Life History and Biography Network: 2006 Conference

Participants

The participants are listed in alphabetical order, with their affiliation, the title of their paper and its abstract.

Anders Siig Andersen & Rebecca Trojaborg
Roskilde University: The interplay between learning environments in working life and life history learning processes

The paper is a contribution to the development of a theoretical and methodological foundation for research, which can elucidate the interplay between learning environments in working life and the life history learning processes of employees. The paper includes an organisational perspective (learning as the basis for the development and survival of organisations) as well as an employee perspective (work as an individual and collective condition for learning amongst employees). The empirical basis for the paper is a case study from the so-called "Office Project", where the purpose was to chronicle and analyse the conditions for learning among office clerks working in state organisations.

Andersen Linda
Roskilde University: Life history as text and context in human service

Modern societies consume a considerably amount of financial and human resources on health care and human service. The dominant objectives to increase efficiency and outcome often point to New Public Management, evidence-based professionalism and target objectives. But we also need to include the individual and subjective perspective on work life, human development and professionalism in human service. The methods of life history represent forms of knowledge that has the potential of reconfigurating dominant understandings.
In this paper I will explore and discuss the life history approach in a methodological, textual and empirical perspective. The life history approach advocates a hermeneutic interpretative and psycho-societal understanding of the interplay between the individual and society. Actions is to be understood as a complex intertwining of individual lifehistoric traits and societal conditions and options – mediated and formed by the individual's ability of psychic processing. When applying a life history approach the living lives of the individual is told – e.g. in the form of a life history interview - and hereby shaped in the form of a text in which it is possible to establish understandings of the implications and potentials of a life history perspective. The life history method then implies the production of a text which is embedded in a context. I will draw upon life history analyses including a number of individuals in social work and human service illustrating the potentials of life history as a method of telling human lives and telling society

Anika Liversage
Danish National Institute of Social Reseach: Three women leaving limbo: using lifestories for analyzing movement through space and time

This article will investigate how social identity and movement in social space are interlinked – it will explore the reciprocal interplay between who people are and where they are and how such processes unfold over time. This will be done through an analysis of life stories told by three high-skilled migrant women.

Avgitidou Angeliki
Greek Open University: Between autopsy and autoptes:on the relationship of diary and art practice

In this paper the diary will be discussed in connection with its operation as tool for documenting and understanding practice but also as a means of coming to terms with its discontinuities. The performance of the diary employed in the works of artists such as Hanne Darboven, On Kawara and Sophie Calle will be negotiated as a strategy towards the creation of continuity.
Lastly the paper will speculate on the use of the diary as a methodological tool within fine art education. The vulnerable state of a work-in-progress, the distance between intention and final piece of work and the focus on process rather than outcome are some of the issues that will be argued in this context.

Bron Agnieszka & Lonnheden Christina
Stockholm University: Life history method - How does the process of life story telling triggers and enables learning?

The paper is situated in the second sub-theme of the conference, i.e. Identities and Selves and is based on both our long experience of life history in research and education, as well as on the current EU project entitled PRILHE – Promoting Reflective Independent Learning in Higher Education. In our project we have gathered data both of quantitative and qualitative character. We have conducted several life history interviews with mature students concerning their ways of learning at higher education.
Reflective, independent learning of mature students is the main focus of our paper. We will present one particular case which we are going to examine against or compare with our empirical and theoretical knowledge. This is the case of a male mature student who, while narrating his story, is puzzled with a sudden reflection and self-reflection on his way of learning and the consequences of such learning for his personal, social and working life. We will be carrying an in-depth analysis of the interview with the student to find out what happens in the story when the realization takes place. The discovery that learning is not an individual and unique course but a social process in its own right triggers a reflection and a spontaneous or even an illuminating reaction based on biographical learning.
We will problematise and advance the concept of biographical learning in the last part of the paper and link this concept with identity work as well as with the self and the others. We will use among others G. H Mead's theory of self, with the support from the reality, i.e. empirical data. The way of conducting life history interview is regarded a crucial methodological tool which allows researchers to initiate the process of reflection and self-reflection. We will challenge the predominant view in the contemporary higher education ideology that learners as unique and individual persons learn in a specific and unique way without being affected by others. We will also go beyond a view of a collective versus individual learning and advance the idea that learning is a social process already from the very start.

Bryan Hazel
Canterbury Christ Church University: A Room of One's Own: negotiating transitional spaces within the new academy

This paper intends to challenge the transitional space between the professional and academic identities of teacher educators. The context for the paper is the rapid expansion of the higher education sector nationally and internationally. We use Virginia Woolf's seminal text, A Room of One's Own, as a metaphoric tool for exploring and negotiating the tensions surrounding the identity of academic women in a changing professional context.
Within a potentially unstable environment there are power struggles in relation to ownership of academic space. The identity of the new space is amorphous. For some key agencies the shape is narrowly preformed, whereas other interested players struggle to resist preordained spaces and attempt to carve their professional shapes for themselves. Academic identity, currently unresolved, has a multitude of claims made upon it and is deeply contested.
The struggles and processes which form the text of this paper are represented and framed within Virginia Woolf's essay. Using her themes, the paper re theorizes the intellectual arena that has been created by the diversification of the Higher Education Sector. We argue that the current climate in Higher Education represents a watershed that may be analogous to that described by Woolf in terms of gender. Just as women were finally admitted to the male colleges in dribs and grateful drabs in the later 1960s, we argue that the new universities have perhaps embraced an inequitable system partly because they felt privileged to be asked to do so.
The nature and definition of the role of academic women in the field of teacher education needs also to be bravely challenged and challenging questions asked of us. Our paper, like Woolf's essay, is not 'an innocent text' (Ball 2004); it is written by 'insiders' who are struggling with their identity, not only in relation to gender, but also in relation to the effects of a 'hierarchy of institutions' (Pring 2004), created by politically led policies.

Cairns Teresa
University of Sussex: Past traces, present memories: exploring life history accounts from the Mass-Observation Archive.

My paper explores the education life histories of correspondents to the Mass-Observation Archive, held in the University of Sussex Library, Brighton, UK. My research, which itself has auto/biographical origins, involves an interpretive and transitional process, exploring the complex interplay between the social and the personal, and the interaction of the past in the present, within correspondents' life narratives. In this paper I draw upon the 'quilted narratives' of 2 correspondents resulting from their responses to 3 Mass-Observation Directives – Education, Growing Up and Close Relationships - in an attempt to understand the traces and memories within their life experiences.

Charalambous Panayiota
University of London: "Compulsory Greekness": Grand narratives, minor literatures and politics of identity in Greek-Cypriot literary education.

With the events of 1974, thousands of Cypriots were forced to relocate to ethnically homogenized Turkish-Cypriot and Greek-Cypriot parts on the north and south of the island respectively. This de facto division of the island gave rise to processes of identity politics on both sides and to symbolic-political repertoires, in which narrative representations of language and literature feature very centrally. Concentrating on the Greek-Cypriot side, I will examine how cultural hybridity in Cyprus, as characteristically instantiated in the Cypriot linguistic varieties and older indigenous literary production, is downplayed in favor of emphasis on the 'grand narratives' of nationalism and Greek 'purity'. This paper will focus on samples from literary narratives from both inside and outside the official curriculum, and will examine the processes of struggle through which institutionalised 'national canons' and their pedagogies emerge as very narrowly defined. Such phenomena of erasure and representational politics will be discussed as features of a diaspora culture, revolving around reshaping history, belonging and identity. I will aim to show how the idea of 'compulsory Greekness' through literary narratives organizes transliteration and transculturation practices that produce Greek-Cypriot learners as - both and simultaneously - fully 'Greek' and fully 'Cypriot'.

Cherti Myriam & Mohammed Boudoudou
University of Sussex /University of Rabat: Migration Trajectories, Life Histories and the Challenges of Creating a Collective Memory: The Case of Moroccan Migrants in London

The notion of migration trajectories often leads us to reconstruct the 'trajectory' as a series of successive events by the same agent or a group in a 'space' that is itself subject to transformations. The biographic events therefore are defined as positioning and de-positioning in a social space. However when using individual migration trajectories in the form of biographies one runs the risk of falling into what Pierre Bourdieu (1986) calls the biographic illusion, where life history is treated as history, that is as a coherent sequence of events and scarifying the rhetoric illusion for a common representation of 'existence,' hence often ignoring the social mechanisms that favour or contribute into making ordinary life experiences representative of a 'community' life experience. In this context, some of the key questions that arise are: to what extent individual migrants biographies can really reflect a collective memory? And can these collective migrant life histories be indicative of their levels integration in their host country?
This paper seeks to explore these questions furthers through a selection of life histories collected from first generation Moroccan men and women across London. It will be an attempt to reconstruct a recent common life history of a migrant group whose 'history' has not been formally acknowledged and documented through other traditional mediums. It would also highlight the difficulties in making sense of individual biographies by tracing common trends amongst the same migrant group.

Christou Anastasia
University of Sussex: (De)constructing the (de)humanizing city: narratives of home and exile in the urban diasporic imagination

This paper reflects on fieldwork in two capital cities Athens, Greece and Copenhagen, Denmark and deals with two migrant groups, that is, second-generation Greek-Americans and second-generation Greek-Danes and their everyday experiences and urban diasporic imaginaries of their ancestral homeland. The comparative analysis derives from two research projects in two varying urban contexts and the collection of data is based on a multimethod approach of oral and written migrant narratives. The discussion will focus on the transformations and transitions of multi-layered institutions and frameworks in how migrants negotiate their sense of self and other as well as their sense of ‘home’ and belonging. The paper will address through the analysis of oral and written narratives the way identities and acts of identification occur in relation to social and cultural space and in response to the ethnic place of origin and destination.

Chronaki Alkisti
University of Thessaloniki: Teenagers Reading Fiction

We all live in a world of stories. We tell and listen to narratives in order to give body to our experience and make ourselves more visible to ourselves and others. This ability to make up stories and recount our experience appears very early in life since children realize at a young age that storytelling can be a powerful tool for understanding the world, patterning the chaos of experience, becoming part of their culture, making and keeping friends, constructing a self.
The ability of making up stories, however, seems to decline by the time a child reaches the age of 8 or 9. So, when she reaches adolescence it may well have been completely lost even though the need of an adolescent to familiarize herself with what is contingent, to come to terms with the unexpected as well as to explore herself and others, define and redefine who she is, who she might become and how the world might be, is more imperative than ever.
This need which a young child satisfies through fiction-making, an adolescent can satisfy through literature, particularly when reading fiction becomes a social process and the reader becomes a member of a community such as a book club. Fiction offers a reader alternative worlds and permits her to explore possibilities and consider options for herself and the world which are not suggested when she takes things as they are. By reading, she enters the thoughts of another person, lets her own self briefly disappear and see the world through the eyes of the imagined self thus gaining different perspectives on what is real.
It should not be assumed though that this kind of interaction between reader and text takes place instinctively but it takes some effort and experience from the part of the reader to reach such a reading position. The transition to becoming a skilled reader and adopting an interactive position can be facilitated when the reader is called to discuss, to narrate her reading experience, to pay attention to aspects that she might have overlooked and most important of all to verify the validity of her interpretation.
A book club provides the context where such discussions can take place and offers the space for a more expanded reading experience. The participants, by discussing the books they have read, they also talk about themselves and their lives while at the same time they order their experience. This way they reflect both on their lives and on the books along with learning that interpretations are always tentative and that possibilities can be explored from multiple perspectives.
The paper is based on a study which is part of my PhD. The survey takes place in the public libraries of Thessaloniki, where book clubs for adolescents between the ages of 11-16 years old have been organized in order to observe their response to fiction and their reading practices. The 'texts' produced by the teenagers during the book club meetings constitute the material that is studied and this paper will report some research findings.

Chronaki Myrto & Sofia Mavropoulou
University of Thessaly: The mothers' network as a learning environment for women's transition to maternity: the case of La Leche League

The experience and significance of motherhood is hardly ever analyzed, neither is the influence it can have on a woman’s subjectivity or its wider implications on society at large. Mothering, however, especially through breastfeeding, can be a powerful motive to acquire new knowledge, to form relationships with other women, to transcend social conventions. This new consciousness is facilitated by the non-typical processes of learning provided by voluntary organizations of mothers, of which La Leche League International (LLL) is the largest and oldest. The experience of breastfeeding with the help of accurate scientific information made available to new mothers, the support and encouragement offered by LLL counselors in the informal ‘educational’ setting of monthly discussion meetings of mothers and through telephone counseling, forms an excellent basis for a woman to learn the art of mothering. La Leche League groups create a transitional space where women can rediscover traditional ways of female communication and feel empowered to assume responsibility for themselves and their children.
This ‘movement of mothers’ has numerous implications for the dissemination of breastfeeding knowledge, for the societal attitudes towards maternity and child rearing, for medical care in pregnancy and birth. The combination of direct experience and authoritative knowledge represents a transition from the institutional methods of education to biographicity as a learning tool. Academic research and theory, as well as everyday practice in medicine and education only stand to gain, if they tap into this unacknowledged reservoir of maternal experience, knowledge, and passion.

Chul-In Yoo
Cheju National University, Korea: A Life History of the Korean Woman who Served the Sentence during Jeju April Third Uprising

This paper reads and (re)interprets the life history whose subject was suspected to be a Communist guerrilla during April Third Uprising (1948-1954) in Jeju Island, Korea. It focuses on how Kang Jeong-Sun, a seventy-seven-year-old woman as of 2001, interprets her experience during April Third Uprising and her whole life, and what her interpretations mean. According to so-called factual truth under martial law at that time, she was guilty and served the sentence for ten months. She interprets such suffering experience in the context of her family life, and then imputes it to her first marriage. The April Third Uprising in the event-time of her age of twenty-five is the turning point in her whole life. The body that had borne children becomes the main part of her subjectivity. With her storytelling, she has created her self by emphasizing her efforts in raising her children very well and in making a good living, rather than simply complaining of her pain mainly from being tortured during examination. She cannot help emphasizing that she did not help guerrillas in any way, needless to say that she was not a guerrilla. The narrative truth that she is innocent is the only truth for her.

Dalamitrou Maria
University of Thessaloniki: Transitional Space: From Marx Through Chekhov To Psychoanalysis

I first came across the notion of “transitional space” in my reading of Donald Woods Winnicott, a British psychiatrist, whose paper on transitional phenomena, described as the “intermediate area of experiencing” supports, in psychoanalytic terms, the idea of an on-going process in the constitution of subjectivity. An effect between self and the other, subjectivity is never fixed. Neither is, by analogy, any centre of power – the author, the nation, the state. My paper explores the psychoanalytic necessity of the existence of a transitional space before it moves into the field of Literature and, specifically, into the literal space of drama production. Starting therefore from the idea that the self is in a constant dialogue with the direct (family) and the broader (politics) environment, I resort to psychoanalysis and to the way individuals work out their relationship to this reality from the very beginning. While my main interest is in psychoanalysis, I bring up later a work by Anton Chekhov for three reasons. Firstly, to narrate the case of a doctor and playwright who, like Winnicott, was interested in the shaping forces of reality and, as a realist, emphasized the importance of environment in the formation of subjectivity. Secondly, to explore the theme of transitional space in the play itself, namely The Cherry Orchard, which, if read psychoanalytically, is an exemplification of how the public and the private spheres clash or have to be partly sacrificed, compromised. Thirdly, again in the context of psychoanalysis, to show how the individual has to negotiate his/her place in a world which is hardly stable. Winnicott’s “transitional space” and Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard allow me to discuss the scope for change, transition and realistic optimism that the socialist ethics had brought about back then and to gauge and measure such a potential nowadays.

