Using Biographical and Life History Approaches in the Study of Adult and Lifelong Learning: European Perspectives: (2 European Studies in Lifelong Learning and Adult Learning Research)

This book illuminates the rich and creative uses of biographical and life history approaches in studying adult and lifelong learning, in diverse ways and settings, across many European countries. It draws on the work of internationally known scholars - under the auspices of the European Society for Research on the Education of Adults (ESREA) - and encompasses learning in the workplace, in families, communities, schools, colleges and universities, as well as in the professions, and in managing processes of migration and building new social movements. The reader will discover, in these pages, a compelling chronicle of the interplay of learning across people's lives - formal, informal and intimate - and how to make sense of this, using interdisciplinary perspectives. The book will speak to researchers - new and experienced - and educators and other professionals wanting to extend their understanding of learners and learning as well as the potential of this 'family' of research methods.

Table of Contents:
Contents: Linden West/Peter Alheit/Anders Siig Andersen/Barbara Merrill: Introduction: Why this Book, and Why Now? - Linden West/Barbara Merrill/Peter Alheit/Agnieszka Bron/Anders Siig Anderson/Edmee Ollagnier: Biographical Approaches and their Development in National Contexts - Peter Alheit/Bettina Dausien: Lifelong Learning and Biography: A Competitive Dynamic Between the Macro- and the Micro Level of Education - Barbara Merrill: Recovering Class and the Collective in the Stories of Adult Learners - Kirsten Weber: Gender, between the Knowledge Economy and Every Day Life - Edmee Ollagnier: Challenging gender with life history - Henning Salling Olesen: Professional Identities, Subjectivity, and Learning: Be(com)ing a General Practitioner - Anders Siig Andersen/Rebecca Savery Trojaborg: Life History and Learning in Working Life - Nod Miller: Developing an auto/biographical imagination - Marianne Horsdal: Therapy and narratives of self - Agnieszka Bron: Learning, Language and Transition - Linden West: An Auto/biographical Imagination: The Radical Challenge of Families and their Learning - Pierre Dominice: Educational Biography as a Reflective Approach to the Training of Adult Educators - Tom Schuller/John Preston/Cathie Hammond: Mixing Methods to Measure Learning Benefits - Linden West/Barbara Merrill/Anders Siig Andersen/Kirsten Weber/Henning Salling Olesen: Biographical and Life History Approaches: Commonalities and Differences in the Study of Adult and Lifelong Learning.

About the Author :
The Editors: Linden West is Reader in Education in the Department of Educational Research at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK and Co-Director of the Centre for International Studies of Diversity and Participation. He co-ordinates the Biographical and Life History Research Network of ESREA and is a member of the Society's Steering Committee. He is presently working on families and their learning, using auto/biographical perspectives. He is also a qualified psychoanalytic psychotherapist. Peter Alheit, Ph.D. in Philosophy of Religion and Ph.D. in Sociology, is currently Professor of General Education at Goettingen University, Germany and one of the initiators of biographical research in German sociology and education as well as co-founder of the ESREA Life History and Biography Research Network. Anders Siig Andersen is Associate Professor at the Department of Educational Studies, Roskilde University, Denmark. He teaches in The Graduate School in Lifelong Learning. His main research interests are the interplay between the work place as a learning environment and learning in life history, educational reforms in adult education and qualitative methodology. Barbara Merrill is a Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Lifelong Learning at the University of Warwick, UK. Her research interests are access and experiences of adult students; gender, class and adult education; learning careers and identities; citizenship and community-based learning and biographical methods. She co-ordinates the ESREA Access, Learning Careers and Identities Network and is a member of the ESREA Steering Committee.

Review :
Overall the book provides good examples of a range of different ways that biographical and life history approaches can be used and should therefore be of interest to readers from a variety of backgrounds. (Elisabet Weedon, Studies in the Education of Adults)