“…Other studies highlight the difficulties of researching educational influences and ways of trying to address them. Bennet, for example, engaged people in systematic ‘retrospective biographical reflection’ (, p. 173) on education, investigating how primary and secondary school influenced attitudes towards lifelong learning: as with this research, he found people more positive about their experience than had been expected. Withnall () adopted a life‐course perspective in exploring influences on later life learning, searching for ‘a new insight into how people make sense of their own attitudes to learning and how they have acquired beliefs and values about what education and learning mean in the context of their own lives’ (, p. 30).…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 68%
“…Bennet, for example, argues that:… retrospective autobiographical reflection offers a different kind of perspective on the meaning and benefits of formal education… With the advantage of both hindsight and maturity, and with the ability to apply the ‘test of time’, adults can more easily identify the worth of both key features. (Bennet, , p. 173)…”
While there is a wealth of literature on radical adult ‘popular’ education for change, most of it looks forward and speculates on the educational processes best able to help ‘the oppressed’, ‘excluded’ or ‘disadvantaged’ become critically‐aware ‘subjects’ of social change. Within a critical education framework, recent research looked in the opposite direction, identified adult activists already critically‐aware and worked backwards through their life histories to find the educational experiences seen as most influential in their development. Examining questionnaire responses, this article analyses how members of the Scottish Socialist Party perceived the influence exercised by their teachers, from primary to tertiary education, in the development of their beliefs and identity as activists. Comparisons are made with research in ‘active citizenship’. The research suggests there is more potential for radical education within the formal sector than is often believed and teachers contribute to this process in sometimes contradictory ways. The findings feed into debates in the UK and other countries, particularly in Latin America, about where popular educators should direct their energies, within state structures or outside, in social movements.
“…Other studies highlight the difficulties of researching educational influences and ways of trying to address them. Bennet, for example, engaged people in systematic ‘retrospective biographical reflection’ (, p. 173) on education, investigating how primary and secondary school influenced attitudes towards lifelong learning: as with this research, he found people more positive about their experience than had been expected. Withnall () adopted a life‐course perspective in exploring influences on later life learning, searching for ‘a new insight into how people make sense of their own attitudes to learning and how they have acquired beliefs and values about what education and learning mean in the context of their own lives’ (, p. 30).…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 68%
“…Bennet, for example, argues that:… retrospective autobiographical reflection offers a different kind of perspective on the meaning and benefits of formal education… With the advantage of both hindsight and maturity, and with the ability to apply the ‘test of time’, adults can more easily identify the worth of both key features. (Bennet, , p. 173)…”
While there is a wealth of literature on radical adult ‘popular’ education for change, most of it looks forward and speculates on the educational processes best able to help ‘the oppressed’, ‘excluded’ or ‘disadvantaged’ become critically‐aware ‘subjects’ of social change. Within a critical education framework, recent research looked in the opposite direction, identified adult activists already critically‐aware and worked backwards through their life histories to find the educational experiences seen as most influential in their development. Examining questionnaire responses, this article analyses how members of the Scottish Socialist Party perceived the influence exercised by their teachers, from primary to tertiary education, in the development of their beliefs and identity as activists. Comparisons are made with research in ‘active citizenship’. The research suggests there is more potential for radical education within the formal sector than is often believed and teachers contribute to this process in sometimes contradictory ways. The findings feed into debates in the UK and other countries, particularly in Latin America, about where popular educators should direct their energies, within state structures or outside, in social movements.
“…Although theory always reminds us that lifelong learning occurs in a range of experiences and activities inside or outside educational programs (Billett, 2010), this research focuses specifically on the dynamic between lifelong education and high school. Thus, previous studies show the implications of lifelong learning at the secondary education level (e.g., Fincham et al, 1982;Bennett, 1999;Bryce & Withers, 2003;Bryce, 2004;Vosniadou et al, 2021;Öz & Şen, 2021;Coudenys et al, 2022).…”
Section: Lifelong Learning and High Schoolmentioning
“…Interviews with tutors and participant observation were also undertaken. Although there are some reliability and validity problems associated with retrospective interviewing (Bennett, 1999;Cieslik, 2003b), these techniques have successfully been used in recent research (MacDonald & Marsh, 2001). The interviewees ages ranged from 30 to 70 years, four were male and six were female, and all bar one had worked in unskilled and semi-skilled employment, some having recently retired.…”
This paper reports on the findings of a small qualitative research project that examined the experiences of a group of adult learners attending a basic skills programme in the English Midlands during the late 1990s. It explores patterns of participation on such programmes and illustrates that early life course experiences can shape changing dispositions towards learning and forms of (dis)engagement from formal provision. The concept of reflexivity is used to help describe the differing contributions that structural and agential processes make to this patterning of engagement with learning. Such an approach is posited as a development of the concepts of learning identity and learning career that have recently been used to understand participation in education.
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