Delikari Vivi
University of Athens: Could Lambeti, Karaindrou and secondary teachers have something in common?

This paper argues that it is a common phenomenon for secondary education teachers to assume "selective affinities" between themselves and artistic figures, in order to construct persuasive professional identities. That is, while they narrate and they try to conceptualize the ways through which they evaluate pupils. In doing so biographical factors shape and influence their narration through which they attempt to rationalize the evaluation processes. These processes seem to be an articulation of heterogeneous discourses without internal coherence. Teachers invent a bricolage of differentiated elements (pedagogical, personal memories, experiences, legislative guidance, perceptions of their role, rituals). In this way they try to negotiate the experience of the power that the evaluation presupposes.
In this proposal we focus on the narration of two secondary teachers: one man, mathematician and one woman, teacher of Greek literature. They both recognize analogies between the construction of their identity and that of two well known artists: one contemporary and active female composer (Karaindrou) and one -now dead- actress (Elli Lambeti).

Diamantopoulos Demetres: Transitions at the Pedestrian path network around the Acropolis - Athens

My paper discusses architecture as a tool for creating transitional spaces that open up possibilities for transitional processes. The discussion and the relevant visual presentation is based on the project 'Pedestrian path network and open public spaces for the region around the Acropolis - Athens'. The pedestrian path network around the Acropolis, which develops from the Temple of Olympic Jupiter, through the south slope of the Acropolis, the Hill of Pnyx and of Areopagus, to the trains' station of Theseion and the Temple of Hephaistos, connects the archaeological sites of the area, following the ancient routes that cross the historical area of Ancient Athens. The paper sheds light on the multiple alternative transitional processes, which are included in this work, such as the transition from a heavy traffic road, which divided the area, to a pedestrian path network, which unifies the historical natural and archaeological landscape. Transitional elements will also be discussed in relation to the broader urban environment, as well as in relation to the conceptual dimensions of transition that are included in this work of important major intervention for the rehabilitation of the historic site and the development of an environment which can enable visitors mentally to transit from today back to the historical past.

Dominicé Pierre
University of Geneva: Life history as research practice for inventing tomorrow's life : toward new challenges for the education of adults

After years of conducting research and dealing with the methodology of life history, the time has come to explore some new theoretical challenges by confronting our practices of life history with our domain of reference in the world of education, namely adult education. Adult education, through the development and diversity of continuing education, has become a market. In order to find or keep a job, curriculum vitae have to be improved. Credit or perish could be considered as new european slogan. Life experiences, as sources of learning, have also been lately taken more seriously. Different practices of life history have helpt facilitating access to study at the level of higher education for learners who already have had professional commitments.

Dybbroe Bettina
Roskilde University: Transformation of Work and Workplace Knowledge in a Life History Perspective

The study of transformation in work and workplace knowledge and learning in contemporary research is still predominantly focused on institutional and organizational analysis leaving the subjective positions and experiences of work as additional aspects or illustrations of institutional characteristics and traits. The potential of studying the social changes in work from subjective positions, as aspects of subjectivity, such as changes in gendered identity, constructions of professional hierarchy, conflicts of rationality of work, the changes in practical sense etc, are underestimated.Furthermore subjective positions of workers are mostly concerned with workers expectations and opinions, such as educational wishes, and much less on workers experiences and sensing of work.This is the field of research and the methodological question I would like to address.
However a life historical and psycho-social approach, with the theoretical framework of life long socialization and experience from critical theory, enables analysis of transformations in work, of conditions and circumstances of work, seen through subjective sensing, experiencing, and forming of work, and processes of learning and building of knowledge. Workers individual lives in and out of work, in a lifewide and lifelong sense, are embedded in collective contexts of life as dual processes of adaptation and transgression of conditions and circumstances. The presentation will focus on how to study work through life history in a way that not only looks the workers over the shoulder, with phenomenology and biographical approaches, but also look behind and illuminates that which workers see and sense through focusing on language of work, analysed as expressions of socialization of work ( with Lorenzer, Leithauser, Morgenroth).The empirical case will be work and workers in the health sector in Denmark,analysed through three examples from three different professional groups.

Dziemianowicz Miroslawa
University of Lower Silesia, Poland: Crisis and change in family narrations. Divorce as a broken narration

The subject of this paper will be the attempt to give an answer to the question of what we learn from critical family experience. The narrations quoted here will ilustrate the thesis that family life can be the site of crisis and change. They will also reveal how even the very moment of getting married is burdened with the potential of generating critical situations, and conseqently requires specific abilities to learn. The process of relationship building, creating new communicative relations, the conflict of mutual expectations we are often unaware of or keep unrevealed, become the source and the impulse for change. In family life we come across situations that put an individual on the 'trajectory of suffering'. Divorce is amongst them. It results from the clash of circumstances, it is the response to an impulse, and as such cannot be logically explained. In such cases we are no longer in control of our actions and become governed by laws, which social logic does not embrace, and belong rather to the situation of chaos. Reiman and Schutze label such cases as the trajectory of suffering. They (these situations) are a kind of biografical phenomenon that influences and changes not only the life of an individual experiencing the suffering, but also the lives of all the people remaining in various social relations with the person.

Egger Rudolf
University of Graz: Roots or Routes? Biographical research and its impact on the democratization processes of a post war society

In this paper I want to show some results of an ongoing project in Kosova. It is an attempt to connect the approaches in biographical research with the processes of social transformation and tries to bring theoretical issues and approaches from oral and life history work into adult education research and practice. The goal is to establish a Life Course Archive and to use the collected materials by students to learn the principles of qualitative research methods. This archive should finally be a resource base for humanitarian and research projects to analyze the conditions and possibilities of social change. In reconstructing the dominant patterns in (auto-)biographical narratives we can see the different historical periods and different stages of societal development. In that sense, biographical research has a huge impact on the democratization process and the transformation of this post war society.
The empirical and the educational work and the problems of using narrative data in a post-war society will be shown in an particular workshop at Pristina.

Evans Rob
University of Magdeburg: Moving through change –the voices of East German HE professionals in transition and their biographical work.

This paper looks at biographical discourse(s) of learning, work and social engagement collected in depth narrative interviews carried out at a University in East Germany. The narrating voices of a collective of teaching professionals are examined in the current shifting educational context in which the university is in transition to a service role with global market orientation and increasingly 'commodified' educational content in a region still struggling with unemployment and depopulation 15 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and Unification. Specifically, the discoursal practice of these survivors of the hard transition from the GDR to the BRD is critically examined for evidence of 'voices of transition' amid competing local, national, international as well as institutional and personal discourses of learning and knowledge.

Evdoridou Elissavet
University of Thessaly: Fellini, Moravia, Segre: From life stories to hypertext

This study explores the transitional characteristics as described by Fellini, Moravia and Segre, projected into today's society. Taking into consideration their ways of observing, and analyzing changes, this study correlates the internal, external data proposed by Winniccott, together with their interface, also projected into the meaning of hypertext. Flexibility and life-long learning extend the exploitation of the Italians autobiographical material, as taken by Edward and Rifkin.

Ferrero Anna & Lucia Portis
Centro Interculturale of Turin: Mixed Races Memories: Migration – Biographies Colleption Path

The city of Turin is placed in Piemonte, Northern Italy, with approximately 900.000 inhabitants. From 1800 Piemonte is a region characterised by heavy emigrations towards Northern Europe (mines) and towards Southern America. At the beginning of the sixty's, due to its economic and industrial development, Turin became a town of immigrants both from Southern Italy and the East. It is therefore a city used to accommodate people, to cultural integration and social inclusion. The immigration from extra?European countries, though it is a recent event (of the last 15 years), reached a good degree of maturity, being not only connected to single workers ? male and female but also to a wide family phenomenon. A peculiarity of immigration in Turin is that it is characterised by a great number of countries of origin (147 different countries have been listed). Within this migration phenomenon in the city, the presence of minors has assumed in these years a special importance, with very different characteristics
- minors reunited to one or both parents
- minors alone with their own migration plan
- regular minors
- irregular minors
The city of Turin reacted with different phases and levels of accommodation; to begin with, services of initial welcoming, both at an institutional level and at the social private level; afterwards with services and dispositions finalised to social integration and evaluation of the various cultural belongings. The Centro Interculturale of Turin Municipality was created in 1996 with the double aim of information and formation regarding immigration, in order to favour knowledge and integration, and to give value to the different cultural expressions of newcomers. The main initiatives include, on one hand a theoretical deepening through formative percourses addressed to natives and immigrants, collection of teaching materials, fulfilment of projects, promotion of moments of thinking and comparison, and on the other hand the organization of cultural events such as expositions, film festivals, music and literary concourses...
Inside this scheme, the project "mixed races memories" was finalised to form memories collectors regarding migration, with special attention to the youngest immigrants or their sons. UP to date this project produced two collections of biographies of young people which refer to an juvenile aggregation centre placed in an area of the city with a high degree of immigration. Its aims are as follows:
- improvement of the active listening to the stories of other people, and especially to young people's stories
- to experiment the transformative value of the narration
- to discover similarities in the life?span of different people, also in the case of "far away" differences
- to overcome stereotypes and prejudices

Formenti Laura
University of Milano Bicocca: The bringing forth of a story: autobiography in a bio-systemic view

In this paper, I intend to explore some theoretical and practical consequences of looking at autobiography through the lens of radical constructivism (von Glasersfel 1984, following Vico, Kant, Wittgenstein, Piaget…) and other systemic approaches (see von Foerster 1981, Maturana 1990, Fabbri e Munari 2005), as I do in research, education, counselling, therapy.
The overall concept is the relational and situational nature of human action. Autobiography is the construction and organization of a text that is mostly narrative, within a context and with linguistic means. This is a relational and political process. Neutrality towards others' stories is impossible: the situation at hand, context, interactions between writer and reader, effects on the late, are part of the process of "bringing forth" the story. This verb – to bring forth - is used by Humberto Maturana (1990) to address a process of human living. We are "languaging beings": in the linguistic medium we bring forth the domain of consciousness, identity, meaning. Languaging is the medium of reflective (self)observation. To acknowledge this is crucial to grasp the complexity of autobiography. We need to know the words. And when we have the words, they oblige us. But in language it also happens that the organization of "old words" creates new meanings. We are the "poetic species" (Rorty).
Hence, the so-called "testimony effect" resulting from the sharing of autobiographies is something more: co-imagining, co-metaphorizing the meaning of life. There is an active co-implication, right and left brain, mind and body, reason and imagination, despite all efforts to monitor, to be not judgmental, to avoid interpretation – to keep a distance.
How is it possible to understand a telling without interpreting? When we are languaging, we make sense of it. The autobiographer and the reader are in the text (Eco), their mutual positionings have effects. Sometimes the narrator's voice comes out, or not. This is of primary importance in educational and therapeutic contexts, as well as in research.
I take from Gianfranco Cecchin (1932-2004), family therapist and beloved Guide, the principle of "curiosity" (Cecchin 1987). When we tell, or listen, a story that satisfies us, we stop looking for other stories, hence our conversation, our dialogue ends. We think that we found the truth, the enemy of dialogue. In this "eccess of memory" the story becomes the explanation of our life, and the situational/dialogical nature of that story is obscured. The complexity of life disappears and we refuse our responsibility for the process of bringing forth it as it appears. Cecchin's view celebrates the complexity of life, and invites us to describe it in polifonic ways. Curiosity develops multiple narrations, and avoids us to think that one story must be the only.
We build coherence in autobiography, even if different, maybe opposing, versions of our life are narrated. We don't need to look for the best story, within a logic of exclusion, we may, and it is healthy, invent a frame to contain all the thinkable versions – within a logic of inclusion. Narrative thinking is inclusive indeed, as a form of thought that refuses strict categorization and hierarchy.
I know the power, the beauty and the richness of autobiography in adult education and research, but I feel the responsibility to propose settings that propose openings towards multiple stories. Through metaphores and images, through different languages, through interactive reflections, through playfulness and creativity. In the paper, I will cite some experiences, as examples to favour a dialogic setting of this kind, apt to generate multiple meanings of a written text.

Ganchev A.
Odessa University: Bessarabian Bulgarians, Studying in Bulgaria. On Searches of Identity

The falling of "The Iron Curtain" and the Reorganization in the USSR in 1985 was becoming the beginning of the main recesses in the life of peoples, occupying the Soviet Union. Democratization of the society, an occurrence of the freedom of a speech, opening of borders have caused a big rise of the ethnic consciousness among the national minorities of the state.
Bessarabian Bulgarians, who weren't have a direct legal communication with Bulgaria about one century, books in Bulgarian language, median editions, have got the access to them. It, in turn, strengthens considerably their identity and desire to know their history, literature, national heroes. Bulgaria has gone towards to these wishes and in February, 1991 the first group of Bessarabian children have gone to study in a language grammar school in Sliven. Since then, the commission of the Ministry of the Education, Science and Technologies of Bulgaria accepts about 100 students from the Bulgarian villages of Bessarabia for training in higher educational institutions of the country every year.
There is a question: - "How the studying in Bulgaria influences on formation and transformation of identity of training youth from Bessarabian?" It is necessary to note, that overwhelming majority of Bessarabian Bulgarians, who are the future students of Bulgaria, were born and have grown in villages. Each separately taken Bulgarian village of Bessarabia represents an isolated relative, an endogamies circle within the framework of which keeps the traditional Bulgarian culture more than two hundred years.
In a similar traditional society personal identity is predetermined by identity of group, opportunities of a choice for each separately taken representative are very much limited. The accessory to group is meant in itself. However, moving to study in Bulgaria, teenagers get completely other type in a society. Considerably more egalitarian, mobile, industrial society of the Bulgarian cities gives a freedom for a choice of identity. The studying in Bulgaria enables students to turn from anonymous in independent individuals and to rethink the personal identity.
The present research is based on materials of questionnaires, carried out by the author in 2002 among Bessarabian Bulgarians, who are the students of higher educational institutions of Sofia. For revealing dynamics and transformation of identity for years of training have been questionnaired about 10 % of students studying and living in Bulgaria from one till six years, that is from 1996 till 2002.
Results of the research enable:
a) To judge an initial condition of the language, cultural and ethnic identity Bessarabian youth in conditions of a modern influence of Ukrainian language and culture;
b) To define the factors put on a basis of opposition "we and they", and not only with representatives of other ethnic groups living in the neighborhood, but also with Bulgarians from Bulgaria;
c) To look after processes of a transformation of the ethnic consciousness of different levels, factors influencing on it and the factors, constraining changes during the training in Bulgaria.

Gonzalez Abilio Daniel Garcia
ULPGC: The Inclusion Of The Archaeological Heritage Of Galdar (gran Canaria; The Canary Islands; Spain) On The Primary And Secondary School Syllabus: Contributing Towards Retrieving Cultural Identity.

The Castillians conquered the island of Gran Canaria in the XVth century. This produced a total upheaval in the native culture of the time who succumbed, in the main, to the conquerors. This weakening of the culture has continued through to the present day when the process has come full cycle with globalisation, meaning that the pre-Hispanic culture and its manifestations, the little archaeological remains that have been preserved, are in a fragile state and that the historical memory of the local population is equally at risk. We decided to publish our own syllabus for archaeological heritage on the island, above all, in Galdar, and to draw up a programme for the History and Geography (or Social Science) teachers to use with teaching materials in order to attempt to stave off this process of loss of identity. We are trying to use teaching methods and material to make the students aware of the need to respect and defend their different characteristics and heritage for future generations to enjoy and understand. We also hope to open up a new line of research, studying possible strategies for promotion and supply of tourism products relating to the archaeological heritage in Galdar. It is, above all, an attempt to promote sustainable economic development for the town by offering an added value towards promoting and preserving the heritage of the island and, thus, safeguarding the integrity of its identity.

