Linden West

Winner of the AAACE Cyril O. Houle AwardThis book constructs a deepening, interdisciplinary understanding of adult learning and imaginatively reframes its transformative aspects. The authors explore the tension at the heart of current understanding of ‘transformative’ adult learning: that while it can be framed as both easy and imperative, personal transformation is in fact rooted in the context in which we live, our stories and relationships. At its core, transformation is never easy – nor always desirable – and the authors thus draw on interdisciplinary and auto/biographical inquiry to explore what it means to change our presuppositions and frames of meaning that guide our thinking. Using their linguistic, gendered, academic and cultural differences, the authors illuminate how the social, contextual, cultural, cognitive and psychological dimensions of transformation intertwine. In doing so, they emphasise the importance of transformation as a contingent struggle for meaning and recognition, social justice, fraternity, and the pursuit of truth. This engaging book will be of interest to students and scholars of transformative learning and education.

Winner of the AAACE Cyril O. Houle AwardThis book constructs a deepening, interdisciplinary understanding of adult learning and imaginatively reframes its transformative aspects. The authors explore the tension at the heart of current understanding of ‘transformative’ adult learning: that while it can be framed as both easy and imperative, personal transformation is in fact rooted in the context in which we live, our stories and relationships. At its core, transformation is never easy – nor always desirable – and the authors thus draw on interdisciplinary and auto/biographical inquiry to explore what it means to change our presuppositions and frames of meaning that guide our thinking. Using their linguistic, gendered, academic and cultural differences, the authors illuminate how the social, contextual, cultural, cognitive and psychological dimensions of transformation intertwine. In doing so, they emphasise the importance of transformation as a contingent struggle for meaning and recognition, social justice, fraternity, and the pursuit of truth. This engaging book will be of interest to students and scholars of transformative learning and education.

Using Biographical Methods in Social Research provides an informative, comprehensive, accessible and practical guide to the nature and use of biographical methods, combining a consideration of theoretical issues with practical guidance as well as reflections on the personal experience of doing research. Barbara Merrill and Linden West consider important questions about who and what research is for and what makes it valid, alongside the practical business of interviewing, transcribing, analyzing and writing up of biographical data. The authors draw on their sociological and psychological orientations to provide a truly interdisciplinary approach to the subject, and provide numerous examples of biographical research across the social sciences. This book will equip students with all the skills necessary to undertake biographical research as well as to fully understand what they are doing and the assumptions they make about the nature of truth, knowledge, story telling and being human. It will be useful for students and researchers using biographical methods in a range of disciplines, including sociology, social policy, social psychology, health care and education.

Using Biographical Methods in Social Research provides an informative, comprehensive, accessible and practical guide to the nature and use of biographical methods, combining a consideration of theoretical issues with practical guidance as well as reflections on the personal experience of doing research. Barbara Merrill and Linden West consider important questions about who and what research is for and what makes it valid, alongside the practical business of interviewing, transcribing, analyzing and writing up of biographical data. The authors draw on their sociological and psychological orientations to provide a truly interdisciplinary approach to the subject, and provide numerous examples of biographical research across the social sciences. This book will equip students with all the skills necessary to undertake biographical research as well as to fully understand what they are doing and the assumptions they make about the nature of truth, knowledge, story telling and being human. It will be useful for students and researchers using biographical methods in a range of disciplines, including sociology, social policy, social psychology, health care and education.

This title focuses on the work, well-being and lives of doctors during a period of constant change and crisis in the National Health Service and of growing anxiety about levels of clinical competence and accountability. The alarming number of well-publicized "failures" by medics - at the Royal Bristol Children's Hospital, the Kent and Canterbury Hospital, for instance, and the appalling breach of trust by Dr Harold Shipman -the Manchester General Practitioner found guilty of murdering 15 patients - has led to a Government enquiry into the accountability of the profession. All, it seems, is far from well among medics. The text shows how GPs are responding to their changing roles in a changing society; and how such responses may be understood in a context of whole life histories as well as within the norms of medical culture. Doctors, as a profession, have tended, for many reasons, to hide behind a professional curtain in what can be a very "male" world. Some matters - surrounding the emotional well-being of doctors - are hard for doctors to talk about in this world where, too often, they have been taught to cope, like "good men should". The book reveals the emotional problems doctors face and, unlikely, provides space for them to tell their stories of struggles to become more authentic, and reflective as well as "effective" practitioners. We are presented with insights into what is a deeply gendered world in which many women doctors feel torn between caring at work and for their families, and where men can be absent from "women's work", at home and in the surgery; a culture too where racism still pervades attitudes towards "minority" doctors. This is also an environment in which cultural and emotional understandings have tended to be disparaged as "soft" in the name of a harder science. The book provides heroic tales of GPs transcending the shortcomings of training, and the misogyny and racism pervading their profession.

Adults now constitute the majority of students in higher education; what they bring to it, want and need are important questions in the development of a more responsive higher education. The author discusses the relationship between motives, education, and life history to explore how culture and history shape people and their motives for learning, taking into account variations in gender, social background and ethnicity, challenging the orthodox view that non-traditional students enter higher educational for vocational/material reasons.

Adults now constitute the majority of students in higher education; what they bring to it, want and need are important questions in the development of a more responsive higher education. The author discusses the relationship between motives, education, and life history to explore how culture and history shape people and their motives for learning, taking into account variations in gender, social background and ethnicity, challenging the orthodox view that non-traditional students enter higher educational for vocational/material reasons.