A new conceptualisation of adult participation in education

This paper presents a new conceptualisation of adults' process of return to formal education, arising from an in-depth qualitative study of 50 Scottish adult returners to various institutional settings. The new way of thinking developed because existing explanations proved ill-equipped to reflect the complex and diverse data gathered in interview about adults' reasons for returning to education. The paper begins by describing the context of the study, the study itself and the questions it raises about participation issues. It goes on to consider three conceptualisations of participation that may be found in the literature, the main barriers to participation and the challenges presented to them by data from the research. The new conceptualisation is then introduced and discussed further with reference to relevant data. The paper closes with some issues prompted by this idea for institutions and policy-makers in adult education.