Session Information
02 SES 09 C, Pathways and Transitions II: Pathways at Risk
Paper Session
Contribution
In a 2015 paper we set out early findings from UK analysis and a pilot of 5 Italian women, to pave the way for a full UK-Italian analysis. This 2019 paper reports on the full comparative study carried out between 2016 and 2018. We discuss the ways in which women aged 50, in two different cultural contexts (United Kingdom and Italy) narrate and portray transitions in their life course. The reference paradigm is adopted from Narrative Learning Theory and the approach is qualitative and comparative in analysing the participant’s voice. This study will show how women’s representations of their life course reveal different propensities to reflect on and learn from their own lives.
The research supports the case for approaches that facilitate biographical learning to become integral to adult education practices and to the development of adult education practitioners supporting areas such as mid-life career change and work -re-entry programmes.
The theoretical perspective focuses on life transitions – normative, non-normative, silent – involve individual changes, social roles modifications, social and historical factors that define transformation in the life course (Perrig-Chiello, Perren, 2005). Heterogenous experiences and important life events are personally significant in promoting a change in an individual’s life trajectory (Rönka et al., 2003). Middle age is a period of life associated with many and multifaceted transitions (age-, time-, event-, duration- and emotion-dependent) that impact on the life course, stimulating some reorientation in values and goals priority or demand a search for a new meaning in adults’ lives. Gender differences and age grouped timing patterns are relevant factors in transitions within a life-span context. From a chronological and longitudinal perspective, women aged 50 offer a special lens on their life course. The concept of biographical learning (Alheit & Dausien, 2002) refers to a close link between learning and biography. The elaboration of this link concerns the ways in which people learn from their lives, (Tedder & Biesta, 2007) The focus of a biographical learning approach is on making sense of one’s life course, faced by challenges and transitions (Hallqvist & Hydén, 2013). This learning entails the exercise of agency, the ability to give direction to one’s life, understood as a bounded and reflexive process that is exercised through environments, drawing on (Evans 2002,2017).
Research question: In what ways do life-course representations of women of age 50 in Italy and UK suggest shared features or differences in propensities to reflect on and learn from their lives?.
The comparative perspective highlights, through two-level analysis (micro and macro) and by contrasting cultural, relational and social contexts, variations in ways these women are enabled or restricted in moving their lives forward, focusing on work histories and family commitments.
Implications for adult education practice are drawn out, particularly in relation to assumptions about readiness for self-directed learning in adult life. The research also contributes to methodological insight into the use of drawings in elucidating life course narratives.
Method
The methodology is designed to explore the narrative and symbolic representations of turning points in the narratives of the research participants. This approach is informed by Mattingly (2007), with the aim of understanding the implicit meanings (tacit and naive theory-in-use) of the ideas expressed in the narratives and sketches; showing the propensities for learning and giving direction to one’s life embedded in these narratives, elucidating how different cultural roles and expectations are reflected in women's representations. Reports from the National Child Development (NCDS) Study (Brown, Dodgeon, 2010) point out that surveys of adults at age 50 can serve as a special baseline in order to investigate life-histories (series of transitions, turning points, number of life events and psycho-social experiences, crisis and identity development paths. Drawing on the NCDS cohort surveys, the first data source for our study is the set of 220 interviews conducted with respondents in England, Scotland and Wales in the study deposited in the UK Archives Data under the "Social participation and Identity" project. From this sub-sample of the 1958 National Child Development Study cohort, we chose the female sub-sample of 110 interviews. From these 110 interviews, we have analysed four sections related to life history and to identity. Furthermore we selected the thirty-one interviews in which women have drawn a diagram representing their life course..For the Italian sample, the data sources are 28 semi-structured interviews and drawings, based on the same selected items of the UK interviews and provided by women aged fifty years old living in the North-East of Italy. The methodological approach is qualitative: ● The content analysis is made on the transcriptions with Nvivo, including the thematic, the linguistic and the narrative analysis. ● The validity of the results is constantly verified by a continuous process of discussion and by a compared analysis conducted by the two authors (UK and Italian) both separately and together. The comparative analysis has a macro-causal dimension (Ragin 2008) as the macro can be seen in different ways through the lens of the micro. The micro cases of biographical learning are analysed and interpreted not only in terms of possible macro forces in action, but also as reflections of gendered relations that transcend national boundaries, embedded in the prevalent societal conditions and gender regimes.