Goodson Ivor & Norma Adair
University of Brighton: In Search of Home: Becoming and Belonging

This paper explores how the 'original' spaces we inhabit, the spaces we are familiar with and initially know as home, may impact on our identity projects, providing frameworks within which we are able to 'travel' and beyond which we may find it difficult to go. Drawing on examples from a larger data set of life histories collected in the UK, we suggest that where our places of origin are familiar but insecure, the ensuing estrangement from 'home' provides an impetus for change and learning.

Hernandez G. Juan
Centro Bartolome de Las Casas, Peru: The Discourse of Rights in a U.N. co-sponsored Indigenous Formation Program in the Basque Country

Upon enrolling myself at an educational program in human rights, attending many classes and meetings, and listening to more than 20 hours of interviews with various persons, a singular impression was derived from the exercise. In this study, which is a form of class ethnography that places the self within a social context, I speak of a specific field of discursive production by inscribing this production within the institutional umbrella of the Human Rights Formation Program for Indigenous Peoples at Deusto University in the Basque Country. The present study pictures the dynamics of the actors at play including students, professors and international actors1. It shows the way in which the subject constructs itself and is constructed in a particular context of institutionalised power. It also brings the attention to the instability of the regime. The main argument indicates that within the overarching legal structure of rights, far away from the dynamics of the classroom, it seems more negligible to attain cultural dialogue. However, the underlying concern is the dialogue between heterogeneous elements present in the human rights discourse. Related questions centre on the fractures of the regime, the unstable production of meanings, and the difficult task for the ethnographer in revealing those issues. I conclude by asserting that the instability of the regime relates to the contradictory category-structure of the discourse of rights in itself. In my view, such unstable balance relates, in brief, to the contradictory category-structure of the human rights regime.

Hughes Jonathan
The Open University: Learning Journeys Research Project

The research aims to develop a better understanding of the way in which an individual's past experience, education and life chances impact on their relationship with further learning. A key element in this exploration is context. This is discussed in relation to six case studies that look at students' life histories. The case studies are divided between work-related learning and locally based learning. In both types of setting the research focuses on the experience of learners as it considers the approaches taken by the three partner organisations to promote access to education.

Inglessi Chryssi
University of Athens: Doing work with teachers: the implications of reflexivity and self-reference on action research professionals

The paper explores the difficulties of having to address the needs of people in difficult educational settings and at the same time containing and regulating anxiety in the self. While supervision and/or group discussions are a much valued part of psychotherapists' work, there is a surprising lack of supportive structures for researchers in the field. In this case, an action research project involving schoolteachers who teach immigrant children. My contention is that persons in charge of the needy and the weak should be encouraged to understand their own anxiety in working with the other, and that contrary to the dominant views about neutrality, researchers, in turn, rather than suspending their own feelings as 'problematic', should use them for a deeper understanding of the communication processes in which all parties are engaged.

Iordanidis George
University of Western Macedonia: Administrative Policies For The Professional Development Of The Educational Staff In An Adult Education Centre

The fields of adult education and life long learning cover a wide range of activities helping adult people learn in systematic and organized ways. Concerning the educational staff of the adults education centers and organizations, the demand for improving specific parameters of their job and enriching their role becomes greater and greater. In any educational system, the development, counseling and motivation of the educational staff are vital and continuing factors towards the increase of the educational units' efficacy and the improvement of the offering educational services. The content of a well planned developmental policy in the educational units should, definitely, be orientated to the educational staff's needs in micro (immediate) and macro level so that to reinforce the staff's sensibility but also to develop and modernize the whole education system.

Jogi Larissa & Katrin Karu
Tallinn University: Learning in the context of life course

Learning in life course context is treated as a lifelong, biographical, influencing individual as a whole in interpreting and widenening one`s meaning perspectives.
- Life course is connected to learning and affected by social environment, cultural background system, prior life experiences, life knowledge and changes in personal and social life.
- Learning in life course context is connected to the measure of time or experiencing time and life.
We are proceeding from a viewpoint that a person/generation is influenced by events connected to social roles, social positions, age, course of life and processes in the society, which are influencing the development of learning apprehensions.
The problem of research, the results of which are presented in paper, is formed as follows:
- How do adults from different generation interpret and understand learning in their own life course? how does adult learning comprehensions develope and what are the factors influencing the development of learning comprehensions in adulthood in dfferent generations?
The paper is based on analysis of 60 semistructured interviews and narratives with people from different generations and age (from 22 years up 99 years).

Juul Ida
Univesity of Denmark: Using biographical narratives as a source in the study of educational history in the period from 1945-2005 in Denmark

The impact of the educational boom of the 1960's and 1970's on the general level of education of the Danish population and the inequalities in the distribution educational resources among different socio-economic groups has been the subject of many quantitative studies. Meanwhile, studies of how these new opportunities were perceived by young people and by their parents have been largely neglected. The aim of this paper is to show how biographical interviews can bee used to answer the following questions:
What motivated young people in the 1960/s and 1970/s to spend a far larger share of their youth in the educational system compared to their parents? Was it because education was conceived as a mean to postpone entry in the labour market, or was it because access to knowledge was seen as a good thing in it-self, or was it because education was seen as a vehicle for social mobility?
Through interviews with peoples from three different generations (attending the 7.th.grade in 1955, 1975 and 1995) about their upbringing, their school experiences and the expectations from parents, teachers and others toward their school performance and future carrier, it becomes possible to analyse the different narratives which have been constructed among different generations, social and cultural classes and gender both concerning the education, which was obtained and the ones not obtained. Furthermore biographical interviews can be used as a source to illustrate the different strategies applied to education and working career depending on class, gender and generation.
The aim of the paper is also to illustrate how individual narratives interacts with the dominating discourses about education characterizing the three different periods (1955,1975 and 1995).

Kallinteri Valia
University of Kent: The fluidity of the 'nation': Xenophobia, discrimination and suppression in Aridea

sThe research examines the reaction of groups of people of Aridea (Northern Greece) 'hosting' Albanian immigrants. The Greek inhabitants that have been experiencing the construction of their debated national identity until recently, provide the frame through which immigration is examined. Two months of fieldwork, involving participant observation, 30 semi-structured interviews and five biographies, has been incorporated for the conduction of the research. The results indicate the use of 'nation' as a fluid concept. Reactions of nationalism embedded with family, religion, local economy and class, come to the surface. Xenophobia and discrimination are the main attitudes towards newcomers. Recent global events and current national and European immigration policies provide the space for these attitudes to arise. The interplay between the local, the national and the international shapes the reaction of the Greek inhabitants of Aridea towards immigrants.

Kalogridi Sophia
Hellenic Open University: Negotiating school failure, negotiating myself and "the other". Narratives of young people who quit 9-year compulsory education in the first year of secondary school

School failure, or more precisely the delay in completing basic education or even quitting school, constitutes a major problem in many contemporary societies where basic education has a generalized and compulsory character for many years. School failure is also a traumatic experience for the person who failed in school. Within this framework, this paper will present data which was compiled during research for a doctoral thesis that aimed to widen the conceptions of school and the post-school period that were formulated by a group of young people who quit 9-year compulsory education in the first year of secondary school in the Iliou District, Attica. One of the basic aims of the research was – within the narration of the personal story of each youth - to widen the ways in which they themselves negotiate their experience of school failure. The narratives concern the personal viewpoints that have been shaped about school and school failure ten years after they quit school. The narratives also concern the feelings, reminiscences and images that they keep 'alive' in their memories and that contribute to the shaping of individual identity at that crucial age.

Kantaraki Maroula
University of Thessaly: L'autodetermination des adolescents gitans musulmans: une approche microsociologique qui "verifie" la structure

Karacosta Arianna: Reflexivity in the biographical approach: unraveling the unconscious processes of the research situation

This paper utilizes the theoretical framework of reflexivity in order to analyze the life story of a woman teacher in secondary education. I observe how my tendency for idealization lead me to focus on the confidence and professional satisfaction of the teacher, ignoring the contradictions in her narration. Analysis of the transference phenomena of the research relationship revealed that what appeared to be a satisfying professional life concealed feelings of insecurity and marginalization. This important insight lead me to conduct a second interview, in which the teacher confessed experiencing racism in her professional life as a result of her difference. The paper discusses the contribution of the methodology of reflexivity in the understanding of what it means to be a woman teacher in secondary Greek education.

Karakatsani Despina
University of Peloponese: Récits de vie et de pratiques des enseignant(e)s: outils importants pour l’approfondissement dans le mémoire professionnel et l’histoire éducative.

L’histoire éducative a toujours montré une préférence pour la recherche du cadre institutionnel, pour l’analyse du discours officiel et a fortement négligé tant la pratique vue de la part des enseignants et des élèves que le sens et la culture de la classe dans le passé. Pourtant toute tentative qui a comme objectif la connaissance de la vie dans les classes du passé doit tout d’abord essayer de pénétrer dans la manière dont les protagonistes de ce cadre, les enseignants, pensent pour leur pratique enseignante et éducative. Ces personnes, avec les élèves, forment et en même temps participent à cette vie et peuvent apporter leur expérience et éclairer cet environnement bien obscur et magique. C’est par le dévoilement des pensées, des idées, du mémoire professionnel des enseignants (au travers d’une recherche appuyée sur les histoires de vie, les récits de vie et de pratiques, les outils qui font parti d’une histoire éducative orale) et qu’on peut détecter le climat de la classe scolaire et reconstituer la vie dans le cadre scolaire et son rapport avec la vie en dehors de celle-ci. La rhétorique de la discussion publique concernant l’éducation et les réalités des enseignants sont dans la plupart des cas des choses bien distinctes. La reconstitution de la vie des enseignants donne la possibilité de se rapprocher des éléments qu’eux-mêmes croient être au cœur de leur identité professionnel. La voix des enseignants a une qualité particulière et caractéristique. D’un côté elle est imprégnée des éléments qui dominent dans la vie quotidienne professionnelle et de l’autre on peut y repérer une tentative de trouver un équilibre entre la tension pour le changement et la force pour la continuité. Dans la première partie de cette communication on l’a l’intention de parler de l’utilisation de ces outils dans le cadre de la recherche de l’histoire éducative de manière théorique. Dans la deuxième partie on va présenter le cadre général et quelques premiers résultats de notre recherche dans ce domaine qui s’appuie sur l’utilisation de cet outil de recherche. Notre objectif de recherche est la description et l’analyse de la vie quotidienne, de la vie scolaire et du cadre scolaire de l’enseignement primaire ainsi que le dévoilement des conditions sociales, des pratiques et des mœurs scolaires, de la réalité sociale et de la culture professionnelle des enseignants grecs de la période d’après guerre 1950-1974.

Karamihova Marg.: How one local folk song leads national ideology, while simultaneously creating a new nation-building strategy

This paper will present observations on how a local myth, created during the time of modern Bulgarian nation-building in the second half of the 19th century, continues to develop and be "proven" in the town of Zlatograd in the 21st century. In the post-communist era, the folk song based on this myth ("Izlel ye Delyu Haydutin" [Delyu has Become a Rebel]) has become recognized nationally and globally. Urban anthropology involves the study of the cultural systems of cities as well as the linkages of cities to other places and populations, both smaller and larger, as part of the world-wide urban system (Kemper 1996). This paper will show how this local myth creates visible and stable networks, across a broad local region, as well as nationally and across international borders.
Zlatograd is in the Southern Rhodope Mountains, near Bulgaria's southern border with Greece. It is the oldest town in the mountain range. Its population is religiously mixed, including both Bulgarian Orthodox Christians and Bulgarian Muslims. Due to various factors, the local population's strategy to maintain the delicate balance between Christians and Muslims is explicitly dominated by the ideology of Bulgarians' ethnic (i.e. – Orthodox) origins.
In the first part of the paper, both religious groups will be presented in their respective historical, cultural and socio-economic contexts. The second and larger part of the paper will explore the ways the local folk song "Izlel ye Delyu Haydutin" has been used over the last 100 years to support Bulgarian ideology in the region, and now also to form the core of a new nation-building strategy. The nowadays cross border Greek religious influence will be noticed as an important factor in this process. The paper points to the role of a particular city as a model of the "Great Tradition" as opposed to the "Little Tradition" of local villages (Robert Redfield 1947).
In the process of researching this paper, a wide variety of sources were used, including: written materials, ethnological interviews, life histories, historical studies, novels and other sources. A Power Point and CD player will be used in presentation.

Karan Day-Kahl
University of Australia: An Auto-Biographical Introduction to the New Adult Learning Movement

I am a PhD student interested in biography and destiny learning. I have discovered that in the field of biography, a new way of thinking is emerging that offers exciting new prospects for researchers. The area is that of the adult educator. This paper explores the scope and impact of the Adult Educators course offered by the New Adult Learning Movement. In addition I briefly consider the way participation in this course affected me, hence this story is partly auto-biographical. These considerations raise questions and issues for how I will approach the analysis of other participants' experiences and consider future research into academic development in higher education in Australia.

Kogidou Demetra
University of Thessaloniki: Childhood poverty and social exclusion - Incorporating children's perspectives

The child-centered social exclusion is almost absent from research in Greece and there are few statistical data and quantitative research. Children's interests and needs are usually subsumed and hidden within family interests and needs.
A greater insight into the lives of children living in poverty could be gained from qualitative research. Developing a more child-centered approach will entail a radical rethink about the concept of social exclusion at childhood itself. Child-centered qualitative research and analysis mean research with children and for children, requires an informed and considered approach at every stage of research.
In order to develop an understanding of child poverty, we must place children at the centre of our analysis, using in -depth interviews to explore the lives and experiences of children from low-income families. One of the aims of this paper is to facilitate the visibility of child poverty, to try to deepen our awareness and understanding of poverty as a lived experience in childhood proposing the use of child-centered qualitative research. Findings from qualitative research can raise critical issues in policy and practice.

Kogidou Demetra & Pliogou Vassiliki
University of Thessaloniki: Being poor in the 21st century: single-parents tell their stories

The aim of this paper is to discuss some methodological reflections that have emerged from our research of single-parents in Greece, particularly, lone-mothers. We discuss some of the central conceptual and methodological issues which must be tackled if we wish to investigate single-parent families and /or women's poverty in a gender - sensitive way, such as the gendered nature of poverty and the necessity of a gender - sensitive methodological approach. We emphasize that women cannot simply be added in the existing analyses. Gender - sensitive poverty research should focus on multidimensional disadvantage, open the family ''black box'' in order to understand to what extent women's poverty is masked. Adequate data for the study of women's poverty dynamics are needed (both qualitative and quantitative oriented) in order to address some questions. A new and more suitable theoretical paradigm, a different analytic framework and a new methodology is required in order to understand their situation and implement appropriate public policies.

