The present paper investigates the narratives of learning trajectories given by an under-represented and thus vulnerable group within higher education (HE) -  the non-traditional students. This group is operationalised in the Czech educational context as adult learners who enter HE at least 26 years old and had a break in their formal educational trajectory between upper-secondary graduation and university (Novotný et al., 2019). These learners come to university from adult life anchored in work, family, relationships and previous education. These experiences have shaped their learner identity and approach to current learning in higher educational settings. The aggregate of these experiences can be seen as a learning trajectory. Previous studies show (Gorard et al. 1997, 1998; Gorard & Rees, 2002) that characteristics set very early (gender, age, family) essentially predict later-life learning trajectories (see also Kerka, 2003) and conclude that efforts to increase participation of adults in education won't help those who don't see themselves as learners.

 To study the relationship between learner identity and learning trajectories, the present paper uses the biographical approach. Through life stories and narratives, we can explore the significance and intersections of informal and formal learning (Hodkinson & Macleod, 2010). Formal learning is in the narratives represented by the university environment but also previous levels of education, and informal learning is incorporated in experiences when the adults learned something through their life. Biographical methods have been used most extensively in Europe (compared to less extensive use, e.g. in North America; Gouthro, 2014) and have become recognised as a valuable methodological approach to research adult learners' learning trajectories and identities life-wide experiences. Using the biographical learning dimension makes it possible to determine how adult learning is structured over time and how higher-order structures are created through various temporal aspects (e.g. social or institutional time, present, past, experience and meaning; see Alheit, 2018).  In this way, we can trace learning experiences over a more extended time and consider the influence of the broader social, political, economic, and cultural factors and reflections from the learners regarding their own experience (Crossan et al., 2003). This paper thus raises the following research questions:  How has the specific educational and historical context impacted the biographical learning trajectories of non-traditional students in the Czech higher education? What is the role of biographical learning in shaping learner identity in this specific context?

Within the conceptual framework, the study works with several sensitising concepts. First of them is the concept of biographical learning, which is understood as the "study of the relationships that exist between learning and biography, the influence of biography on learning processes and practices, and biography as a mode of learning" (Tedder and Biesta 2007, p. 3). Following Goodson et al. (2010), biographical learning is operationalised as how a person works and reworks their biography through storytelling.

Furthermore, the biographical learning perspective is compatible with other theories on learning trajectories. According to the framework of theories of practice, learning trajectories incorporate both past and future into the meaning of the present and are connected to identities (Wenger, 1998). Within this lifelong learning perspective, Gorard and Rees (2002) define learning trajectory as the aggregate of an individual's learning experiences across the life span. Finally, the societal and historical context in which these trajectories occur is operationalised as structure, and it can be contrasted in data with the concept of agency (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Giddens, 1984). The aim of the paper is to explore how  learner identity is built within a given biography, how it is shaped by biographical learning and by the structure - historical and societal context of the life story.

To conduct interviews, the narrative approach was chosen because it captures the complexity of the individual-centered perspective (Webster & Mertova, 2007). Moreover, according to Gough (1997), the study of narratives is a suitable way to approach several theoretical and practical problems in education. The final corpus of data material comprises 29 narratives of the non-traditional students studying for education degrees in Czech universities. It was collected in 2019 through biographical narrative interviews, starting with the following initial narrative question (inspired by Lieblich et al, 1998; Rosenthal, 2004): "Imagine you had to write a book about your educational trajectory, what story would it be"? Such a broad assignment aimed to achieve the narrative nature of the interview, to stimulate the respondents to shape the story independently and decide what they see as important in their story and not the interviewer (Flick, 1998). The interviews lasted from one to two hours and consisted of three phases (Wengraf, 2001): Period of main narration, Internal narrative questions, External narrative questions. A biographical account or a life story is a story told in the present about experiences of events in the past and expectations for the future (Nilsen 1997). The interviews were listened to more times during the analysis to capture the exact meaning of the story. The narrative analysis itself started with word by word and line by line coding and hypotheses about the narration's future flow inspired by the future-blind method (Wengraf, 2004). Narrative analysis is an analytical method that accommodates a variety of approaches through which social researchers explore how people story their lives (Esin et al. 2014). The narratologists characterise stories in terms of the transformation (change over time) of characters and actions. In the methodological framework, this paper combines this structuralist approach to narrative analysis with the sociological dimension to study both the story structure and the broader societal context reflected in the narratives.

Previous research described the structure of individuals’ stories and has investigated that people don't tell stories as a linear progression of events but move backwards and forwards between different times, experiences and spaces (Merrill & West, 2009). This paper tried to bring more light to the purpose of these narrative movements. In this study, adult learners were current university students. Still, their narratives represented both the present (their actual higher educational experience) and also the past – what they have lived in terms of (post) communist historical circumstances, life experiences, learning environments and education institutions, some of those even non-existent nowadays. The emerging results of this study point also to a bidirectional influence between individual biography and social settings. Historical time and space have given meaning in anchoring both the lived (e.g. when the only memory of educational setting is the space where it was situated) and unlived (e.g. study aspirations that could not become true because of the communist regime) into the biographical story.

Alheit, P. (2018). Biographical learning–within the lifelong learning discourse. In Contemporary theories of learning (pp. 153-165). Routledge. Burke, C. T. (2014). Biographical narrative interview method: Tracing graduates' futures. Sage. Crossan, B., Field, J., Gallagher, J., Merrill, B. (2003). Understanding participation in learning for non-traditional adult learners: Learning careers and the construction of learning identities. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 24(1), 55–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/01425690301907 Goodson, I. F., Biesta, G., Tedder, M., & Adair, N. (2010). Narrative learning. Routledge. Gorard, S., Rees, G., Fevre, R., & Furlong, J. (1998). Learning trajectories: travelling towards a learning society?. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 17(6), 400-410. Gorard, S., & Rees, G. (2002). Creating a learning society?: Learning careers and policies for lifelong learning. Policy Press. Gouthro, P. (2014). Stories of learning across the lifespan: Life history and biographical research in adult education. Journal of Adult and Continuing Education, 20(1), 87-103. https://doi.org/10.7227/JACE.20.1.6 Hodkinson, P., & Macleod, F. (2010). Contrasting concepts of learning and contrasting research methodologies: affinities and bias. British Educational Research Journal, 36(2), 173-189. https://doi.org/10.1080/01411920902780964 Lieblich, A., Tuval-Mashiach, R., & Zilber, T. (1998). Applied social research methods, Vol. 47. Narrative research: Reading, analysis, and interpretation. Sage. Merrill, B., & West, L. (2009). Using biographical methods in social research. Sage. Novotný, P., Brücknerová, K., Juhaňák, L., & Rozvadská, K. (2019). Driven to be a non-traditional student: Measurement of the academic motivation scale with adult learners after their transition to university. Studia paedagogica, 24(2), 109-135. https://doi.org/10.5817/SP2019-2-5 Rosenthal, G. (2004). Biographical research. In C. Seale, Gobo, G., Gubrium, J.F., & Silverman, D. (Eds), Qualitative Research Practice (pp. 48-64). Sage. Tedder, M., & Biesta, G. (2007, March). Learning from life and learning for life: Exploring the opportunities for biographical learning in the lives of adults. In ESREA Conference on Life History and Biography, Roskilde University, Denmark (pp. 1-4).