Biographical learning "places confidence in the competence of individual learners to handle biographical disruptions caused by late modernity "(Hallqvist, 2014).  This type of learning was closely related to biographical research methods from the very start but is also connected to a particular educational practice of autobiographical storytelling.  The broadest definition claims biographical learning deals with the relationships between biography and learning, biography as a way of learning and the influence of biography on learning (Tedder & Biesta, 2007).  This definition opens up the theoretical view into biographical learning but does not help operationalise it to capture it precisely in the empirical data.  Therefore, the research gap in biographical learning knowledge is a lack of clear understanding of the internal processes that occur when an individual engages in biographical learning.  Alheit, the author of the biographical learning concept, also pointed out the lack of a systematic theory of biographical learning (Alheit & Dausien, 2002).  According to Alheit, biographical learning is about understanding changes in personal and social identity, as well as bodily identity, as a potential for growth and ownership of one's life story and biographicity (Alheit et al. 1995). The paper aims to present biographical learning as a theoretical and empirical perspective on learning. The leading question for the theoretical analysis of this study was what the role of biography, narrative, and identity is within biographical learning. The empirical analysis of biographical learning was a concrete analysis of non-traditional students' narratives about their biographical experiences to understand their biographical learning in relation to what they learned and how they learned it. 

The study presupposes the process of making sense of biographical experiences can be evidenced through storytelling during the research interview. Data was collected through 29 biographical narrative interviews with adult learners in Czech higher education and analysed through different means of narrative analysis. The narrators had at least 26 years old, had a break in their previous educational trajectory before entering university and were studying for education degrees in different Czech universities. The abductive synthesis of the results enabled the creation of graphic empirical models of the process of biographical learning. This study applied abductive reasoning using biographical data (Bron & Thunborg, 2017) as "abduction is intended to help social research, or rather social researchers, to be able to make new discoveries in a logically and methodologically ordered way" (Reichertz, 2010, p. 4).

The results of the narrative analysis showed biographical, narrative and identity categories, respectively. Biography and identity level correspond to what is learned, whereas narrative level corresponds to how it is learned. It was also discovered that connections between experiences are created in three possible ways through storytelling: biographical learning by analogy, biographical learning by audit, and biographical learning by authority. Learning by analogy takes place when two different events from a biography, distinct in time, are connected by creating an analogy between them in the narration. The narrator was not aware of this link before and they are thus learning something new about their identity. The second type of biographical learning is when the narrators’ experiences are linked to the present day and the direction of link goes from the past experience to the present day. The narrators become aware of the effect in their past and reflect upon it during storytelling. The third type of biographical learning found in the narratives can be observed when the narrator is analysing the past experiences with the current biographical knowledge containing all the experiences that came afterwards. Biographical learning was evidenced by creating meaningful connections between biographical experiences stored in the memory. Moreover, the empirical model determined that identity is the guiding element for the selection, transformation and integration of the experiences. Identity is a condition and outcome of biographical learning. The consequence of the process of biographical learning is the constant construction and reconstruction of one's biography and identity. Understanding these processes more fully can help to shed light on the mechanisms behind biographical learning and how it can be effectively facilitated in various settings.

Alheit, P., & Dausien, B. (2002). The 'double face'of lifelong learning: Two analytical perspectives on a 'silent revolution'. Studies in the Education of Adults, 34(1), 3-22. Alheit, P., Bron-Wojciechowska, A., Brugger, E., & Dominicé, P. (Eds.). (1995). The biographical approach in European adult education. Vienna: Verband Wiener Volksbildung. Bron, A., & Thunborg, C. (2017). Theorising biographical work from non-traditional students' stories in higher education. International Journal of Contemporary Sociology, 54(2), 112-127. Hallqvist, A. (2014). Biographical learning: two decades of research and discussion. Educational Review, 66(4), 497-513. Reichertz, J. (2010). Abduction: The logic of discovery of grounded theory. The SAGE handbook of grounded theory, 214-228.