Expected Outcomes
Variations in the women's narrations of ways in which they move their lives forward reveal inner capabilities that are developed reflexively through experiences and relationships in a range of life and work environments. They also reveal the potential for adult education to incorporate practices that facilitate the telling of life experiences in ways that can better support people towards the achievement of critical insight into these experiences and in learning from their lives. The stories people tell about their lives not only reflect what they have learned from their lives but also show how the process of telling itself is often indicative of growing self-awareness and insight, as the construction and narration of their stories becomes part of the learning process. The research has shown the variety of ways in which some women bring consciously reflective habits of mind to their experiences and opportunities; others are pre-reflexively feeling their way. Understanding, from the perspective of the women themselves, the role of activating events and activating relationships in the life-course indicates the importance, for adult education practitioners, of sensitivity to these variations and to the cultural embeddedness of the women’s experiences, as they navigate the expectations of particular gender regimes. The research thus supports the case for approaches that facilitate biographical learning to become integral to adult education practices and to the development of adult education practitioners. The use of drawings also yields some methodological insights into tools that can be used, in both research and practice, in facilitating, elucidating and comparing life course narratives. Comparative reflections on these retrospective accounts of lives shaped over half a century also contribute to the debate on individualisation and the extent to which the ‘traditional’ social structures of class, gender, religion and family are weakening, as biographical learning confronts pre-given life worlds.
References
Alheit, P., Dausien, B. (2002). The double face of lifelong learning. Two analytical perspectives on a silent revolution. "Studies in Education of Adults", 34, 1, 3-22. Biasin, C., (2012). Le transizioni. Modelli e approcci per l'educazione degli adulti. Lecce: Pensa Multimedia. Biesta, G., Field, J., Hodkinson, P., Macleod, F. & Goodson, I. (2011). Improving Learning through the Lifecourse. London: Routledge. Brown, M. & Dodgeon, B. (2010). NCDS Cognitive Assessments at Age 50: Initial Results. London: Centre for Longitudinal Studies, Institute of Education. Evans, K. (2009) Learning Work and Social Responsibility: challenges for lifelong learning in a global age. Dordrecht: Springer. Evans, K. (2007). Concepts of bounded agency in education, work, and the personal lives of young adults. "International Journal of Psychology", 42, 2, 85-93. Evans, K. (2017) Bounded agency in professional lives. In M. Goller, Susanna Paloniemi eds. Agency at Work eds An Agentic Perspective on Professional Learning and Development. Dordrecht: Springer Hallqvist, A., & Hydén L.C. (2013). Work transitions as told: A narrative approach to biographical learning. Studies in Continuing Education, 35, 1, 1-16. Heinz, W.R., & Krüger, H. (2001). Life Course: Innovations and Challenges for Social Research, Current Sociology, 49 (2), 29-45. Mattingly, C.F. (2007). Acted Narratives. From storytelling to emergent dramas. In D.J. Clandinin (Ed.), Handbook of Narrative Inquiry (pp. 405-425). London: Sage. Perrig-Chiello, P., & Perren, S. (2005). Biographical Transitions from a Midlife Perspective. Journal of Adult Development, 12, 4, 169-181. Ragin, C. C. (2008). Redesigning Social Inquiry: fuzzy sets and beyond. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rönka, A., Oravala, S., & Pulkkinen, L. (2003). Turning Points in Adults’ Lives: The Effects of Gender and the Amount of Choice. Journal of Adult Development, 10, 3, 203-215. Stromquist, N. P. (2006). Gender, education and the possibility of transformative knowledge. Compare, 36 (2), 145–162. Tedder, M., & Biesta, G. (2007). Agency and learning in the life course. Towards an ecological perspective. Studies on Education of Adults, 39 (2), 139-149. Tedder, M., & Biesta, G. (2009). Biography, transitions and learning in the life course. In J.Field, J.Gallacher, & R.Ingram (Eds.), Researching transitions in lifelong learning (pp.76-90). London: Routledge.
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