In this paper, we report on a participatory oral history study documenting the lives of late-diagnosed autistic adults in Australia. We interviewed 26 autistic adults about their life history and the impact of late diagnosis. All were diagnosed after the age of 35, growing up in an era when autism was not well known. Using reflexive thematic…

This article examines the life stories of adults in Israel who were defined as 'at-risk children' in their childhood and removed from their homes by court order to therapeutic boarding schools against the backdrop of 'inadequate parenting,' 'neglect,' and/or 'abuse.' The findings reveal how graduates experienced their forced removal from the…

This study examines the impact made by music education on a sample of Catalan citizens who studied this subject during their compulsory schooling. A biographical narrative methodology was used to investigate a broad spectrum of the participants' school musical experiences and to analyze the impact that music education has had on different aspects…

Background: Historically, the emotional lives and mental health needs of adults with learning disabilities received scant attention, especially when the policy of institutionalisation was at its zenith in the UK. Materials and Methods: This case study employed biographical narrative interviews based on a psychosocial approach. The main sources of…

This article presents the research results from a study that was conducted on Spanish youths aged 25-29 years who are neither in employment nor education and training (NEET). Their characteristics were analysed as well as the differential aspects in relation to people who are in employment, education or training. A typology of NEETs was also…

The study aimed at unfolding the personal creative characteristics of an educator in the field of gifted education, and examining creativity as expressed in childhood and its transformation into adulthood creative approach and outcomes. The study focused on Dr. Erika Landau, the pioneer of gifted education in Israel, an internationally renowned…

Career adaptability is mediated by personality factors and socio-psychological processes, with learning playing an important role. Using a five-fold career adapt-abilities competency framework (defined here as control, curiosity, commitment, confidence and concern), which was developed from the international quantitative study that is the focus of…

This report analyses how learning supports labour market transitions and career changes of adult workers across five countries (Denmark, Germany, Spain, France and Italy). To make the most of career and labour market opportunities, individuals have to rely on their own resources and their agency but also know how to navigate the institutional…

To address the question of musical identity, the research the author mainly draws on takes the form of qualitative, in-depth interviews with people about how music fits into their everyday lives and musical biographies. In this the author adopts a largely biographical and social constructionist perspective, asking people to reflect on important…

The paper presents the results of a qualitative study into the lives of people with inadequate functional literacy skills. The data were collected through a biographical interview with a respondent whose characteristics correspond to those of a hypothetical person likely to exhibit signs of low functional literacy. The characteristics, such as…

This article reports on a study that analysed life history accounts of language learning. The key aim of the study was to understand how the experience of language learning was discursively constructed through recourse to particular cultural worlds and narrative strategies. The study contributes to the growing field of research using language…

In this article, the author discusses how narratives, which are part of the common currency of the day, have dramatically changed over the years. Grand narratives, which grew exponentially in the mid-nineteenth century, have now been replaced by two different narratives: life narratives and small-scale narratives. He also discusses how small…

This article uses the metaphor of game in examining how 26 successful Finnish scientists defined and depicted their creative processes. Life-story interviews were analyzed in terms of various stages and characteristics of creative processes suggesting a collage-like dialogue that creates multiple layers of meanings to illustrate the creativity…

"Lifelong learning" is the latest educational mantra. Yet little is understood about the ways in which learning and living are interconnected. To find out more about the complexities of learning in the life course, Professor Gert Biesta, of the University of Exeter, is leading a team of researchers from four universities in the first…

This study uses national data from the 1996 Life History and Social Change in Contemporary China survey (N= 3,087) to gauge the effect of the economic transition on parent-adult child coresidence in urban China. Previous studies find that, thanks to state actions, traditional patterns in co-residence persisted in post-Mao urban China. This study…