Transcript Diapositiva 1

Higher Education and Lifelong learning
A research on “non traditional” students
at University
Andrea Galimberti - PhD
[email protected]
Knowledge as a “grey capital”
Since 90es the political agendas of the main western
international organizations (EU, UN, OECD) have been
enlighting the lifelong learning as a key factor for the
development of a more productive and efficient
workforce and social cohesion. So “effort and resources
are being devoted to promoting the idea of lifelong
learning as a solution to society's current ills”
(Field, 2006 :1)
“(…) For those who are excluded from this process,
however, or who chose not to participate, the
generalisation of lifelong learning may only have the
effect of increasing their isolation from the world of
'knowledge-rich'.”
(OECD, 1997 quoted in Field, 2006)
University
Third task
Lifelong learning programs
Research
Life skills
Community services
Teaching
Population
élite niches
Mass higher
education (Trow
1999)
Lifelong?
Non traditional students in HE
Students under-represented, and whose participation
in higher education is constrained by structural
factors.
• students whose family had not been to university
before,
• students from low-income families,
• mature students
• students with disabilities
These students are considered at risk in terms of
access, retention, active participation, academic
success and social integration.
http://www.ranlhe.dsw.edu.pl/documents.html
“This interest in integration led us in turn to explore
what promotes or limits the construction of a
learner identity among non-traditional adult
students. Such an identity is itself part of the
integration process which enables people to
become effective learners and which promotes or
inhibits completion of HE.”
(Field, Merril & West 2011 p. 2)
Research design
1. Auto/biographical workshops (50 students)
2. Co-operative inquiry (6 researcher-students)
1. Auto/biographical workshops
The workshops,
articulated in three
meetings (three hours
each), promoted writing
and sharing, in small
groups.
Purposes
- give voice to individual learning stories within the
university;
- highlight differences and connections between the
participants' experiences;
- develop meaning and understanding through
dialogue;
- foster reflexive processes, and possibly deliberate
actions.
The workshop activities were structured in order to
allow an exploration of students’ experiences from new
perspectives. The dimension of “new” was gained
through proposals based on cognitive displacement
(Munari & Fabbri 2005), aestethical experiences and
group debates.
All the autobiographical activities were meant to trigger
sensemaking processes.
“Explicit efforts at sensemaking tend to occur when
the current state of the world is perceived to be
different from the expected state of the world, or
when there is no obvious way to engage the world”
(Weick et al. 2005: 409)
Learning
 “Side effect”: possibility emerging from the
workshop constraints
 Learning biography (Dominicèé 2000):
reflective thinking and transversal competences
(learning to learn)
“Transformative learning refers to the process by
which we transform our taken-for-granted frames
of reference (meaning perpectives, habits of mind
mind-sets) to make them more inclusive,
discriminating, open, capable of change, and
reflective so that they may generate beliefs and
opinions that will prove more true or justified to
guide action (…) (Mezirow 2000)
2. Co-operative inquiry
(Heron & Reason 1997, 2008)
• Research is conducted with people rather than on
people: a group of researchers come together to
explore an agreed area of activity.
• All the subjects are fully involved as co-researchers
in all research decisions
• The co-researchers engage themselves in the actions
they have agreed
• When had I the feeling that university was eager to
meet me?
• When did I feel that university was a place useful for
me (a place where I can play)?
• When did the university allow me to dream?
• When did I feel recognized as an adult, with his/her
own proper learning interest?
Conceptual framework to analyze stories
about students and university in relation
Sensitising concepts structured in couples.
The two terms are considered complementary, not
opposites (Keeney, 1983).
Two polarities of a continuum in order to create“open
concepts” (Morin 1980): concepts able to connect
ideas and open semantic spaces, not intended to
define discrete qualities.
Mapping students’ experience
 Structure/agency;
 Real/imagined social capital;
 Self/mutual recognition.
New call for tenders with a little surprise: the
coordinator must have a degree in educational
sciences. The fever to level the diploma of the
school for educators and the degree explodes.
Will that be enough? Not any answer from whom in
charge.
You can’t always risk, therefore I’ll enroll at the
Bicocca university and will graduate by the end of
the next mandate
It’s unbelievable, that’s what I needed to justify a
desire. It was necessary that it was a duty, history
repeats itself, if it’s only for pleasure it has no
validity.
Because it is not valid to say “I like too much
studying, I want to enroll at the university because I
would be happy”. Not after wasting mommy and
dad’s money some more than 10 years ago, when I
left literature, not after failing.
University as a political and symbolic
space
“Political” (Arendt 1958)
 Action, to the extent that it requires appearing in
public, making oneself known through words
and deeds can only exist in a context defined by
plurality. Human plurality has the twofold
character of equality and distinction
 Such public space of appearance can be always
recreated anew wherever individuals gather
together politically
Symbolic space
 “I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming,
the house protects the dreamer, the house allows
one to dream in peace.” (Bachelard, 1957: 44)
 Renegotiation of aspects of self in relationship
to others and the cultural world of the university.
(Transitional Space – West, 1996)
In my experience the university is a sort of cinema
that is willing to offer a kind of movie but this thing
it doesn't work. Sometimes this cinema becomes a
theatre and we are invited on the stage as actors:
it's the situation I prefer!(Sara)
Year after year I remained Veronica,“counselor”,
but without a degree. This is an important point in
my personal and professional life. I felt not up to
others. Before going to the university I couln't see
my skills, even if other people aknowledged them.
(Veronica)
It’s time to restart, looking for something new, time
to confirm and disconfirm what I’ve inside me, my
past. I’m still from so many years...I help others to
grow up...now it’s time to take back my space for
growing up. I’m sure that this experience will be a
renovation for me; I’m thirsty and I’m no more able
to give water to others, I’m looking for my spring.
(Silvia)
A space for critic, for imagination, for reverie that
sometimes is difficult to find out. A space able to
give meaning, to enlighten the day by day life. It’s
about maintaing an unblurred gaze on the world in
order to not become old in the soul. (Rosanna)
Shelter “fragile”, “at risk”
And if I had start this new experience only
because I was looking for an escape? And if it was
only a way to escape the adult life? (Tiziana)
I don't have the courage to dive in a wide space...I
need my orientation points...the university for
example. And then? What is it going to happen?
What I'll have to invent again? (Giovanna)
Self/mutual recognition
The necessity of being recognized by others in
our identity can produce a series of different
effects.
For example Honneth (1995) is interested in
the struggle for recognition, Ricoeur in the
possibility of gratitude.
• ActualCarla: I would like to say that you enrolled
at university! You can’t believe it right? But you
asked and obtained a time off work, you took a
first level degree and now you’are studying for the
second level degree!
• PastCarla: Are you sure???
• ActualCarla: Yes, and now you don’t work
anymore at the bank! You left that job for
good two years ago
• PastCarla: Beautiful! And all these things
happened in eight years? I can’t believe
that!
“So, Luca, now you are a music-therapist. What are
you going to do in the future?”.
No hesitation in my answer: “I’m going to the
university”.
Imagine my colleague look and her reaction:
“What?!? But you are old!!! Are you going to live
forever with your parents???”
Few weeks ago the same professor was invited
as speaker in a convention held in my company. I
was tempted to speak to him but I felt ashamed.
A sense of failure grew inside me and I hid
behind my colleagues. (Simona)
I'm no more the same person of two years ago. My
husband too says that I'm a different person: I'm
more reflexive and more critical (sometimes too
much!). Even my friends, my relatives, everybody
says that now I'm a better Anna and this fact is a joy
for me.