Kokkinos George
Aegean University: Mémoire institutionnelle et anti-mémoire: le récit de vie du marin Stamatis Skordos et le dossier le concernant, constitué par la police

Le phénomène de l’épanouissement et de la démocratisation de la mémoire historique fait son apparition durant les années 1970. Il est organiquement lié à l'abandon du caractère réglementaire du récit national, qui était fondé à l'idée d'une mémoire collective nationale, unique et compacte et il est produit non seulement de la démocratisation de l'historiographie, mais aussi de l'effondrement des «grandes idéologies» et des récits du 20ème siècle, principalement de l'idée du Progrès (opinion de Henry Rousso et François Bedarida). Des mémoires multiples qui, par le passé, étaient reprimées, ont émergé et elles ont fait paraître non seulement la demande de la vérité historique, avec le témoignage individuel, mais aussi le vécu en tant que critère inhérent de leur authenticité. L’épanouissement de la mémoire est lié aussi à l’épanouissement de la littérature autobiographique, à l'occupation avec l'histoire familiale, ainsi qu’ à la création de musées personnels.Michel Wieviorka considère que l’ assaut dans la sphère publique de mémoires individuelles hétéroclites et multiples ne surgit pas uniquement de l'incertitude de l'avenir et de la crise des valeurs du présent, qui ont entraîné le recul au passé, soit en tant qu’ assise, soit en tant que consolation, soit en tant que fil conducteur, mais aussi en tant que conséquence de la pression, que les groupes organisés, opprimés ou victimes d'élimination systématique, ont exercée par le passé, afin que leur offre soit reconnue et que leur vécu soit sauvé.
Le témoignage et le dossier du marin communiste et syndicaliste Stamatis Scordos originaire de Korthi d'Andros, parent éloigné de Dimitris Glinos, offrent l'occasion à l'historien d'enrichir l'enquête historique avec deux exitants et nouveaux - dans le cadre de l'historiographie grecque au moins - produits de sources historiques primaires : une source de première personne et une source archivistique, désormais rarement disponible, qui sauve la mémoire institutionnelle d'une longue période de répression du mouvement communiste, le traitement de ces sources étant sensé obéir à de nouvelles techniques méthodologiques, qui renient la logique du fétichisme positiviste, sans cependant réfuter les fonctionnements traditionnels de la verification de la fiabilité des sources historiques primaires, qui sont fondées sur le contrôle de validité intérieur et extérieur et sur le recoupement des informations. Parallèlement, en raison de leur nature et des nouvelles questions qu’ elles posent, ces sources permettent à l'historien de se mesurer à la problématique historiografique moderne, telle que celle-ci est composée par la nouvelle histoire politique, l'histoire sociale dans sa version « de l'histoire d'en bas », la micro-histoire, l'histoire orale et l'histoire des représentations collectives et des mentalités, en révélant l'action, le vécu, les modes de construction et de perception du temps, ainsi que les représentations collectives des classes sociales «tributaires». À travers cet affrontement, l’historien minimise le risque de succomber à des préjugés idéologiques, qui idéalisent des aspects du passé, ou à des tendances modernes, qui parfois changent l'historien en détective ou en chasseur de têtes et parfois en propagandiste soit de l’idée d’une identité compacte et renfermée, soit en promoteur des procédures de construction de cette idée. En ce sens, le témoignage et le dossier de Stamatis Scordos ont une signification pour la science de l'histoire non seulement en tant que traces-preuves de la particularité individuelle et de l'aventure d'un communiste syndicaliste, de sa marche idéologique et de son engagement, mais aussi en tant que prismes reliés, à travers lesquels l'historien peut entreprendre d’ évoluer du partiel au collectif et, si possible, à l’universel.

Kokogiannis Kostas
University of Thessaloniki: Re-negotiating the aims of the hierarchically structured education: transformable power and pedagogic identity

Indeed, in our days, the administrative organization of education unfortunately imposes the operation of an "advantageous observatory" through which we can finally gaze one and unique meaning of the educational phenomena: more particularly, the educational phenomena function as a "well-orderly factory" of foreseeable and consequently controllable situations. This "well-orderly factory", that is strengthened by the discourse of homogeneity, supports itself onto the two basic structural elements of educational system: a) the center of control (everything is being regulated and formed by the ministry of education, as it happens mainly in Greece) and b) the aims of the educational organization, which are supported by a central system of values that is found in the top of educational system (and, consequently, everything else inside the system should be considered as a specialization and application of these values).
Besides, the lower position of the educator within the hierarchical scale and the control (legislative, bureaucratic…) that is exerted upon him led to the perception that the educator isn't less than an executive body (particularly in Greece) - a perception that affected and affects upon his "self-image" and social prestige negatively.
Moreover, the administrative norms (despite they reproductively reflect the government owned power) simultaneously create a complex mesh of practices that assist the production of new forms of power within the pedagogic relations. According to the Foucault, the disciplinary coercions "have their own particular discourse and create same systems of knowledge and various cognitive fields".
Therefore, the fact that the power within the transitional educational space is today exerted via, on the one hand, the legal frame of the educational politics and, on the other hand, the techniques of discipline ("standard'" codes of behavior that produce and reproduce power in the context of educational administrative model), as well as the fact that the fermentations of "standardization" increasingly dominate on the legal processes, finally interpret the lack of initiative and creativity of all that they work and live in the school, explain the emaciation of the right to be different, justify the annihilation of each "self-administrative experience" through the free experimentation. The pedagogic identity of educator is permanently found in a conflicting process…

Kontoyianni Alkistis & Xenia Arapaki
University of Thessaly: Suppositions... Propositions... about Transitions, Using New Technologies in the Field of Visual Arts Education and Drama in Education

This study refers to a survey, part of a wider research, an interactive pilot project in Art Education, applied in the Post-graduate Studies of the Department of Early Childhood Education at the University of Thessaly. This project aims at Post-graduate students training in using new technologies to the field of Visual Arts Education and Dramatic in Education.
Specifically, the structure and the content of the project are presented, while emphasis is given to its design principles followed by the transition to Dramatic expression as: (a) The organic connection between theory and practice, (b) the in depth study and analysis of the selected painting, (c) the emphasis on its morphological elements, (d) the dramatic representation of the painting’s thematic environment and, (e) further elaboration, analysis and evaluation of it by using drama techniques. Finally, the multi - dynamic character of the project is pointed out and elements of its evaluation are given.

Krabi Kristiina
Tallinn University: University teacher's professional identity construction as learning

During last 10 years several researches have focused on academic's identity in order to map changes in higher education at the core of the processes. It can be said that the profession is changing towards diversity and fragmentation, and the expertise of university teaching is achieved through social learning in Estonia. The paper is part of the doctoral research, which originates from the need to know, what are the options to support university teachers' professional development. It seems that the professionalism of the university teachers' is defined by others (administrators, students), but not hearing their voice. The focus of the research is on the university teacher's professional identity and its construction. Understanding university teacher's professional development as a means of professional identity construction is important as the self is at the core of the decisions, evaluations and meaning making, but there is a threat to see their professional development from too agentic position (Bourdieu, Passeron & Saint Martin 1994). Therefore the task of the research is to understand university teacher's professional development contextually.
Professional identity is seen as a professional self-concept (Olesen 2003) and professional identity construction can be conceptualized as learning in its broader meaning. The research question is: how do the university teachers' understand their development of professional identity and their professional identity.
In order to understand the processes and find similar and differentiating points, 11 interviews were conducted with lecturers and professors in Tallinn University. The paper is based on the secondary analysis of 11 semi-structured interviews; the interviews were analyzed based on grounded theory.

Kravaritou Yiota
University of Thessaloniki: Claude Cahun: Une citoyenne europeenne

Claude Cahun (1894-1954), issue d'une famille bourgeoise, de Nantes est connue mondialement pour son oeuvre photographique et ses photomontages pionniers presque inconnus pendant son vivant, revelant un imaginaire feminin unique, qui est revendique par ailleurs a nos jours par le mouvement lesbien, vu sa relation de vie' avec sa demi- soeur, en raison du mariage de leur parents, Suzane Malherbe.
L' activite de Claude Cahun est cependant polymorphe: elle est poete, ecrivain, elle s' occupe du theatre, frequente les surrealistes et participe au mouvement surrealiste, elle est donc active politiquement. Pendant l'occupation allemande elle fait la resistance contre les nazis pendant quatre ans des l'ile anglais Jersey, ou s'etait installee depuis 1937 avec sa compagnon. Pour cette raison elles seront arretees, emprisonees et condamnees a mort- la sentence n'a pas pu etre executee a cause de la Liberation. o Ma contribution(paper) se trouvera dans le deuxieme sous- theme «Identities and Selves: ...the narrated and narrating self». Je compte utiliser les ecrits autobiogaphiques de Claude Cahun, notamment son texte Confidence au miroir, essaie autobiographique qui commence a ecrire en 1945, peu apres sa liberation, deux longues lettres addressees a ses amis et ses notes pour ecrire l'histoire de ces annees sous l'Occupation.Ces texes ne sont publies que recemment- Leperlier, Paris, 2002. Cela permettra de voire l' evolution de sa pensee politique qui l'ont conduit a l'act de resistance. Il s'agit de la periode sa vie et de son activite qui, d'apres ses ecrits, compte pour elle enormement. Je veux voir comment cette bourgeoise, boheme, artiste etc, a pu acquerir une conscience politique, un soi(self) anti-nationaliste et anti-nazi, des ideaux democratiques ou plutot l' ideal pour la liberte (pour elle : amour liberte )qui la menent a lutter sans penser a sa vie, au nom de la citoyennete («.. le citoyen de la republique humanisant..»), a l' occurrence, dans le context de la deuxieme querre mondiale et le lieu de son action, europeenne.

Kravva Vasiliki
University of Thessaloniki: Deepening the understanding of cultural distinctiveness and belonging through life-story telling

The paper explores some issues drawn from a particular life history: an interview from an old woman who was an Orthodox Christian until the age of 18, "became" a Jew after that age and lived as "a Jew" ever after. The interview was taken at the Jewish old people's home in Thessaloniki a few months ago and is part of a European research programme called CENTROPA which researches pre-War and post-War lives of European Jews, in this case of Salonican Jews. The life-story under discussion sketches the life of a 95 woman who was born by Orthodox Christians in Egypt, Cairo, originates from Thrace (at that time the place was part of the Ottoman Empire) and Russia, lived in Athens and the island of Lesvos, came to Thessaloniki and at the age of 18 met her future husband, a Salonican Jew and risked her life during the second world war in order to save him. Her story – apart from explaining step by step the diasporic conditions that gradually gave place to what is now the "homogenous" Greek nation-state - is a magnificent example of how collectivities can be informed by personal views and subjectivities, how there is not just one reality but complex transformations of it, how identities are not static and prescribed but subject to transformations and negotiations. Above all the story of this old woman informs and challenges conventional notions of history reminding us that there are multiple, often debatable histories. A personal narration strongly indicating that there is nothing natural, or innate or even unchangeable about communities, belonging and cultural distinctiveness.

Kurantowicz Ewa & Rozalia Ligus & Adrianna Nizinska
University of Lower Silesia, Poland: Transitional Spaces Of Learning In HE: The Polish Context Of PRILHE Project Research

In this paper authors are about to present the HE institutions in Poland as a meeting space of students needs and educational offer, both embedded in social/ cultural background with its qualities such as free market, permanent change or growing individualization. Authors perceived reflective and independent learning as a one of the key for both the individuals and the institutions to become familiar with the permanent present and (probably) future changes. The data and some conclusions that are enclosed in this paper are the result of the first analysis of Polish discourse over the higher education in connection with the PRILHE (Promoting Reflective Independent Learning In HE – Socrates-Grundtvig Project) questionnaire research while looking for the learning dimensions of non-traditional students.

Laskaridis Giorgos
University of Thessaloniki: Feeling of shame and schooling trajectory in the case of migrant students

The children of migrant families go through a painful experience as students in a new school environment. In this paper I will discuss how the feeling of shame can constitute an important factor which determines the schooling trajectory of migrant students. In order to do so I will present a part of my analysis which is based on the life story of a young male Albanian who migrated to Greece.

Leon Maria
Deree College - The American College of Greece: Relationality of Self and Other / Reciprocity of life-stories

Cavarero borrows Arendt's theory on the "who" and "what"; the woman writer of autobiography desires the "bios", a desire to write how she lives as a unique entity, as opposed to writing the "zoe" or a way of life within and about those roles assigned by society. Any woman "who is the autobiography's protagonist, shows herself to be unique and unrepeatable" (C71). In other words, her life story or storia puts into words the "uniqueness of her personal identity" (C71), the "who", as opposed to the "what", that is, "the qualities, the character, the roles, the outlooks of the self". (C73) She argues that the 'what' is inevitably changeable and multiple, whereas the who – "as the uniqueness of the self in her concrete and insubstitutable existence – persists in continual self-exhibition, consisting in nothing else but this exposure, which cannot be transcended." (C73) In her book, Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood, Cavarero repeatedly states that "I tell you my story in order to make you tell it to me" (C63): Women tell stories in order to hear them reiterated from the point-of-view of another, the listener or reader. "At work, therefore is a mechanism of reciprocity through which the narratable self of each woman passes on to the self-narration, up to the point at which the other woman is familiar enough with the story to be able to tell it herself". (C63) The story-telling procedure follows a recursive pattern, as stories are told from one to the other, while they are thrust back and forth, altered in form, style and language, but fundamentally based on understanding the "who" as opposed to the "what" to borrow Arendt's terms. Although the storytelling can be repetitive, the life-story is unique. Narrating the "who" involves narrating one's life story, the unique story of an unrepeatable existence of an insubstitutable being. This process is however hindered or paradoxically catalysed by woman's effort to tell the "who", as opposed to the "what", or those characteristics that designate her as mother, daughter, wife, teacher or nurse. "'Who' somebody is or was, we can know only by knowing the story of which he himself is the hero – his biography, in other words; everything else we know of him, including the work he may have produced and left behind, tells us only 'what' he is or was." (186)
Caverero also refers to a form of "narrative friendship" and "psychoanalytic dynamic" between narrator and audience, wherein lies the "scene of a narratable self that offers autobiographical materials to a biographer, who in turn, is an accomplice to the whole operation." (C63) Indeed, this theory has been supported by other critics as well, among them Carolyn Steedman who endorses the idea of a psychoanalytic dynamic between narrator and audience, as shown in the following: "The psychoanalyst might indeed be interpreted as a story-taker whose purpose is to give back to the patient the story of his or her life, welded into a chronological sequence and narrative coherence, so that at the end of it all, the coming to psychic health might be seen as the re-appropriation of one's own life story." (C64)
The desire of the self to hear her story from the mouth of another induces a "double-voicedness", as defined also by Sidonie Smith in A Poetics of Women's Autobiography (1987). In her work, Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, Self-Portraiture (1989), Francoise Lionnet uses the term "metissage" or "braided texts" to explain the plurality of voices that speak the life of the subject. Shari Benstock has, in turn, provides a Lacanian reading of the "relationality" in women's autobiography in her essay "Authorising the Autobiographical" (WAT 13). Benstock presents the interplay of voices as the "fissures of female discontinuity", or the "fluid boundaries" between the self and the self-image. According to Benstock, the autobiographical act gestures toward a desire for the 'self' and the 'self-image' to coincide, but because of these 'fissures', autobiography does not lead to a unitary self, but a self de-centred. This interplay of voices is synonymous to the self becoming an other, in order to be able to tell his or her story. Cavarero slightly diverges from these traditional modes of psychoanalytic and Lacanian readings of Autobiography and points out that, "The self, using memory as a separated mirror in which he inseparable consists, appears to himself as an other- he externalises his intimate self-reflection. The Other, therefore, is here the fantasmatic product of a doubling, the supplement of an absence, the parody of a relation…an other who is really an other." (C84)

Licen Nives & Maja Furlan
University of Ljubljana: Analysis of the family as learning site: expanding the discourse of lifelong learning to consider family learning and bibliotherapy as a method in family life education

Our research delves into the way which current discourses in lifelong learning are delineated by competitive values of marketplace. The paper focuses on the significance of the family as an important site of learning in everyday life.
Using biographical research methodology (biographical thematic interview as chosen form of narrative) our research analysed ten life stories. We were interested in existence of marker events which have influenced the learning process.
By examining the quality of relationships with children and with other adults in family and by examining how relationships and family problems shape learning experiences, insights may be gained into the particular challenges that parents, partners and adult children as learners face. From this, attention can be focused upon developing educational programmes.
We tried to find methods that could be used to improve reflexive learning, understanding and interpreting. Bibliotherapy could be an effective method to stimulate introspection and to make individuals think about their behaviour and their feelings. Art (literature) can provide space for »reparation«. By understanding the story of the other the individual can relate it to his or her own story. Trough phases of recognition, examination and juxtaposition the adult attains application to himself or herself.

