Constructing narratives of continuity and change - Canterbury Christ ...

understanding of the people involved, as the story is reduced to simple ideas. We
need to develop views and actions, in education, that are able to celebrate human
complexity. Stories have this power, but we also need a good process to achieve
this.
Autobiographic work (i.e., not only the telling itself, but the whole disposal
of research) shapes our minds in a very interesting way. It can become, under
certain conditions, an experience of transformation. This word can help us to
become reflexive about our own ideas about change and learning: words have
cultural and historical connotations. In our historical circumstances, such words
as “change” and “learning” do not (always) celebrate human dignity and selfrespect,
or reciprocal respect. In the 1940s, Bateson claimed the need for models
of communication that sustain the reciprocal respect of cultures, of human
differences. We are ready, by now, for a (new) model of research, education and
communication that brings a change of perspective (and not only a change of
action). A model where good relationships can work towards self-acceptance and
a better reciprocal understanding. Autobiography can be a part of this model. A
new way to make our journey into human life.
Professor Linden West
Director of Research Development, CCCU
The interdisciplinary imperative: or when Bourdieu met Winnicott and
Honneth
Connecting intimate and cultural worlds in narratives of change among
non-traditional learners at university.
In this paper, I draw on non-traditional learner narratives from the European
RANLHE study. In-depth narrative interviews were held, among samples of
learners, in different types of universities, at the beginning, middle and end of
the process. I use two case studies - when thinking about change processes –
connecting the work of Pierre Bourdieu – in particular his notions of habitus,
disposition and capital - with more psychosocial understanding of recognition in
human interaction and transformation. In Bourdieu’s terms, if we think of students
as either ‘fish in or out of water’, I want to understand more of how subjective
experiences of objective phenomena may develop. The main research question
was what enabled particular students to keep on keeping on.
It can be argued that Bourdieu fails sufficiently to engage with how some
students, with apparently limited educational and social capital, nonetheless
survive and prosper. They become fish in water, in effect, even in what might
be the culturally exclusive habitus of elite institutions. Of course Bourdieu was
aware of this phenomenon and argued that such learners serve to mask systemic
inequalities yet he failed to engage, in these terms, with ‘the subjective experience
of objective possibilities’. Donald Winnicott (1971) suggested the concept of
transitional space, when thinking, for instance, about developmental processes in
adulthood. We can think of university, as a space where the self is in negotiation,
and where a process of, or struggle around, separation and individuation - letting
go of past ideas and relationships – may take place. A renegotiation of self may
be more or less legitimised in the eyes and responses of significant others; and
via recognition within a particular sub-culture or habitus. Axel Honneth, a critical
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