Discourses, Dialogue and Diversity in Biographical Research: An Ecology of Life and Learning

This book explores how narratives are deeply embodied, engaging heart, soul, as well as mind, through varying adult learner perspectives. Biographical research is not an isolated, individual, solipsistic endeavor but shaped by larger ecological interactions - in families, schools, universities, communities, societies, and networks - that can create or destroy hope.

Telling or listening to life stories celebrates complexity, messiness, and the rich potential of learning lives. The narratives in this book highlight the rapid disruption of sustainable ecologies, not only ’natural’, physical, and biological, but also psychological, economic, relational, political, educational, cultural, and ethical. Yet, despite living in a precarious, and often frightening, liquid world, biographical research can both chronicle and illuminate how resources of hope are created in deeper, aesthetically satisfying ways. Biographical research offers insights, and even signposts, to understand and transcend the darker side of the human condition, alongside its inspirations.

Discourses, Dialogue and Diversity in Biographical Research aims to generate insight into people’s fears and anxieties but also their capacity to ’keep on keeping on’ and to challenge forces that would diminish their and all our humanity. It provides a sustainable approach to creating sufficient hope in individuals and communities by showing how building meaningful dialogue, grounded in social justice, can create good enough experiences of togetherness across difference. The book illuminates what amounts to an ecology of life, learning and human flourishing in a sometimes tortured, fractious, fragmented, and fragile world, yet one still offering rich resources of hope.

Alan Bainbridge, DClinSci (2012), is a Senior Lecturer in Education at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK. He has written the monograph Becoming an Education Professional (2015) and co-coordinates the ESREA Life History and Biography Network.

Laura Formenti, PhD (1996), is a Professor in General and Social Pedagogy at Milano Bicocca University, Italy. She is a co-coordinator of the Life History and Biography Network of ESREA and Chair of the Italian Universities Network for Lifelong Learning.

Linden West, PhD (1998), is Professor of Education at Canterbury Christ Church University. He was co-coordinator of the ESREA Life History and Biography Network, author of diverse publications and, with Laura, winner of the Cyril O. Houle prize for outstanding literature in adult education.