotard has developed a set of categories in his understanding of post‐modernity including the notions of pagan knowledge and the figural. Two scenes from the course are analysed through Lyotard's categories in order to reveal the distinctive discursive work that was taking place. Other accounts of such scenes have relied upon a clash between discourses, e.g. a discourse of oppression being countered by a different discourse. If Lyotard's ideas are developed, then the dominant discourse can be seen to contain its own oppositional practices and there is no need to search for further external discourses. The case‐study shows how the students in training used the dominant discourse of participation to bring about a series of different effects.