Lonnheden Christina
Stockholm University: To move - to feel - to learn: emotions and adults learning from a life history perspective

Emotions from a social science perspective has been a field of research that the scientific society has rejected for several years, even if thinkers such as Freud ([1905] 1938) and Darwin ([1872] 1955) as well as James (1922), Mead (1895) and Dewey (1922), and later on even Sartre (1948) as wells as Nussbaum ([2001] 2003) and other philosophers have theorized emotions in both interesting and fruitful ways. Despite that the empirical research in this area is limited to the last thirty years for example in sociology (Hoschschild [1983] 2003, Flam, 2000, Barbalet, ed., 2002). Research in Education and more specific Adult Education are not exceptions here, which is surprising, since learning and emotions are very much interconnected with each other and often mentioned in adult education research but seldom explored. Brookfield (2000) is one of the few who have illuminated this subject in empirical research concerning adult in higher education. Sociologist Barbalet (2002) writes that emotions can be described as "what might be called an experience of involvement [---] not the subjects thoughts about their experiences, or the language of self-explanation arising from the experience but that immediate contact with the world the self has through involvement" (ibid. p.4). The self's involvement with the world in terms of teachers, colleagues, family, managers, information and knowledge etc. is without doubt a central aspect in all learning processes but especially biographical learning processes.
Emotions, adults (biographical) learning and work are issues that are illuminated by the results of life history research carried out at three working places, where men and women with shorter education works. The research will be presented in my PhD thesis in the year 2006. Findings from this research will be introduced in this paper where especially gendered and cultural emotional connections to learning are explored. How men and women learn from each other under conditions of gendered emotional structures which constitute parts of their biographies as well as identities and how these structures are in a state of transformation will be focused in the paper. Generally emotional rules are developed both in family life and in working places. Rules might differ but the person has to handle and learn to act in accordance to them. These rules are of importance to the employees when reacting and acting at work. Which emotions are socially negotiated and allowed to feel and express them, which on the other hand are not and how does this affect learning processes are all the issues that will be considered and presented in the paper.

Magnusson Nicola
Stockholm University: Experiences of migration and democracy - examined using a biographical approach

In my PhD I am examining what it involves to move from an authoritarian country to a democracy from the perspective of political refugees in order to gain a deeper understanding of what significance the concept of equality and democracy have in particular for these refugees. The informants in my study have fought for democracy in their home country and as a result have been forced to migrate for their own safety. The aim of my research is to investigate what lies behind the concept of democracy and indeed equality and what it involves to experience the life changing event of forced migration from the perspective of refugees using a biographical approach. The research is also comparative between England and Sweden.
For the purpose of this conference paper I will present how refugees make sense of their life stories and what strategies they adopt in the informal learning process involved in forced migration from a non democratic society to democracy. Listening to refugee's biographies provides valuable data as to how refugees construct meaning in their life situation and what strategies are adopted in their attempt to create understanding for the concept of democracy and what meaning they assign to such a concept in light of their own experience of forced migration.
Since these refugees have constructed a positive view of democracy in their home countries before migration this paper will present what can occur when these two views of understanding meet and how these refugees learn from their biographies. The paper seeks to examine learning for democracy for the socially excluded, in this case refugees using a biographical approach. This approach provides an opportunity to analyse a refugee's way of learning democracy and create meaning in their lives in a new society and indeed the opportunities and obstacles faced by refugees moving to a democracy.
Refugees use different strategies in order to make sense of their life situation of migrating from a society that has maybe punished them for their political opinion, to a long and drawn out migration process, which can have involved walking from one country to another to avoid being traced, to arriving in a so called democracy that does not recognise them as a competent individual that can have something worthwhile to contribute. These strategies will be discussed in the conference paper.
When we exclude groups from society because of their ethnic background people build their own systems for the basis for their identity. Many people who can't make it through the system, build their own system that they can be accepted in and survive in. This exclusion is a dilemma for democracy. A greater understanding of the mechanisms behind such a process of mutual learning is required. Therefore it is interesting to examine what kinds of informal learning takes place in understanding democracy using a biographical approach and what kind of learning for democracy takes place as a result of migration and exclusion.
The paper will discuss the use of a biographical approach when researching a refugee's life story and will also include examples from my PhD empirical data that I am currently working on. These examples enable an illustration of the kinds of learning strategies that are adopted by refugees which make it possible for them to construct their own understanding of democracy and what forced migration to democracy can involve.

Magos Kostas
University of Athens: The autobiographical experience as a tool for intercultural awareness in teacher training

The presentation is concerned with the benefits of using the autobiographical experience in an intercultural training for nursery teachers. The training was part of the course "The Intercultural Dimension in Education" delivered in the In-Service Nursery Teachers' Training School of the University of Athens.
In this course the autobiographical experience was systematically used as a tool for the understanding and the analysis of the way discriminations are reproduced, but also for a general thinking over dealing with Otherness. Indicative references and examples of how the autobiographical experience was used will be highlighted in order for the methodology followed and the conclusions to be best illustrated.

Malcolm Irene
University of Stirling: Life history research as emotional labour: Power, class and gender in transitional space

Researchers enter a transitional space when they embark on life history interviewing. However, this space is intersected by social structures and their related norms that have influenced researcher's and participant's identities: we are caught between agency and structure, among social and political boundaries.
The role of emotion in life history research is worthy of attention, particularly in view of its contested role in current educational debates that warn of "therapisation" and a trend among educators to become "therapeutic professionals" (Ecclestone et al, 2005, Furedi, 2004). This has been seen in turn to present a danger of diminished selfhood and low educational expectations on the part of learners. Some researchers have identified the increased popularity of life history methodology as a related symptom - part of a trend towards introspection (Ecclestone et al, 2005) that inhibits radical moves toward political and social empowerment through education and learning.
Central to such critiques has been a conception of self-esteem that links it, principally, to individual pathology. This paper will a) describe emotion work and some of its implications in life history research and b) challenge some current assumptions by relating emotion to structural positioning and gender. It will draw on the experience of conducting 80 life history interviews, as part of Learning Lives, a UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded to identify the legacy (Skeggs, 1996) of class attitudes to emotion as part of an individual and group sense of self. The formation of emotional capital is linked to identity, and in this paper the emotional labour connected with such identity work will be described in relation to power and the effects of class and gender (Hey, 2003 and Quinn 2004). It will explore radical understandings of identity in life history and ask whether such formulations may be linked to political understandings, leading beyond the individualisation of experience sometimes associated with the methodology.
Life history interviewing may be said to involve "deep gestures of exchange" (Hochschild, 1983). Drawing on empirical data, I will describe the emotional labour involved, with its implications and risks, as well as methodological benefits. The ability of the researcher to engage in emotional labour is central to the success of the method and I realised early in the research project that the recruitment and opening up of interviews with participants depended to some extent on my personal disposition. The outcome of the researcher's emotional labour is a journey undertaken by the interviewee to recount her history – a form of identity work that is also emotional labour. While individual stories speak of power, class and gender, power considerations are mirrored in the situation of the researcher herself who is caught in a transitional space between the interviewee who controls what she reveals and the Principal Investigator who will be "in-charge" of interpreting the meanings that the researcher labours to produce. This seeming lack of control reflects the researcher's position in a research hierarchy, where the ability to exercise agency in a transitional space is vital to influencing the research process.

Manthou Chryssa
University of Ioannina: Feminine routes: exceeding the limits in education and work. Biographies of women of the Evening Junior High School of Ioannina

The Evening Junior High School is a social form in the basis of the legislation of the Greek Educational System. It gives an alternative solution not only to working students, male and female, above the age of 14, but also to adults, men and women to obtain the certificate of compulsory schooling. The whole educational procedure and teaching activity are the same as those of the typical school.
The present announcement is trying to present the results of an empirical long term research, the population of which was made up of 20 women, students of the Evening Junior High School (1991-2004).
For the realisation of the research the methodology of the biographic approach with interviews in the framework of life stories was adopted.
The targets of the research were the following:
a)The recording and understanding of the motivation of the attendance of these women in the Evening framework.
b)The study of the mode with which these women experience school life.
c)The significance of their expectations from this effort and
d)The investigation of their professional setting-up with starting point the Certificate of the Evening Junior High School.

Menoutis Vasilios
Hellenic Association Of Groupanalysis And Group Psychotherapy: Group-Analytic Paideia and Idioprosopia

Group Analysis constitutes on of the most creative and constructive movements in contemporary science, including Sociology, Medicine Physics and Philosophy. As a late development of Psychoanalysis the similarity in linguistic code and theoretical approach is only to be expected. Nevertheless, its context differs since the function of Small, Median and Large Groups is substituted for the binary relationship in Psychoanalysis.
The particular elements of the groups are distinguished and identified according to structure, context, process, content and metastructure in both their static and dynamic dimension.
Group Analysts must make initial assumptions on the manifest, latent, projective, dialectically opposing, antithetic and metaphoric dimensions of what the members of the group say during the sessions, in order to analyse the variety of information at the right time and for the benefit of all parties concerned. Thus the process is facilitated and respect is established for the emotions of anguish and the resistances of each member and the group as a whole. Hence it is evident that the group is a place where the life-history of each member but also the life-history of the group is created. In order to create a sense of respect for that history, certain rules had to be established.
M.L.J. Abercrombie's contribution is considered to be crucial in the history of group analysis. She attempted to raise the level of ingenuity and astuteness of student scientific inquiry on the basis of her own observations, of contextual interrelations, and of interpersonal relations. She eventually succeeded in creating a new climate in interpersonal and teaching ethics and deontology.
At the end of the process each member of the group attained a better understanding of the factors by which scientific thought is influenced. The relations between professors and students were radically differentiated from what is usually the case in standard learning environments, typified by lack of original thinking, prejudice and preconceived opinion. Thus the borrowing of the term idioprosopia from Philosophy and its application in a Group- analytic context becomes itself the hallmark of the Self in transition.

Mentzeniotis Dionisis
Hellenic Open University: Dialogue in Community:The dialogical relation between one and many, between self and community in Descartes, Heraclitus, and Plotinus.

Dialogue for us is not just one of the driving forces of social creativity; it is not something about which we talk, it is something within which we talk, we think, we are being defined, and – most importantly – exist. Initially it is discussed the modern (mis)understanding of Descartes' ideas (according to which the individual derived from Descartes' conception of the self as a private, self-reflexive subject which could think, act, and exist in isolation), and we interpret the Cartesian 'cogito' as a provisional ideal, a means to a new social order, a 'passage' strategy to a community of subjects (whilst later thinkers opposed the individual to the community, creating 'ubiquitous' conflict), not an end in itself. Then, it is attempted a dialogical interpretation of Heraclitus' and Plotinus' commonness of logos, which affirms that thought, in its most genuine sense, cannot be accomplished in isolation but is an essentially joint act.

Merrill Barbara & Rennie Johnston
Univesity of Warwick: Changing learning identities for working-class adult students in the transitional space of Higher Education

This paper explores the changing 'learning identities' of working class students in Higher Education based on some UK case studies within a recent European research project on 'Learning in Higher Education'. It uses the term 'learning identity' as a way of acknowledging the irregular and complex interrelationship of learning and identity and the fact that, particularly for non-traditional adult students, learning identities co-exist with and influence and are in turn influenced by other adult identities. The paper will focus on how the biographies of learners in the study in question reveal a range of learning experiences which influence the construction of new learning identities in a learning situation which may, for working class students, be characterised by risk and uncertainty.
As Higher Education institutions across Europe begin to engage with a greater range and variety of students, it is increasingly important that they take account of the learning biographies, attitudes and starting points of these non-traditional students. (Barnett 1997). Universities need to listen to the voices of these learners in relation to their learning experiences, circumstances and needs and implement changes in order to adjust both culturally and structurally to a more diverse student population if they are to become lifelong learning institutions.
The paper will use a biographical research approach to identify and understand the changing learning identities of working class adult students as they engage in transitional processes in their biography. Biographical research provides an important tool for enlightening and revealing the impact that learning has on a person's learning trajectory and learning identity. In narrating their experiences as learners before and during university participants revealed the dialectics of structure and agency in constructing their learner identity. Such research indicates that studying for a degree in the transitional space of a university transforms, for many, their identity: s/he becomes a changed self. Higher education offers a space in which the present and future self is worked out through reflection of the past biography and learning experiences. In Bourdieu's (1984) term, the process involves adopting a new or modified habitus, a set of dispositions which incline agents to react in certain ways.
In a wider societal context, Manuel Castells (1997) makes the crucial theoretical distinction between role and identity. The former, for example, worker, mother, is primarily defined by the institutions and organisations of society while the latter is primarily a source of meaning making for the actor her/himself. He argues that identities are ultimately stronger sources of meaning because of the process of self-construction and individuation they involve. This paper looks to interrogate and develop this argument through examining the biographies of four working-class adult students from two UK universities. It sets out to explore the changing learning identities of these students as they enter HE and the implications of this for re-thinking the processes of learning for non-traditional adult students in higher education.

Mica Adriana
Polish Academy: The Chronicle of Matei and of the Treasured Town of Cluj

Few years ago the city of Cluj from Romania was celebrating the Fadrusz’ Days, which mainly stands for the Transylvanian celebration of the sculptor of the statues of Matei Corvinul from Cluj and of Wesselenyi from Zalau (October 11 – 12, 2002). The event attracted such an inquisitive public because of the contentious history which underpins the symbolic texture of the two statues.
Like the destiny of the statue of Matei, the monument to Wesselenyi became the object of substantial debate as the city endured the tribulations of the change of the political regime. Erected on September 18, 1902, it was demolished in 1935, and eventually restored in 1942.
After 1945, the communist authorities accepted the role played by the Fortyeight-ist baron in setting free the serfs, and therefore left the statue in peace, but the nationalistic eruptions immediately after the revolution left their scars on the statue
Aside from the fact that the statues are works of art by the same artist, the quite similar destiny of the two statuary groups is rather explained by the fact that the figures represented are perfectly integrated in the Hungarian nationalist pantheon, but problematically or incompletely legitimated in the Romanian one.
For these reasons, but also because of the savoir the details of certain urban legends pose, the present paper addresses the beginning of the polemics concerning the questrian statue of Matei Corvinul, in Cluj.

Mitakidou Soula & Dowdy, Joanne Kilgour & Williams, T. Shane
University of Thessaloniki: Greek Rom women in their own words

This presentation aims at revealing an authentic image of what it means to be a gypsy woman in Greece. The women's pictures emerge from interviews they gave, where they were encouraged to talk about themselves, about the people who affected their lives, about their life patterns, their family habits, and their hopes and aspirations for themselves and their children. Acting as an audience, the interviewers were challenged to "co construct" these women's portraits, keeping in mind that the women interacted with them and told them aspects about themselves that they thought they needed to know. The interviews are analyzed and patterns are identified and discussed in the framework of the Greek context.
Facilitating these women in sharing the narratives of their life stories allows us, the "outsiders," an insight about the real predicament of being a Greek Rom woman, but also encourages the women to reflect on their own biographies, and, hopefully, to make sense of their personal journeys.

