In today’s society, people and organisations increasingly undergo processes of transition. Experiences of change affect all areas of life: our jobs, relationships, status, communities, engagement in civil society, lifestyles, even understandings of our own identity. Each person must expect and make ready for transitions, engaging in learning as a fundamental strategy for handling change. This is where lifelong learning steps in. From career guidance to third age programmes, from ‘learning to learn’ in kindergarten to MBA, from Mozart for babies to gender re-assignment counselling, people face a crowded world of learning activities designed to help them through transitions. Researching Transitions in Lifelong Learning presents new research from Britain, Australia and North America. The authors include leading scholars with established international reputations - such as Kathryn Ecclestone, Sue Webb, Gert Biesta, W. Norton Grubb, Nicky Solomon and David Boud - as well as emerging researchers with fresh and sometimes challenging perspectives. While emphasising the complexity and variety of people’s experiences of learning transitions, as well as acknowledging the ways in which they are embedded in the specific contexts of everyday life, the authors share a common interest in understanding the lived experiences of change from the learner’s perspective. This volume therefore provides an opportunity to take stock of recent research into transitions, seen in the context of lifelong learning, and outlines important messages for future policy and practice. It will also appeal to researchers worldwide in education and industrial sociology, as well as students on courses in post-compulsory education.

‘Transition’ has numerous everyday and conceptual meanings yet, while certain transitions are unsettling and difficult for some people, risk, challenge and even difficulty might also be important factors in successful transitions for others.

This book guides student researchers through the different stages of small-scale or practitioner research, a common component of study for students training to work in the lifelong learning sector. The authors look at the entire research journey, from planning a research topic and framing research questions, through the process of data collection and analysis, to writing up and presentation. Using a step-by-step approach the book tackles common thorny issues such as: Understanding the different genres of research Discussion of qualitative and quantitative approaches to research The importance of forming research questions and of locating them within current research literature How to do a literature review Dealing with permissions, access and ethics The nuts and bolts of research methods Interpreting data and writing up research findings Together with case studies and examples of real-life research projects that have been completed by the authors’ own students, this book tackles research in a student-friendly and accessible style, carefully unpacking and defining the different terms, concepts and theories that students need to know when beginning research for the first time. This book is essential reading for students who are training to work in the lifelong learning sector or practitioners who are undertaking CPD to maintain their license to practice. “Many teachers training in the lifelong learning sector, as well as those going on to do foundation, honours and masters degrees in education, find the prospect of carrying out educational research for the first time daunting. Thus far, they have been reliant on generic educational research textbooks. Jonathan Tummons’ and Vicky Duckworth’s excellent work now guides them clearly and supportively through the research journey in a way which is underpinned by the authors’ deep understanding of both the sector and nature of the challenge of the research task to the student, using an informal and accessible written style.” Andy Armitage, Head of the Department of Post-Compulsory Education at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK “This book combines sound practical advice with an exploration of the philosophical and methodological concepts underpinning educational research. Often drawing on the authors’ own experiences, it makes a convincing case for the practitioner as researcher and draws clear and appropriate attention to the purposes, uses and dissemination of small scale research.” Susan Wallace, Professor of Continuing Education, Nottingham Trent University, UK

Research into early childhood transitions has become a field in its own right. It is increasingly understood that a positive start in any new setting can influence the child's engagement, sense of belonging, well-being, progression in learning, and agency, and may be dependent on the insight of educators and families, and yet there is no research methodology or research methods book dedicated to this growing field of study. Including 27 chapters written by researchers from the UK, New Zealand, the USA, Sweden, Iceland, Australia and Canada this handbook presents an overview of the field exploring its current debates, reflects on its history, and offers suggestions for the future of the field. This book is an essential reference point for anyone studying or undertaking research into transitions in early childhood.

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The connections and interactions of lifelong learning and social justice are complex and contested. Both are seen as a means to unconditional good, with little account taken of the inequalities and equalities located in constructions of power. This book develops critical ways to engage with international debates about lifelong learning and social justice through a range of competing and contested definitions, setting out some of the complexities and challenges of linking the two concepts. In particular, it engages in debates about the equalities and inequalities of learner identities, displacement and place. Its chapters consider those marginalised in complex and multiple ways, including gender, social class, ethnicity, age and migration. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Lifelong Education.

This title sets out the issues and requirements for mobile learning research and presents recent efforts to specify appropriate theoretical frameworks, research methods and tools. Leading researchers in the field present their experiences and approaches to key aspects of mobile learning research such as data capture and analysis.

"This second edition of the Handbook provides a comprehensive examination of lifelong learning. With 38 chapters (12 new and 23 updated), the approach is interdisciplinary, spanning human resources development, adult learning (educational perspective), psychology, career and vocational learning, management and executive development, cultural anthropology, the humanities, and gerontology. It covers trends that contribute to the need for continuous learning, considers psychological characteristics that relate to the drive to learn and the personal and professional value of learning throughout life, reviews existing theory and research on adult learning, describes training methods and learning technologies for instructional design, and explores current and future challenges to support continuous learning. Chapters examine individual differences in learning motivation, styles of learning, and learning at different stages of adult life. They also account for situational conditions that stimulate, facilitate, or pose barriers to learning"--

Scholarship on adult education has fueled a high level of methodological creativity and innovation in order to tackle a diverse range of issues in a wide range of settings and locations in a critical and participatory manner. Adult education research is marked by the desire to do research differently and to conduct critical research with rather than about people which requires theoretical and methodological creativity. This entails a particular approach to how we seek to know the world in collaboration with people, to rupture hierarchical relations and to create new collaborative spaces of learning and research that encompass the diversity of people’s life experiences. Doing Critical and Creative Research in Adult Education brings together both leading and emerging scholars in adult education research in order to capture the vitality and complexity of contemporary adult education research. This includes contributions on biographical, narrative, embodied, arts and media-based and ethnographic methods alongside the critical use of quantitative and mixed methods. This distinctive and rich methodological contribution has a general relevance and usefulness for all researchers and students in the social science and humanities, which draws attention to the importance of critical and creative participatory learning processes in human life and learning.

This book provides an important compilation and synthesis of current work in transition to school research. The book focuses strongly on the theoretical underpinnings of research in transition to school. It outlines key theoretical positions and connects those to the implications for policy and practice, thereby challenging readers to re-conceptualize their understandings, expectations and perceptions of transition to school. The exploration of this range of theoretical perspectives and the application of these to a wide range of research and research contexts makes this book an important and innovative contribution to the scholarship of transition to school research. A substantial part of the book is devoted to detailed examples of transition to school practice. These chapters provide innovative examples of evidence-based practice and contribute in turn, to practice-based evidence. The book is also devoted to considering policy issues and implications related to the transition to school. It records a genuine, collaborative effort to bring together a range of perspectives into a Transition to School Position Statement that will inform ongoing research, practice and policy. The collaborative, research, policy and practice based development of this position statement represents a world-first.