Adaptive and transformative biographical learning: how do middle-aged women represent their learning lives?

This paper discusses the ways in which women aged 50, from contrasting cultural contexts, narrate their life course, with particular reference to relationships and events that have enabled and constrained their learning and self-development. Their representations reflect complex sets of motivations, beliefs and dispositions towards learning and their own capabilities for taking action to change their situations (Evans & Waite, 2013).The paper investigates how learning can play a crucial role in interpreting and acting biographical Learning (Albeit & Dausien, 2000) and Transformative Learning (Mezirow, 1991) are useful are frameworks to conceptualize the links between life course trajectories and learning lives. Research questions are: How do middle-aged women represent their learning lives? What are their learning trajectories? What is the role (or the impact) of learning in the transformation of their life patterns?