Molho Rena
University of Thessaloniki: Digital Autobiographical Biographies: Centropa's Method in Reconstructing and Sharing the History and Culture of Annihilated Jewish Communities

The Centropa "Witness to a Jewish Century" project, aims in constructing an audio-visual digital archive of Jewish oral life histories. The interviews taken for Centropa in the last five years are geared towards rediscovering the Jewish world-s in many countries and its memory before, during and after the II WW. The subtitle 'Witness to a Jewish Century' relates to the connection of the interviewee with his ancestors, his offsprings and grandchildren, that often belong to the second or third generation, or the same age group interested in conducting the interview.
This paper presents the methodology adopted by the Centropa's interviewing process inclusive of all aspects of Jewish life and Culture in Europe. Life stories of European Jews still living in their country of origin are enriched by a family tree, glossaries, recipees, jokes and commented family pictures, that restore the Jews to their human and cultural context. Eventhough the Holocaust experience is not excluded, its association with what was and what has changed since it happened has a greater impact on the museum and internet user exposed to the mutlidimensional material provided to him electronically. Easily accessible and multifaceted this material defines cultural distinctiveness in a positive and specific way : It triggers the viewer's thinking and perception by activating spontaneous comparisons with his own family story and culture. It could therefore constitute an ideal tool to enrich tolerance education around the world. At the same time it is a multidynamic source of research in social sciences.

Monbaron Jacqueline
Universite de Fribourg: La compétence biographique comme soutien aux transitions de l'existence

La base empirique qui soutient ma réflexion est une recherche que j'ai poursuivie pendant plusieurs années avec des formateurs et des formatrices d'adultes, dans le but de mettre en évidence les principales composantes de leur identité professionnelle.
Je m'arrêterai sur le processus de recherche-formation mené à l'aide d'une approche de type biographique. L'objectif est de montrer comment une telle démarche, qui a amené chacun-e des protagonistes à ne pas être uniquement objet de la recherche, mais bel et bien sujet à part entière, a produit des effets perceptibles sur cette personne. Il est résulté de la démarche poursuivie la production d'un savoir sur soi et sur la construction de l'identité des professionnels des formateurs. Elle a en outre, par sa dimension réflexive et interactive, favorisé une transformation de soi et le développement d'une véritable "compétence biographique". Cette compétence permet à ces formateurs et ces formatrices d'être mieux outillés pour affronter les importants changements qui jalonnent l'existence, tant professionnelle que personnelle, de tout adulte confronté aux dures réalités du contexte socio-économique contemporain.

Monteagudo Jose Gonzalez
Univesity of Seville: Autobiographical Formation And Educational Emotion

In this paper I explore the relevance of autobiographical approaches to emotional and sentimental education. Traditionally the affective, emotional and interpersonal dimensions have been largely underestimated. Recently, more importance has been attributed to feelings and emotions. Autobiographical activities (in oral, written, creative, and other multiple ways) are an important instrument in order to educate emotions, through dialogue, understanding and expression, from an emancipatory viewpoint in a group setting.

Nakou Irene
Univesity of Thessaly: From childhood to adulthood and vice versa: approaching early childhood through adults' narratives

The paper is based on the preliminary results of an on-going research programme on the theme Early Childhood And Material Culture, which is based on adults' narratives about their first experiences. The collected data enabled multiple alternative readings related to several spheres of early childhood, which allow for a range of understandings about the significance of material culture in early childhood. Among others, subjects' remembrances imply the unpredictability of experience and the significance of transitional spaces and transitional processes in their life histories. On the whole, life history research seems to open an alternative route for understanding childhood and the transitional processes that lead from childhood to adulthood and vice versa. Children and childhoods appear diverse and unique.

Navridis Klimis
Univesity of Athens: Travail du génogramme et métaphores du transfert dans la thérapie de groupe

Cette communication se refaire à une utilisation spécifique du génogramme en thérapie de groupe avec des participants ayant des difficultés en matière de symbolisation (ex-toxicomanes de double diagnostique en voie de réinsertion), dans le cadre de laquelle le génogramme est conçu et mis en valeur en tant que technique de médiation. Nous considérons que le genogramme ne porte pas uniquement une information objective concernant la trajectoire et la situation familiale du sujet qui l’a produit, mais que ceci est fabriqué, présenté et parlé sous l’égide de l’inconscient et de la communication inter psychique groupale. C’est à dire, que le genogramme est également porteur d’une information transférentielle singulière. D’autre part, ces participants en question, qui apparemment vivent dans le groupe une réalité imaginaire transférentielle, ne disposent pas la capacité psychologique leur permettant de la mettre en mots et la penser en termes de métaphore. Par conséquent, ils sont aussi incapables de saisir et d’en profiter d’une interprétation du transfert de la part de l’analyste du groupe.
Objet a la fois matériel et symbolique, imaginaire et réel, qui renvoie en même temps à l’intra psychique, à l’interpsychique et à l’interpersonnel (passé, aussi bien que présent), le génogramme va donc ouvrir un espace intermédiaire, s’interposant entre le personnel et le groupal, entre l’Histoire, l’histoire et les histoires du groupe ou des familles, et libérant ainsi la voie à l’imaginaire individuel et groupal, au travail du transfert et à la communication.

Nomikou Anna
Univesity of Sussex: Remembering and Revealing the Past: Memory, Identity and Narrative in personal testimonies

There exists a dialectic relationship between memory, identity and narrative in the way in which people construct their stories, which forms a vital part of life history research. One's identity is shaped by one's memories and in turn, one's memories are influenced and transformed by one's identity. Hence, while narrating a life story, one is involved in the process of re-negotiating one's identity and making sense of one's past in the present. At the same time, one is also involved in a particular relationship created throughout the interactive process of the interview, the nature of which will ultimately determine the extent and type of information revealed. In the course of an oral history interview memories are re-collected, meanings are negotiated, identities are constructed and re-constructed and narratives are shaped. In this paper, using the case study of the life story of a repatriated immigrant from Egypt, I will explore the ways in which the content and form of a narrative is influenced and shaped by the various relationships developed during the process of story-telling.

Ntaousani Elia
National Technical University of Athens: Two parallel analyses of identity as performative transition.

Adopting Butler's thinking, based on the idea of deconstruction, we firstly systematize the mechanism of the performative gender model by exploring notions such as "binarism", "asymmetry" and "heterosexual matrix". Next step is to check if this model could turn helpful to deconstruct or at least extrude to its limits the exemplary case of a discourse directly related to gender issues: "sex"-"gender"-"desire". Proceeding to a second level, we attempt a parallel approach of space as well as of the spatiality of performativity, only to finally ascertain continuous displacement of space characteristics similar and proportional to those of gender ones. Finally, we dare a comparative study between "social sex", that is gender, and "social space", that is public space, by analyzing the new triadic discourse of: "spatial duality"-"spatial asymmetry"-"heterosexual matrix". After all, we dare to ask: could we apply this performative triangular template on the final overall scheme: "subject"-"gender"-"public space;" or, better to be said, on: "identity"-"social temporality"-"gendered corprorealization of time"?

Oraiopoulos Philippos
Univesity of Thessaly: Personal History (narration) and Architecture of the City

The two semesters of the first year of studies will deal with the conceptualisation of architecture and the city together with their respective applications in each period, from prehistoric times till today, in the Greek and European civilisations. This lengthy period will be represented in the form of conceptual historical models. These models (as eidi, or forms, in the Aristotelian sense) are in some respects the keys to interpreting, and hence presenting and analysing, the more representative examples of each period. Modern conceptual design exercises will be conducted in addition to the theory, along the same line of reasoning. The first exercise, which will be handed in during the first course, is titled: PERSONAL HISTORY (narration) AND ARCHITECTURE OF THE CITY. Its aim is the critical analysis of the stereotypes and the emergence of personal traits and obsessions through the creative act with abstract formal structures.
My aim being to facilitate the exchange of views, I have provided below a description of the exercise, followed by three projects completed during this academic year (October 2005).
1st Exercise – 1st Semester: Personal History and Architecture of the City
A. Using pictures and text, present your own personal history related to the architecture of the city. Present your own architectural history, the personal stimuli that led you to choose architecture. Express your architectural memories using words and those pictures that give substance to your words, as well as your doubts, objections or fears.
B. Use pictures and text to render your idea of what city architecture is. Using abstraction, symbolism, metaphors or analogy, illustrate your narration of what you think city architecture is.
In both cases, the pictures and text can be fictitious, symbolic, abstract or even realistic creations, but always processed in such a way so as to present your personal narration.
Both text and pictures should be creatively self-defining. They should be a self-portrait of your personal relationship of the architecture of the city and the surrounding environment (natural, artificial, geographical) that you have experienced to date (A) and also what you would like the architecture of the city to be like B).
This must be rendered in such a way so that it can be exhibited, presented and discussed.
Rendering – representation mediums: collage, processed photographs, models, painting, sculpture, sketches, comics, video, texts, concrete or abstract constructions (using various materials), self-presentation, happenings, installations, and whatever best conveys your ideas.
The ingenuity displayed in the narration/text and the means used to render it, and the aesthetic result of the overall presentation, are particularly important.
The presentation will be made to teachers from the School or other Schools one month after the preliminary presentation has been made. Clarifications and discussions regarding the exercise will take place at the end of each lecture.

Paliokosta Paty
Canterbury Christ Church University: Inclusive education and special educational needs; the impact of differing school cultures on teachers and other stakeholders' interpretations of these notions and consequent practice within mainstream schools.

The ideological construct of integration /inclusion has been controversial for decades and especially after the rise of New Labour in power, inclusion has gained momentum and been placed in the centre of educational policies in the UK. Despite the fact that meeting all pupils' needs in mainstream school is supposed to be a shared rhetoric within education and society, the 'translation' of principle into reality is not so straightforward and is open to numerous interpretations. This paper explores interpretations of inclusive policies in different contexts and their implications on practice. The major theme addressed is the impact of school's ethos and culture on stakeholders' different conceptualisations of inclusion and special educational needs (SEN) within it. The aim is to reach a deeper contextual understanding of the above notions by exploring various discourses. The complexity that surrounds the notion of inclusive policies and their implementation is addressed, as a way to explain the discrepancy between theory and reality and the implications stemming from that as far as inclusive education is concerned.
The discussion is based on data stemming from research that took place in three school settings in the South-East of England, namely a comprehensive catholic, a voluntary aided high and a grammar school. As schools are organisations that have some sets of shared beliefs that dignify particular practices and behaviour (Skrtic, 1991), exploring each school's culture is essential in the effort to approach the context under which, stakeholders develop their ideologies and create their discourses. Investigating, thus, the multiple ways in which 'structures' become 'cultures' in my schools, I am observing behaviours and listening to stories. In these terms, I get engaged into a kind of story telling where I, as a writer, use the stories of stakeholders through transcripts from interviews I conducted with them as well as my own stories; those stem from my commentary upon stakeholders' own words- which I attempt to accommodate in the particular context they were created- and from my diaries where I had the opportunity to construct a new picture of what I was investigating.
Through this kind of teacher research enquiry, my aspiration is to generate pictures and theories which are of relevance to other teachers, by offering them alternative ways of understanding and acting in their own situations.

Papadimitriou Maria
Hellenic Ministry of Greece: Temporary Autonomous Museum for All (www.tama.gr)

Papadopoulou Smaragda
University of Ioannina: Life History and Biography through Bibliotherapy: a teaching tool at school in language acquisition (grades K-6th) Greece

In terms of reconsidering research and teaching methods in the continuous change of social structure in our world, this proposal will explore the implication of story telling, biographical and autobiographical narration, writing and reading through an educational theory and practice in teaching language which is called "bibliotherapy". The concept of bibliotherapy is not a new one. Simply stated bibliotherapy can be defined as the use of books to help people solve problems. It is also a technique for structuring interaction between the teacher and the participants based on mutual sharing of literature. In our proposal we examine the power of using literature on biography and life history books as long as other relevant educational materials (visual arts, films, photos) reconsidered as the capable substitute for common and traditional thematic categories in teaching language such as fiction or poetry.

Papagianni Ekaterini & E. Nina-Pazarzi & F. Paraskeva
University of Athens: Gender differences and self-esteem: supporting intercultural pupils

This paper examines how the development of mother tongue influences the students' self-esteem and performance in the subject of the host country language and how these vary according the gender.
The mother tongue plays a very important part in a child's identity and self-esteem as it provides the basis for the child's ability to learn so that the child finds it easier to learn their second language and other school subjects.
Mother Tongue Studies must be a school subject in its own right at both primary and secondary level. The objective laid down for teaching this subject is that the courses should contribute to enabling students to benefit as much as possible from their school education, while at the same time developing their bilingual identity and proficiency. The teaching is to be carried out in such a way that it promotes students' individual performance and strengthens their self-esteem.

Pazioni-Kalli Katerina
University of Edinburgh: 'Looking through her eyes': Life History/Biography as a transitional space for exploring women's learning.

The value of life histories of women in relation to adult education and learning offers a form of 'view from below' in addressing experiences that are often excluded from academic discourses (Thompson 2000; Barr 1999; Mayo 1997; Merrill 1999). Moreover, although there is now a great deal of interest in biographical research in adult education, the general tendency, however, is to be presented and analysed from an individualistic and decontextualised perspective. Thus transforming biographical research from an individualized research process into a collective one that engages with larger groups requires changes within our own epistemology or the academy itself. Further, in recent years, the development of sensitively-written life history and biographical reconstruction signals many researchers' efforts to capture not only the flux of women's actual lives, but also to incorporate their agency and unique views about their world. Biographical methods were radicalised by feminists as a means of bringing women out of obscurity and into historical and sociological research. However, a biographical tradition of 'her-story' in western countries is substantially different from those who belong to east and south-eastern European or Asian ones. The idea rooted, in Western philosophical dualisms, that privacy is linked to femininity and that public life is generally masculine has long been questioned as a universal formulation of gendered experience. Public and private spheres have been connected in very distinctive ways, for example, for Greek women. The subject-matter of (some) Greek women's personal narratives therefore differs considerably from that of the western feminist tradition of biography.
The proposed paper wants to argue that biographies can illustrate the dialectics of agency and structure in accord with C.Wright Mills (1970: 12) who argued that 'no social study that does not come back to the problems of biography, of history and of their intersections within a society has completed its intellectual journey'. Moreover, it will stress a distinct characteristic of biographical research that the positions of the researcher and the researched become a critical issue, along with the structure of the entire research process. In this respect, it draws for the most part on work by poststructuralist feminist writers. An example based on research on Greek women's learning acquired in informal learning spaces will illuminate the arguments of this paper. The aim is democracy in the production of knowledge, and the empowerment of ordinary women (and men).

Prigarin Alexander & Samaritaki Eleni
Odessa University: People and ceremonies in deportation: The Life-Story and History of a community of Thracian Greeks of Crimea

During 2001 - 2005 within the limits of the international scientific program "Greeks of Ukraine (18-21 centuries): history, culture, present" were carried out researches of the Greek population of Crimea. In particular, the database of memoirs-curriculum vitaes gathered. It has appeared, that materials of oral history allow not only is bright, but also authentically to recreate vital ways of Creams Greeks. Localness and individuality of such circle of sources has appeared unique concreteness of historical process - human memory has kept that numerous documents have not fixed. Results of work have was a source for " The Family album of Greeks of Crimea", where photographic materials and the fragments of interview opening collisions of greater historical processes on a background of private experiences have entered.
As the most remarkable among biographies of the Crimean Greeks can be considered destiny of a small Greek community Chernopolye (Karachel) area Belogorsk. This group of the Thracian Greeks who have moved to Crimea from Strange (Romeliya) in 1830, is characterized by stability of the original culture. As a basis of it the specific ritual practice - "anestinarstvo". The given community - one of few alive relicts of ancient type of outlook. It is surprising, that Sancta Konstantin and Elena's reverence and belief in the exclusiveness has helped to survive and in tragical years of the Soviet transformations and reprisals, II World wars and deportations. In 1944 all thracinian with other Greeks have been compulsorily moved to Urals region. Come back 1960th back to Crimea also connect "rational experience" with the "a mystical condition". The same spiritual core is perceived by the factor of a survival in the modern world of Ukraine. These processes passed all during a life of one generation. We have an opportunity to track interaction of traditional consciousness and the modernized world. Thus, religions customs directed on mystical reflections, isolation, selectivity.
The special accent both human memory, and our research does on the period of compulsory resettlement and residing in Urals. One level of Life-Story - a survival physical or adaptation. Another - perception of deportation through preservation of bases of the ritual practice.
One histories testify to an opportunity to avoid eviction through protection of the maximum forces, others - about abilities to survive in complex conditions with their help. Memoirs of leaders of a community on secret sacrifices and departure of other ceremonies, and also roles of spiritual patrons and their icons in rescue of a community are expressive. Here the documentary statement of events, how many the characteristic of specificity of outlook is important not so much.
The unique empirical material allows to add scientific understanding of a role of culture, especially - its religious part, in human life in the modern transformed world.

