Personal stories: how students’ social and cultural life histories interact with the field of higher education

Abstract

Learners’ biographies affect their engagement with knowledge and shape how their learning is understood. This article uses an educational life history approach to investigate how students’ social and cultural educational experiences affect their engagement with their university. