The concept of trajectories is typically used in work on transitions of young adults into the labour market, providing ideal type, segmented routes that can be used to understand a variety of personal histories (Evans and Heinz 1994). In adult life, routes diverge, experiences diversify still further and  multiplicities of new contingencies come into play (Ecclestone et al 2009; Alheit and Dausien 2002; Biesta, 2007; Biasin 2012). In researching adults’ life and work experiences, initial career  trajectories take on historical significance. Trajectories start, in early life, with family relationships, with educational achievement, moving onto occupational choices, applying for and taking up jobs and the processes of establishing independent personal and family lives. These processes continue in adult life with activities undertaken with the aims of maintaining employment, changing employment, balancing work and family life, taking risks, seeking stability, finding personal fulfilment. They often involve changes in the adult’s orientations to learning, work and family. This paper discusses the ways in which women aged 50, in contrasting cultural contexts, narrate and portray turning points in their life course, with particular reference to the relationships between identity, agency and learning, including  opportunities to  learn through work and life experiences . These accounts reflect identity and the complex sets of adults’ motivations, beliefs and attitudes towards learning and their own capabilities to achieve in and through learning (Kirpal, 2011). Their orientations can also change according to specific experiences of success or failure, opportunities or setbacks at any stage. Orientations towards work and career, similarly, comprise complex sets of motivations, beliefs and attitudes rooted in actual life experiences and social structuring of the lifecourse. 

In the conceptual framework for exploration of women’s representations of turning points in their lives, we draw on theories of life course (Heinz 2001) and, in particular,  approaches with particular relevance to the study of women at the age of fifty, assumed as an age of specific transitions in the  life course (Sugarman 1986).  The gender perspective in this field will be examined. The exercise of agency is understood as a bounded process that is exercised through environments, drawing on Evans ( 2002; 2007; 2009)  and Biesta et al (2011).Furthermore, the biographical learning perspectives of Alheit, Tedder and Biesta, and Goodson reveal aspects of the narrative-in-action which permits the research participants to negotiate and to make claims about different life events and about life course. These are dominant perspectives in European scholarship and research  in adult learning.

The life experiences and women’s representations of them also reflect cultural norms and expectations about the adult life course, particularly with respect to gender roles and relationships. Initial analysis of narratives and drawings (sketches) of 17 women born in 1958, selected from the 220 in-depth qualitative interviews conducted as a sub-study of the UK National Cohort Studies (NCDS), has been completed and is now being extended, as a second stage, to the analysis of comparable transcripts and drawings provided by a sample of  women of the same age in Italy. This is part of a UK-Italian collaboration hosted by the ESRC Learning and Life Chances in Knowledge Economies and Societies (LLAKES Centre)

Research questions: How do women’s representations of the life course reflect the relationship between agency, identity and learning? To what extent do representations of the life course of women who have grown up and lived their lives in Italy suggest shared features or differences from those of the women in the UK NCDS sample? How might these shared and contrasting features be explored further to elucidate the intertwining of identity, agency and learning with cultural norms and expectations?

 .

Alheit, P., Dausien, B. (2002). The double face of lifelong learning. Two analytical perspective on a silent revolution. "Studies in Education of Adults", 34, 1, 3-22. Andrews, M., Squire, C., Tamboukou, M. (2008). Doing Narrarive Research. London: Sage. Biasin, C., (2012). Le transizioni. Modelli e approcci per l'educazione degli adulti. Lecce: Pensa Multimedia Biesta, G., Field, J., Hodkinson, P., Macleod, F., Goodson, I. (2011). Improving Learning through the Lifecourse. London: Routledge. Ecclestone, K., Biesta, G. and Hughes, M. (eds) (2009) Lost in Transition?: Change and Becoming through the Lifecourse, London: Routledge Falmer Evans, K., Behrens, M and Kaluza, J. (2000) Learning and Work in the Risk Society: Lessons for the labour markets of Europe from Eastern Germany, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Evans, K. (2009) Learning Work and Social Responsibility: challenges for lifelong learning in a global age. Dordrecht: Springer. Evans, K. and Heinz, W.R. Heinz (1994) Becoming Adults in England and Germany, Anglo-German Foundation, London and Bonn Evans, K. (2007). Concepts of bounded agency in education, work, and the personal lives of young adults. "International Journal of Psychology", 42, 2, 85-93. Evans, K., Waite, E. (2013). 'Activating events' in adult learners'lives. Understanding learning and life change through a retrospective lens. In H.Helve, K.Evans, Youth and work transitions in changing social landscapes. London: Tuffnell, 195-217. Goodson I. (2013). Developing Narrative Theory. London: Routledge. Heinz, W.R. and Krüger, H.(2001) Life Course: Innovations and Challenges for Social Research Current Sociology March 2001 vol. 49 no. 2 29-45 Mattingly, C.F. (2007). Acted Narratives. From storytelling to emergent dramas. In D.J.Clandinin (Ed.). Handbook of Narrative Inquiry. London: Sage, 405-425 Kirpal, S. (2011) Labour-Market Flexibility and Individual Careers: A Comparative Study, Dordrecht: Springer. Sugarman, S. (1986) Life-span Development: Theories, Concepts and Interventions, Routledge. Tedder, M., Biesta, G. (2007). Agency and learning in the lifecourse. Towards an ecological perspective. " Studies on Education of Adults", 39, 2, 139-149. Tedder, M., Biesta, G. (2009). Biography, transitions and learning in the life course. In J.Field, J.Gallacher, R.Ingram (eds.). Researching transitions in lifelong learning (pp.76-90). London: Routledge. Webster, L, Mertova, P. (2007). Using Narrative Inquiry as a Research Methods. London: Routledge.