Rankovic Daniela & Ivan Halev
Belgrade Faculty of Architecture: Moving Balkan Border - Box Border: Design development of architectural concept

Having on mind what was happening on the Balkan in the past decades (we can freely say, all the time in the past), for us (people who are living in the Balkan countries) was more than just interesting to think about the border as extreme and extraordinary location for creating space, having on mind specific political and social conditions and conditions deriving from functional changes. Border as a multifunctional and different meaning phenomena in one way it's disappearing and in the other way it has become "line" with stronger meaning than ever, the "line" which can not be easily crossed by. So, starting from the idea of present meaning of Balkan border, we tried and wanted to connect two ideas in the future, of having and not having borders at all. And we were guiding our designing process with one main question: "What will happen and how will border look like in the future?" The conclusion was two different ways of seeing things , ironic and realistic point of view, and that led us to the next step, point of creating flexible space, moving and stopping point. The borders were changing all the time in the past and reality is that the number of countries and borders is getting bigger everyday. So, we want to think that in the future, no matter how many countries will exist on this territory (which we take only as example), border as a large physical structure will only be a memory for us. The only thing left from that unexisting "line", will be only one point and that is the place were we put our box border (stopping point), place between two countries known as "no ones" land. Box border will have inside two toilets, exchange office, info touch screens and one big panel on which can be shown films, music spots, and cultural events from different regions. Function is changeable, which means that it can be change due the different requiring circumstances. We presume that in the future, social and political conditions will change, and that will require different needs. The box border will be in the role of the reminding and welcoming "person", for all those people who want to know, to see, to be inform…The material used is so called "transparent mirror". Outside is the mirror and we can not see the place inside, in opposite, inside we can see what is happening outside. The box is light and that's why it can easily be moved from one place to another, and it means not only and just on the past borders, but also in the cities as a info stops, part of some cultural installation, etc. When it is moving it is cover with the wooden box, either bind with the car, train or a boat. What matters is that it is moving and reminding us on the huge "borders moving" in the past. Dimension of the box border is 4x4x4m. It can be used during the whole year by different regions/countries and by all the people. The place is open day and night. It is also important to say that it is functional even when it is moving as a provocation, and memory on tough and heavy years on "closed" Balkan, when the moving through the countries was strongly controlled.

Robertson Meg Hart
ULPGC: Borders and Frontiers: Databases as Transitional Research Spaces

The EU partially financed project of Med Voices (EuroMed Heritage II) coordinated by London Metropolitan University and subscribed to by thirteen partners (www.med-voices.org) had, as its main research product, a seamless database of the Mediterranean Oral Heritage. The idea was to touch upon cross-cutting themes found throughout community life in various cosmopolitan areas of the Mediterranean in order to set up a research tool of oral interviews which could have applications at all levels of lifelong learning. The first tension was to overcome the reticence of researchers to share privately conducted interviews on a support as 'public' as the web, so to decide the frontiers between respect for the person and possible reification of the same. The second tension was to share a common framework with each partner tackling the database grid from their own perspective, and with their own priorities: therefore, the tension between promotion of identity and respect for difference. The third tension was on striking a harmonious balance with the people interviewed, or rather the communities and individuals represented. Inclusion and exclusion of comments on account of their 'degree of subjectivity', the boundaries of authentic memory as opposed to retrospective re-creation, was another of the potential pitfalls to be overcome. However, as the first phase of the project, at least, draws to a close, the abiding tension is with respect to the intellectual property and ownership of the information and interviews reflected in the database, a problem which is a challenge in all EU funded projects and, even more so, on the Internet. If the database becomes a mere transitional space for research as opposed to an interactive and 'live' tool then the point of having constructed it as a web-based tool will have been frustrated. The author discusses the problems of transitional research spaces and processes in the changing panorama of higher education and intellectual property rights.

Ryley Peter
University of Hull: The radical educational philosophy of Patrick Geddes: A theoretical approach for Lifelong Learning in the 21st Century?

This paper examines the life and ideas of Patrick Geddes (1854-1932) and seeks to explain why he remains an important figure for Lifelong Learning, especially for those practitioners who are interested in focusing on the lives and experiences of the learners themselves. Geddes was much more than an educationalist; he was a scientist, activist, sociologist and town planner, amongst many other accomplishments. His own biography exemplifies his holism and advocacy of non-specialisation. For Geddes, learning had to be based on both active observation and reflection; it is the basis of his concepts of personal and social progress. Not only that, Geddes' pedagogy was also an integral part of his ecological anarchism and, as such, it provides an alternative theoretical framework for libertarian, rather than liberal, adult learning and posits a new conception of the University in the life of its region.

Sapountzis Antonis & Pavlos Pantazis
University of Thessaloniki: The Role Of The Notion Of "National Interest" In Warranting Political Decisions

The present paper explores the way in which notions of national interest are mobilized in talk within the context of international animosity. While notions of group interest have been a focal point in the study of intergroup conflict and intergroup relations there has been scant attention on how people use notions of group interest in certain social and rhetorical contexts. This paper scrutinizes how formal members of Greek political parties used the notion of national interest in a narration about their party membership and the animosity between Greece and Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Following a discourse analytic perspective (Billig, 1987; Edwards, 1997; Potter & Wetherell, 1988; Potter, 1996) notions of national interest are depicted as a rhetorical tool people mobilize in their talk in order to achieve certain rhetorical tasks. Very often "the national interest was mobilized" in order to provide support for certain party policies and condemn those of other political parties. On occasions even people who argued against the existence of national interest mobilized it as a rhetorical tool in order to support the policy of their political party.

Savvakis Manos
University of Crete: Demarcating a State of Non-Illness?: Leprosy as Battlefield and as Struggle of Resistance

In the present paper we discuss the multiple ways through which active social subjects, that have experienced chronic illness, bodily suffering, long-term confinement and social stigmatization, cope with these disrupting situations and strive to articulate an 'alternative' biographical plan. More particularly, this contribution endeavors to thematise issues that emerge form the analysis of a woman's life history that was confined to the Leprosarium of Spinalonga, (1903-1957). The core aim is to understand-and possibly interpret-how social subjects that experience situations of biographical tension constitute a 'know-how' of everyday survival and resistance in order to over-come the difficulties of living in a community of confined lepers, seen as a multidimensional social world of meaning and action. We conclude that a more systematically empirical research that will bring together life histories with written historical sources can potentially cast light on issues that are strongly related to the historicity and the social dimension of the concepts of social exclusion, stigma, suffering body, health and illness.

Scherto Gill
Guerrand-Hermes Foundation: Understanding school community – Initial insights from the New School

This paper recognises tension and conflict as one of the major engines of school community development. In the conduct of day-to-day teaching and learning practices, communication and interaction between members of the school community, these tensions and conflicts become manifest. They arise out of the need to resolve individual needs vs the group interests; exploring new ideas vs consolidating existing practices; shared decision-making vs authoritative leadership; desiring to remain small and new vs the pressure to expand for fee income; school community culture vs family culture; the New School's micro agenda vs the Nation's macro agenda.
This paper views these tensions and conflicts as a necessary component of community practice. It is suggested that school community is a transitional space, providing the modalities for members to negotiate purpose and meaning and leading to "fusion of horizons", a convergence of perceptions on learning, values and worldviews.

Sidiropoulou Trifeni & Schiza & Sidiropoulou
TEI of Athens: Evaluation of Pedagogic Practices Trough the Nrration of the Lives of Future Educators

The objective of our study is to examine the image of the educator and the concept of the game as an educational means from future educators of early school age (department of Early Childhood Education \Technical Educational Institute of Athens). Furthermore, we wanted to determine to what extent these are determined by their personal experiences and whether studies differentiate their attitude. The aim is to ascertain the way through which future educators perceive the role of the pre-school educator, as well as the importance given to educational practices, to his/her anthropocentric attitude and his/her culture.
The method that we used to collect the data of our study is the biographical approach and more specifically the technique of narrating a life. (Mertens, 2005) For someone to narrate something from his life does not mean that he simple talks or remembers. It is an activity, a meeting with reality. Biography is not composed from the simple accumulative narration of past events, but consists of a continuous reconstruction of these events, which obtain specific meaning in the framework of the present situation. The form and the content of the narration, as well as the inter-subjective framework of the instance of narration demonstrate that biography itself includes a series of elements for the reconstruction of reality (Pantazis, 2004).
92 students of the 2nd Spring semester of 2003 in the department of Early Childhood Education were asked as part of the course "Child-Game" to record their personal experiences from their childhood to the present day, which are related to game. In addition, we have asked 206 students of different semesters to answer in writing the one and only question: "who was your first educator?"
The results demonstrate that the recorded percentage of positive attitude towards game is not translated to the expectation of educational use. The shaping of the image of the educator by the students seems to be defined both by references to the character, appearance, age, class organization, inter-personal relationships, as well as to his/her attitude to specific instances as described by the students. Furthermore, elements that compose the image of the educator, such as his/her work, his/her attitude and his/her behavior seem to be differentiated to students of the final semesters, who have more knowledge and can make better evaluations based on educational criteria.

Spanopoulou Anna
Municipal Gallery of Larissa - G.I. Katsigras Museum: Oral Narration In Visual Arts: Examples at the Municipal Art Gallery of Larissa

In an Art Gallery, children, young and older people have an opportunity to follow the evolution of visual arts of a broader or narrower period, that is to contact a certain "chapter" of Art History. Curators and Art Historians may use oral narration of relevant persons (living artists, relatives, senior citizens etc) as a means of getting visitors closer to the origins of a work of Art. Young children can develop a historical way of thinking; they can learn to distinguish the valuable from the myth or rumor. Adolescents may realize the relation between era and styles or between specific creators and their time and place.
The Municipal Gallery of Larissa, contains about 1000 paintings of Greek artists of the 19th and 20th century, collected by the surgeon doctor G.I.Katsigras and donated to the Municipality of his hometown. It can serve as a good example of how the above subjects can be shared between visitors and narrators in such an Art Gallery.

Stavroulaki Evanna & Tsilimeni Tasoula
University of Thessaly: Storytelling: the natural way for people to learn about their world

In this paper we are going to discuss the implications of storytelling in relation to learning. A story is a journey through the imagination, undertaken by a speaker and a group of listeners, with words as the vessels. As with any journey, the experiences we gain along the way tell us a lot about ourselves and how we relate to each other. We search for our own stories in the stories of others. In this way, it is obvious that Storying is an active process: we invent stories, live them, remember or forget them, tell them, change and reshape them, pass them on, write them down, sing, act and paint them.
Storytelling is the natural way for people to learn about their world. It is a communication art that has existed since the dawn of civilization. Storytelling can involve all four modes of communication – speaking and listening, reading and writing. People pass the time of day in conversation, talk, chatter, exchanging ideas and stories. We all need real opportunities for conversation, in order to share our thoughts. In the workplace, in the pub, in the cafe, in the changing rooms, in the kitchen, in the bus, in the classroom, in the bank…we tell stories. We construct stories from the events in our lives, so that we can make sense of them.
Stories stimulate our imagination, intellect and emotions. They help us to reflect upon our own experiences. When we are listening to stories, we are not merely a passive audience, but are actively involved. We are actively engaged in the storytelling process and therefore we learn so much from it. We review what we hear, reflect upon it, make judgments. We may also become totally involved in the world the story has created.
Listening to a story involves interpretation and the creation of new images in the mind's eye. It also involves getting in front of the story to anticipate the action, establish connections and make meanings. The audience paint pictures through words and actions, as the language of tales encourages particularly rich visualizations.
Through stories, people are able to explore the worlds and minds of others. They can play with ideas, emotions and feelings, extend their mind and gain knowledge. They are free to explore ideas and concepts not present in their everyday lives. Stories can be an open window to the world of our imagination.

Stilidis Iordanis
University of Thessaly: The Journey as an Overall Educational Exercize: How much information can we suffer?

The aim of the presentation is to declare the strenth and the ability of the educational voyages, especially to the far East, to evoke all tendencies and abilities of the young conscience, wandering along, meeting multiple layers of information, confronting with self and the inner fundamental stereotypes.
The voyage involves space, body and behaviour in a multylayerd process surfacing all cultural identities. Through out the experience of the journey one can identify that all separate educational territories and tendencies, all questions that originate from the conference's sub-themes are present, building or deconstructing the form of each theme.
The explanatory elements of the presentation are photographs and sketches representing and visualising the ideas and the environments we were encounter. The teatcher and the student, then and now, are under a constant information feedback which is penetrating the western standard conscience, provoking all obsessions, all idealistic defences.
The only shelter that can be used to survive this shower of questions and meaning of detailed observations is to perform certain disciplines, in order to reinforce the ability to purify and expose, step by step, the core meaning, pushing back the information bulkiness.

Taki Paraskevi
University of Thessaloniki

This paper concerns the methodology of research conducted within the framework of a doctoral thesis on "Women in the administration of primary education". The present research contributed a) to the women's, participating in the research, awareness concerning the existence and projection of the dominant / bureaucratic model of administration in education and b) to providing women, participating in the research, with the opportunity to testify their own experiences and proposals through which – by questioning the dominant male model of administration – they projected the need for the creation of an alternative model without sex discriminations.

Tsakiris Despoina & Tsatsaroni Anna
University of Peloponese: Narration et initiation à la pratique de la recherche

Les dernières décennies, la narration gagne une place significative au sein de la politique et pratique éducative, en tant qu’approche pédagogique utilisée dans les activités de formation et notamment celles qui concernent les adultes. Dans ce cadre la narration, en tant qu’élément indissociable du champ pratique, est appréciée car elle permet la compréhension et l’amélioration des pratiques professionnelles. En revanche, il semble que dans un autre cadre, celui de la formation universitaire, la valeur de la narration est mise en question.
Dans le discours scientifique, la discussion autour de la narration indique que les questions qui concernent son usage, sa mise en valeur, ainsi que sa légitimation comme méthode de recherche et/ou d’enseignement aux Sciences Sociales et Humaines, restent ouvertes.
Il est bien connu que, dans ce cadre là, continue à être privilégiée une forme de construction des connaissances fondée sur la pensée objectivante qui creuse l’écart entre sujet et objet de connaissance.
Notre communication rend compte d’une action expérimentale qui porte sur une activité de formation effectuée en Sciences Sociales dans l’Université. L’objectif de cette activité était d’amener les étudiants à comprendre un champ de pratique sociale moyennant leur initiation à la pratique de la recherche en utilisant, entre autres, comme méthode de travail le récit de leur expérience d’une situation d’observation. Plus précisément, cette activité visait à mettre en place les conditions favorisant l’activité réflexive des étudiants afin qu’ils puissent observer les pratiques des acteurs d’une école grecque et leur donner du sens.
Dans cette communication, l’appréciation de cette activité spécifique s’effectue en référence à trois niveaux d’analyse. Ainsi s’agit-il :
- De dégager une intelligibilité de la narration comme une approche pédagogique, moyennant laquelle les sujets s’initient au champ de la pratique de recherche
- D’élucider les premisses d’une telle approche à partir des considérations sociologiques et psychanalytiques
- De formuler une réflexion sur la narration en tant que processus de formation d’un rapport au savoir, dont condition préalable constitue la reconnaissance de la subjectivité.
De ce fait, notre communication s’inscrit dans une entreprise d’élucidation qui engage la réflexivité sur les processus de liaison entre la narration, la recherche du sens et la subjectivité ainsi que sur les conditions qui permettent à la subjectivité de devenir un soubassement dans la construction du savoir.

