Beth Crossan

Understanding Participation in Learning for Non-traditional Adult Learners: Learning careers and the construction of learning identities

Concepts of learner identities and learning careers have recently acquired popularity as ways of analysing participation in learning among young adults. This paper presents a conceptual challenge to unilinear approaches to the concept of learning careers. It draws on empirical data gathered during a study of new entrants to Scottish further education colleges, and illustrates the analysis through two biographical studies. It argues that learner identities can be fragile, contingent and vulnerable to external changes, and indeed can incorporate elements of hostility to education, as well as a degree of denial of responsibility even on the part of enthusiastic learners.

Learning careers and the social space: exploring the fragile identities of adult returners in the new further education

This paper examines the concept of ‘learning careers’ as a way of understanding the processes through which adults return to education. It particularly considers the ways in which adults from groups who are at risk of social exclusion develop identities that enable them to engage with learning. The concept of learning careers is derived from symbolic interactionist theory, with its origins in the work of the Chicago School. To illuminate the concept of learning career, the paper presents qualitative data produced in a research study set in Scotland in which the processes that underpinned participation and non-participation in further education (FE) colleges were explored. FE colleges constitute spaces that occupy a specific location in relation to the social milieux inhabited by many working-class adults, so that engaging in learning involves a degree of socio-cultural boundary-crossing. The paper draws on theories of the social space that derive ultimately from attempts to operationalize Bourdieus concept of ‘habitus’. Bourdieu used this term to denote systems of durable, transposable dispositions, internalized subjectively by actors as a consequence of their objective positions within the social space, which in turn constituted the underlying principle of generation and structuring of practices and representations. In Bourdieus own words: ‘To speak of habitus is to assert that the individual, and even the personal, the subjective, is social, collective. Habitus is socialized subjectivity’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 126). We also draw on the concept of status passages, including personal factors and social relationships, as well as institutional responses to the needs of non-traditional adult learners in the formation of learning careers and the patterns that these careers assume. We also argue that learning identities should be seen as fluid or even fragile, rather than fixed and unidirectional.

Expanding Our Understanding of the Learning Cultures in Community-Based Further Education.

This paper presents arguments for distinctive features of the learning cultures present within community‐based further education. It draws on an analysis of qualitative data generated through interviews with staff and learners in two community learning centres (CLCs) attached to two of Scotlands Further Education (FE) colleges. The following features are identified: the permeable boundaries of CLCs; the complex roles of teaching staff and the ‘horizontality’ of the relationships with learners; the centrality of the role played by non‐teaching staff; the tensions created by balancing formality and informality associated with the impact of the wider field of FE; and the extent to which CLCs can be come a comfort zone for learners, and make transition difficult. In the analysis of these empirical observations the concept of ‘learning relationships’ has been influential. We have also drawn on Bourdieus concepts of ‘habitus’, and ‘field’, in understanding the dispositions and practices of the staff and learners.

Learning relationships in community‐based further education

This article offers a new perspective on pedagogy and learning culture by emphasizing the key role played by learning relationships. The first part of the paper describes the theoretical background in the work of Bordieu, and Lave & Wenger, and considers how, through the role of identity, individual relationships reflect the influence of community. The article then looks more closely at learning relationships in the empirical setting of community‐based further education, explored through the methodology of interpretative phenomenological analysis. The discussion considers the generality of the concept of learning relationships, adopts a tentative typology, and argues that adopting this perspective encourages an approach to pedagogy based on the development of a learner’s identity, mediated through the influence of others, in a variety of roles.