Beyond Fragments: Adults, Motivation And Higher Education / Edition 1

by Linden West

Overview

Adults now constitute the majority of students in higher education; what they bring to it, want and need are important questions in the development of a more responsive higher education. The author discusses The Relationship Between Motives, Education, And Life History To Explore how culture and history shape people and their motives for learning, taking into account variations in gender, social background and ethnicity, challenging the orthodox view that non-traditional students enter higher educational for vocational/material reasons.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780748404858
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/19/1996
Series:	Culture and Society Series
Pages:	250
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Thinking of Fragments; Chapter 2 Self, Method and Imaginative Empathy; Chapter 3 On Becoming a Solicitor; Chapter 4 Telling Stories; Chapter 5 Men Talking on the Medway; Chapter 6 Men Talking; Chapter 7 Part ners in Change; Chapter 8 Women in Professional and Personal Fragments; Chapter 9 Border Country; Chapter 10 East and West; Chapter 11 Red Pens and Relationships; Chapter 12 Beyond Fragments?;

Editorial Reviews

Develops a cultural psychology of adult learning incorporating object relations and sociological, cultural, and feminist theory, drawing on in-depth biographical research with individual adult students in higher education from various backgrounds. Students' stories and their experiences of oppressive conditions and negative cultural scripting demonstrate the importance of higher education as a space in which to experiment with the creation of new identities. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Booknews

'... [a] thorough and revealing study of adult students in higher education. West's study is worth singling out because, apart from its other virtues, it makes us stop and think about some of the ways in which people cateogorise learning and actively tackle it within the context of their daily lives, challenging us to look again at our interpretation of survey and other data ... Linden West's vivid and moving portrait of learner identities...' - Professor John Field, University of Warwick, for Adults' Learning

From the Publisher