Tsaliki Evanthia
University of York: Aspects of Roma pupils' education: processes and experiences from a primary school

The subject of this presentation deals with aspects of Roma pupils' education. More specifically, it deals with the processes adopted and the experiences gained from an educational institution, which accommodates Roma pupils. The primary focus of this paper is on the use of life history and story telling in the educational process. It aims at revealing the usefulness of the use of life history and story telling to teachers both as persons and professionals. It also reveals that the use of life history and story telling and the data resulting from these make teachers realize that both life history and story telling constitute appropriate methods for exploring the constant changes made in pupils' identities, following the changing social and cultural constructions. The change and enrichment of cultural identities also constitutes an integral part of intercultural education.

Tsimas Nicolaos & Thermos Kimon
University of Thessaly: The transition from the collective to the personal space and time

The city is conceived as a transitional space where different individuals and social groups leave their traces as successive registrations in space and time. These fragmentary registrations form the specific physiognomy and the characteristics of a place and, at the same time, form the collective and personal memory and consciousness of the city and its inhabitants.
The scale and the way of the approach of the city and its components, as well as that of the social groups and the individuals, defines and specifies the time and the place of transformations, leading gradually from the collective (city – social groups) to the personal space and time of individuals connected, in any way, with the city.
The proposal examines, diversifying the scale of the approach, the transition and the change, moving from the collective time of the city to the personal time of the individuals, focusing at a specific building and its surrounding area at the historical city-center of Thessaloniki. The motive of this proposal was a special research topic, that was carried out at the University of Thessaly, department of Architecture.
The proposal composes a registration of an area and a building, that both have a strong transitional character, moving from a previous condition to a new one, that has not yet formed its characteristics. During this transitional period, marginal groups and functions, taking advantages of its indefinite and temporary character, occupy the place lending their individual characteristics.
Their installation, however, is temporal as they occupy vital space of the city-center and their marginal character is not compatible with the acquired image by the city. Their removal from the city-center, in this case, seems unavoidable.

Tsouroufli Maria & Heather Payne
Cardiff University: Senior hospital doctors' histories of learning and professional development

This paper explores senior doctors' biographical accounts of learning and professional development embedded in a changing medical education context in the UK. It draws on data from a study which looked at the effectiveness of formal continuing education for hospital doctors in an educational and supervisory role.
Research methods involve field-notes and 20 oral history interviews with senior hospital doctors sampled for diversity of gender, age, clinical experience and clinical speciality across six different localities in Wales, UK.
In this paper we highlight the significance of oral history approach in unravelling tensions (work/learning), dichotomies (theory/practice), contradictions and transitions in senior doctors' approaches to learning and continuing professional development. We argue that these issues emerge either as regulatory forces or social products of a dialectic relationship between the medical self and the challenging reality of medical life. It is envisaged that the discussion developed in this paper will inform current medical education practice but also adult education theory, research and practice in other contexts.

Varidaki-Levine Lily
Roskilde University: The Fence

This work–in-progress paper is based on my PhD research project that studies the Life History and Experience, the Learning Process and Profession of Greek Female Social Workers employed in the Private Sector. It is a qualitative, interdisciplinary study along the lines of A. Schutz's Phenomenological Sociology. The production of the empirical material follows the guidelines of Narrative, Biographical Interview (Schutze, F) and the analysis/ interpretation of the texts draws on the method of Hermeneutics. With the assistance of various psychosocial theories on identity, I intend to present a case study of one of my informants who, as a child of Greek immigrant parents in Australia, experienced multiple transitions (culture shocks) moving repeatedly between the two countries. I will focus on and discuss the following issues:
1. The internalization of the "ethnic self" in relation to the "ethnic other" and the construction of the concepts familiarity /strangeness through an interaction between "inner and outer realities".
2. Implications of immigration (life experience) on professional practice (work experience).

Ioannidi Vassiliki, Chaitas Charis, Vasiliadou Sofia
University of Athens: Story telling of the scientific personnel of Correctional Institutions for Juvenile Delinquents in Greece

This paper presents the conclusions of a research study conducted at the Correctional Institutions for juvenile delinquents in Greece -story telling of scientific personnel in relation to education of juvenile delinquents.
The idea of a truly educational system which would focus on the rehabilitation of juvenile delinquents or of juveniles with social difficulties has proved unsuccessful as the Institutions failed to keep up with the general progressive ideas and the need for an educational structure capable of supporting young delinquents to participate in the various social activities at equal terms. Due to this failure, the Juvenile Correctional Institutions have reached a critical point for their function and existence. The causes of this phenomenon need to be sought in the social and political control structures of thought and action that undermine the function of any educational treatment in the Institutions.

Tor Ahlbäck, Maria Alm, Margareta Carlsson, Ann-Christin Dettner-Arvidsson, Elisabet Frithiof, Claudia Gillberg, Inger Hellgren, Gunilla Härnsten, Eva Klinthäll, Inga Ljung, Kerstin Pong, Birgitta Sjöblom, Birgitta Söderlund-Wijk University of Växjö: It's been a long and winding road...

Our paper is a result of cooperative work and writing in the setting of a course in “University pedagogy as research circles' at the University of Växjö in Sweden. The focus of this particular course, with thirteen university lecturers, PhD students and one researcher - all in the discipline of Education - was the use of life history in higher education. Here we shortly present our experiences with working together with the stories and the analyses within different themes, but also the consequences this might have for our own practice at the university. After lively discussions, three themes emerged which we wanted to work with: motivation, encounters and power/resistance. Each participant could choose the theme she or he felt most committed to and consequently we had three teams of teachers/researchers who, in their own way, continued working with their respective theme. As a consequence, our work mode and our texts differ from each other and the analyses of our texts were done in the light of our respective thematic group's perspective and theories. Regardless of thematic group new thoughts evolved around the power of educators and the alleged helplessness of students. Ultimately, we discuss the importance of teachers' reflecting upon their teaching practices in order to deepen their insight as to what values they mediate to their students, e.g. convey in the contents of the literature on offer, the degree of openness of discussions etc.

Vidali Anna
University of Thessaly: Early Childhood as transitional time /space for pleasure in education

One of the main purposes of in-service teacher's continuous education is to facilitate changes in the classroom during transitional periods. Classroom practice, however, resists change since by definition it aims to teach children order and control through surveillance. In other words its function is a conservative one: to safeguard social order.
In the nursery school, prevailing theories have up to now favoured an approach towards scientific knowledge and rationality, which has an impact on everyday life in the classroom. Children have to control themselves, their bodies and their feelings obeying to the fundamental rule of Western Tradition which is the body/mind divide. As a consequence classrooms are getting more and more gloomy and oppressive to both children and teachers. Meanwhile there is a growing concern with life long learning in the form of seminars and courses which nursery school teachers attend most of the time voluntarily. How could this continuous education help to effectively change things in a classroom with very young children? What kinds of learning and training are more appropriate in order to introduce the dimension of pleasure in early childhood education?
To investigate this question I have gathered life histories from a number of nursery school teachers, who have talked about themselves their families and their professional lives including life long learning courses. The question I ask my narratives is about the place they attribute to pleasure in their life and in their work with young children. Then, in a second phase, I want to consider the kind of courses they get and whether or not these courses contribute to changing things towards a more pleasant experience for the education of young children. Finally, I want to consider if the use of life history in professional training could contribute to changes in the way nursery school teachers view things in the classroom.

Visocnik Natasa
University of Ljubljana: Narration of the life stories: Researching the Persecution of the Carinthian Slovenes

The fatal moments in a person's life are deeply impressed in his memory as we can see in the case of victim of fascist violence from the ranks of the Carinthian Slovenes in Austria. Their experiences caused many mental traumas, which individuals tried to overcome in different ways. A few of them learned that writing and telling about them could alleviate their traumas. Some started to write a diary, but this was highly dangerous after the end of war.
Nevertheless, people wrote down their life stories to prevent such events from ever happening again. All the interviewees agreed that today not much is said about those times. People are increasingly less willing to listen to other people, and they are not aware that a conversation often helps them to face the horrors of the past. Telling one's personal story helps people to get over fatal moments in their life. Though events and commemorations are organised every year, it is obvious that to the authorities it is all about and insignificant past. And even though the do not obstruct the celebration, they do nothing to increase the attendance or to involve the young.
Not everyone, who was exiled in the April days of 1942 from Austrian Carinthia, was literate to record the events of these tragic times, or was able to do so later. These people preferred to suppress painful memories in their subconscious rather to alleviate them by writing about them. There are several reasons for this reluctance. Austria's borders were left unchanged and many people thought it improper to write about these events. They had contributed their share to the defeat of nazism, and as to their ethnic adherence they soon learned that nothing had changed. The memory of the hard times became part of the everyday life of the Slovenes only, not of the majority population. And the expellees also did not have the professional help they required.
The victims of violence and their representatives, however, feel the wish and need that the memory of the suffering should never fade. It is indeed the duty of the descendants to the so-called leaving generation to preserve the memories of their ancestors' suffering, their belief in victory over the oppressors and their love of their people in the worst of times. They should be written into the nation's memory as warming or historical documentation. They belong to the nation's treasures, which are inherited by the younger generations in order to better appreciate coexistence, and also to proudly participate in all the forms that coexistence.
Listening of the life stories on the field is always a deep emotional experience, because the events which occur and the people who cooperate in different ways, change the researcher's perception of a place and its people. The researcher's opinion of the world he/she researches may be different at the end of the field work from that before it started. In spite of the efforts to remain scientifically objective, new people, new events, new life stories affect the feelings of the researcher and somehow change his attitude to the world. It is true, of course, that some things leave a deeper impression in someone's memory than in others and thus have a stronger influence on his or her view of the world.

Vlachaki Maria
University of Thessaly: Talking about migration in school

This paper firstly intends to present the preliminary results of a research program on the use of 'life history' in Greek nursery, primary and secondary schools according to a respective research which was conducted during the last four months. Secondly it aims to describe the conceptions and the impressions that a group of children had during and after the interviews they took themselves, according to a concurrent research project, which was carried out on the island of Skiathos about the migration. The pupils were asked to gather the relative information by interviewing members of their immediate families. The activities which constitute a great part of the particular research and learning process will be descriptively and audio visually presented.

Vosniadou Tania
University of Thessaly: Intergenerational research with life histories: a case study

Webb Susan & Simon Warren
University of Sheffield: Researching post compulsory education: beyond phenomenology?

This paper explores the question how can we capture adequately the formation of learner identities in a world where social structures and social relations are undergoing continuous change? The paper considers this question by discussing how researchers have used life history and narrative research in analyses of learners in transition, and it offers suggestions for the development of this methodology. We examine a strand of work that has engaged with Bourdieu's conceptual framework and the traditions of symbolic interactionism in order to provide a social-structural account of learner experiences. These accounts have developed the concepts of 'learning career' and 'learning culture' to depict learners' agency as complex and heterogeneous rather than deficient, and as involving negotiation of meaning with institutional, learning and vocational cultures. However, we argue that analysis of social structure and the dramatic structural changes experienced by learners and educators over the past 25 years are largely absent from these accounts. While accounts of learners' experiences do some important counter-hegemonic work, this has to be strengthened with an account of structural change that is entwined with that of agency. The paper concludes with a rationale for a narrative based approach that seeks to understand changing identities through snowball sampling allowing us to generate narratives from different levels of analysis within the same context of change.

Weber Kirsten
Roskilde University: Theorizing Professional Identity: Conflict, contradiction, anxiety and ambivalence

The social sciences have suffered a number of "turns" during the later decades of the 20th century: the textual, the subjective, the biographical, etc. In relation to adult and lifelong learning research the "turns" and their methodological implications have strenghtened the dialogue between social science and humanist approaches, and the implications have been an increased focus on the subjective factor.
Within national research communities and within paradigmatic discourses it is often taken for granted that "life history and biography" educational studies are constituted either by the German biographical tradition (Schutze and critical developers) or by the U.S. narrative tradition (Bruner and followers). Indeed even the concept of narrativity is often confused or identified with biography, and the concept of life history is used randomly to describe almost anything. Thus the concept of "biography", fruitful though it is, may also cut off theorizing inner relation betweeen the social and the psychic processing needed in the development of educational and learning theoretical discourses.
However, the critical theory in the tradition of Theodor W. Adorno has formed the foundation of a theoretical framework of socialization theory (not identical with the Parsons functionalist approach) that allows a critical understanding of learning and experience in psycho-societal terms.
This paper explores the incomplete wrirings of German psychologist Alfred Lorenzer on a materialist theory of socialization, pointing to central conceptualizations of symbolic language and interaction. Founded in a comprehensive understanding of primary socialization Lorenzer's theory of a lifelong socialization opens theoretical doors to psychoanalyst object relations theory as well as to the 1980'ies discourse on work and labour (Negt) and feminist analyses of double sicialization and societalization (Becker-Schmidt et al.). The approach opens a rich field of potential methodologies, but these will not be touched upon in this paper.

Weber Kirsten
Roskilde University: Life History without Biography: a theoretical exploration of a Continental tradition

This paper sets off in two current challenges to research in lifelong learning on the basis of a life history approach, both of a terminological and conceptual nature. I furthermore touch upon the problems of integrating life history and biographical approaches into educational and learning research.

West Linden
Canterbury Christ Church University: Learning in a Border Country: Using Psychodynamic Ideas in Teaching and Research

This paper arises out of recognition of the shared importance of psychodynamic theory in our approaches to teaching and research. We demonstrate, in the form of a sustained dialogue, how psychodynamic ideas – broadly defined as encouraging people to engage more closely with thoughts and feelings that may be hidden from the conscious mind – can be applied in many, diverse, and radical ways. But also how such an approach can be problematical both for students and teachers. In writing this paper we take issue with those writers who want to separate therapy from education, insisting as they do that 'therapeutic education' involves a 'diminished' notion of the subject who sees him- or herself as a victim of circumstances. Instead, we suggest, entering the border country between therapeutic and educational processes and ideas can be deeply rewarding as well as empowering for teachers, researchers and learners alike.

West Linden
Canterbury Christ Church University: Challenging auto/biographies in the transitional spaces of research

This paper derives from continuing concern about the neglect of the place and influence of the researcher in the construction of research ‘texts ’in biographical and life history research. Despite the contribution of feminist researchers, especially, to challenging the idea that research is, or can be, carried out in some autonomous realm that is insulated from the wider society or from the particular biography of the researcher, or from the interaction between researcher and researched, including power and unconscious factors, the researcher’s self, and qualities in the interaction with the other, tend, more often than not, to be absent from the research narrative.

ESREA Life History and Biography Network: 2006 Conference

Transitional Spaces, Transitional Processes and Research

Volos, Greece, 2-5 March 2006

Participants

© 2006: European Society for Research on the Education of Adults