Narratives of fundamentalism, negative capability and the democratic imperative

Alan Bainbridge and Linden West offer a theoretical discussion of (mainly) contemporary British society with particular reference to Stoke-on-Trent, the home of the Workers’ Education Association and a city still struggling to adjust following the decline of the pottery industry. They posit the growth of fundamentalism as a search for certainties and propose that Keats’ notion of negative capability (the ability to accept uncertainty) may offer an alternative len

Using Biographical Research (or is it Auto/Biography?) to Illuminate Adult and Lifelong Learning: Contested and Illuminating Space

This paper illustrates ‘the turn’ to biographical approaches in the study of adult learning and considers some contested issues in this ‘family’ of approaches. Especial attention is paid to issues of subjectivity and objectivity and the role of the researcher in shaping the subject (s) of her enquiry. However, the paper concludes by suggesting that, whatever the differences, such approaches offer unique and more holistic insights into the complexities of learning, lifewide and lifelong

A Gendered Edge: Auto/biographical Research into Doctors and Lifelong Learning in the Inner-city

This paper considers lifelong learning among a group of doctors within the male medical profession. It explores their struggle to be effective and reflective practitioners, in a world where subjective knowledge and cultural understanding are often derided, and yet success may depend on the integration of medical with cultural and emotional literacy

"Adults participating in learning"

This thesis explores the theme of adults participating in learning with reference to social groups who are largely absent from adult education. This is done by refining four propositions through a literature review and some case studies. The first proposition is based on the idea that participation should be understood within the context of a person or group's general pattern of social participation while the second relates the development of learning to an individual or group's belief that control over significant events is possible. The third proposition focuses on the content of learning and that this should consist of reflection and action on social constraints to personal wellbeing. The final proposition examines the suggestion that learning is enriched when participants control what is done. These ideas have been neglected in the literature although there is evidence that participation in learning is best analysed as an element within social class relationships. The case studies involve in-depth interviews with working class participants in four projects. These interviews indicate that learning should be understood in highly personal as well as institutional and relational terms. It is suggested that a theory of participation in learning needs to incorporate personal and socio-psychological perspectives as well as sociological. Equally it is not easy to develop an alternative approach to sustained learning from thinking about, and acting on, social constraints alone. Participant control is difficult to establish since people need confidence and personal legitimacy as well as skills and knowledge before learning can become more 'dialogical'. Nonetheless it is concluded that the forms of participation which maximise the potential for learning should be democratic in nature. The thesis ends by discussing some practical implications. These include approaches to social organisation and curriculum development. Difficult questions are raised about values underlying the organisation of adult learning which cannot be avoided in research

Towards an Understanding of What it Might Mean to Research Spiritually

This paper reports on a two-year funded seminar series in the UK. This highlighted two distinct ‘locations’ of spirituality and the need to recognise different ‘ways of knowing’ when working in this field. It also raised questions about what it might mean to research spiritually

Connecting Bourdieu, Winnicott, and Honneth: Understanding the experiences of non-traditional learners through an interdisciplinary lens

This paper connects Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, dispositions and capital with a psychosocial analysis of how Winnicott’s psychoanalysis and Honneth’s recognition theory can be of importance in understanding how and why non-traditional students remain in higher education. Understanding power relations in an interdisciplinary way makes connections – by highlighting intersubjectivity – between external social structures and subjective experiences in a biographical study of how non-traditional learner identities may be transformed through higher education in England and the Republic of Ireland

A history of biographical research in the United Kingdom

Biograpahical researchers in the United Kingdom have been influenced by symbolic interactionism, feminism, oral history, critical sociology, psychoanalysis and what we term an auto/biographical imagination. The latter involves reflexively situating the researcher and her influence, via power, unconscious processes and writing, into the text and by acknowledgeing the co-construction of stories. The focus of much research has been on marginalised peoples, as part of a democratising project to bring more diverse voices and stories into the historical or contemporary social record. It is important to avoid too rigid a distinction between mainland Europe and developments in Britain. Collaboration and dialogue have been extensive, across various research networks, including in the European Society for Research in the Education of Adults (ESREA)

Exploring HE retention and drop-out - a European biographical research approach

This symposium is based on the developing work of the research project ‘Access and Retention: Experiences of Non-Traditional Learners in HE’, funded by the European Commission Lifelong Learning Programme under Key Activity 1 “Policy Co-operation and Innovation” of the Transversal programme. (Project number: 135230-LLP-1-2007-1-UK-KA1-KA1SCR). The project has eight partners from seven different countries: England, Germany, Ireland, Poland, Scotland, Spain and Sweden and runs from 2008 to 2010. The overall aim of the project is to examine issues of access, retention and non-completion in relation to ‘non-traditional’ undergraduate students (young people and adults across a wide age range) in higher education on a comparative European basis

Neural correlates of enhanced visual short-term memory for angry faces: An fMRI study

Copyright: © 2008 Jackson et al.Background: Fluid and effective social communication requires that both face identity and emotional expression information are encoded and maintained in visual short-term memory (VSTM) to enable a coherent, ongoing picture of the world and its players. This appears to be of particular evolutionary importance when confronted with potentially threatening displays of emotion - previous research has shown better VSTM for angry versus happy or neutral face identities.Methodology/Principal Findings: Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, here we investigated the neural correlates of this angry face benefit in VSTM. Participants were shown between one and four to-be-remembered angry, happy, or neutral faces, and after a short retention delay they stated whether a single probe face had been present or not in the previous display. All faces in any one display expressed the same emotion, and the task required memory for face identity. We find enhanced VSTM for angry face identities and describe the right hemisphere brain network underpinning this effect, which involves the globus pallidus, superior temporal sulcus, and frontal lobe. Increased activity in the globus pallidus was significantly correlated with the angry benefit in VSTM. Areas modulated by emotion were distinct from those modulated by memory load.Conclusions/Significance: Our results provide evidence for a key role of the basal ganglia as an interface between emotion and cognition, supported by a frontal, temporal, and occipital network.The authors were supported by a Wellcome Trust grant (grant number 077185/Z/05/Z) and by BBSRC (UK) grant BBS/B/16178

Life events and hemodynamic stress reactivity in the middle-aged and elderly

Recent versions of the reactivity hypothesis, which consider it to be the product of stress exposure and exaggerated haemodynamic reactions to stress that confers cardiovascular disease risk, assume that reactivity is independent of the experience of stressful life events. This assumption was tested in two substantial cohorts, one middle-aged and one elderly. Participants had to indicate from a list of major stressful life events up to six they had experienced in the previous two years. They were also asked to rate how disruptive and stressful they were, at the time of occurrence and now. Blood pressure and pulse rate were measured at rest and in response to acute mental stress. Those who rated the events as highly disruptive at the time of exposure and currently exhibited blunted systolic blood pressure reactions to acute stress. The present results suggest that acute stress reactivity may not be independent of stressful life events experience