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A New Conceptualisation of Adult Participation in Education
Author(s) -
Blair Amy,
McPake Joanna,
Munn Pamela
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
british educational research journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.171
H-Index - 89
eISSN - 1469-3518
pISSN - 0141-1926
DOI - 10.1080/0141192950210506
Subject(s) - context (archaeology) , adult education , process (computing) , pedagogy , qualitative research , sociology , public relations , engineering ethics , psychology , political science , social science , computer science , engineering , paleontology , biology , operating system
This paper presents a new conceptualisation of adults' process of return to formal education, arising from an in‐depth qualitative study of 50 Scottish adult returners to various institutional settings. The new way of thinking developed because existing explanations proved ill‐equipped to reflect the complex and diverse data gathered in interview about adults' reasons for returning to education. The paper begins by describing the context of the study, the study itself and the questions it raises about participation issues. It goes on to consider three conceptualisations of participation that may be found in the literature, the main barriers to participation and the challenges presented to them by data from the research. The new conceptualisation is then introduced and discussed further with reference to relevant data. The paper closes with some issues prompted by this idea for institutions and policy‐makers in adult education.