Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (1827-1891) was an English educationist, artist, philanthropist, and feminist. Her personal correspondence is quite extensive, containing letters exchanged with her family, friends, and acquaintances. The bulk of her epistolary archive though consists of letters sent to her. Instead of viewing this fragmentation and…

This is a study of the process of biographical learning and how it can be observed in narration. There have not yet been empirical studies focused explicitly on the learning aspects of biographical learning, as scholars have focused more on the biographical part of the concept -- more on the question of what is learned than of how it is learned.…

Given that exclusive boarding schools in Germany are repeatedly referred to in public and academic discourses as places of elite education, the question arises as to the consequences of boarding school socialisation and how these schools affect the post-school biographies of their alumni. This qualitative study examines the autobiographies of…

This article develops an agentic approach to activist learning and analyzes the interplay between agency and learning. The agentic approach derives from Alheit's concept of biographical learning and Emirbayer and Mische's concept of agency. The article builds on the case study of an activist's narrative to show that the development of agency is…

Identity transformation from teacher to teacher educator is problematic as an 'expert become novice'. The need for professional development for neophyte teacher educators is accepted. The focus of such professional learning has been on the development of an academic identity and engaging in research; the transition in identity is assumed to…

Previous studies of linguistic "mudes" in minority language contexts, this is, biographical junctures where speakers enact changes in their linguistic repertoire, have contributed to our understanding of how linguistic codes are appropriated across the lifespan using a largely temporal frame of reference. However, our research in Catalan…

Universities represent spaces where language ideologies are taken up, modified, and transformed. The monolingual orientation of most universities contributes to the (re)construction of inequalities between students perceived as "native speakers" and others labelled as "non-natives". Therefore, language ideologies can be a…

This study aims to determine the geographical discourse that occurs in the personal histories of adults aged 75 years and older and how they interpret and use them. We conducted interviews with elderly persons living in Çemisgezek (Chemishkezek), a village established along the Karasu River, a branch of the Euphrates River. Expert opinions were…

In this memoir, I accounted several episodes of my childhood of a middle class family in early 1990s in a Chinese urban city. Two major discourses permeated my account: the nationalism and socialism discourse and the upward social mobility discourse. While my family and I cherish the comfort and joy of everyday life enjoyed in the era of…

Adult Education has many values, including experiences and co-operation among people, and the fact that adult education is full of stories from adult educators, which can help to understand trends in the past and developments in the present. Established in 1991 as part of a more general regional cooperation among five Nordic and three Baltic…

The life narrative is an oral genre grounded in Indigenous tradition and teaching practice. In Canadian Indigenous communities, the expertise and content transmitted by life narratives are a part of their oral heritage. Drawing from their personal and professional experiences in Indigenous school environments, as well as the results from…

We examine the benefits of developing critically reflexive learners through life story performance embedded in a Critical Reflexive Model. Students are invited to work with their life stories in a safe, dialogical space and to deconstruct various forms of power and its influence on their lives. Using a mix of creative and embodied methodologies,…

This paper reports on the findings of research aimed at examining the life stories of teachers who have experienced migration moves between Mexico and the U.S. and are currently engaged in English Language Teaching in Mexico. Drawing from a larger research project into the transnationals' learning trajectories in two Mexican states, the study…

The general aim of this paper is to present some insights into Polish senior immigrants in Sweden. In particular, it seeks to identify and illustrate the important contribution of previous generations of Polish senior immigrants in building on the diverse culture, traditions and values of the Polish community (Polonia) in Sweden. The paper…

The main topic of this article is architectural barriers and infrastructures as identified by university students with disabilities. The data presented is part of a much wider research project, sponsored by Spain's Ministry of Economy and Competition. A biographical-narrative methodology was used for this study. The results presented have been…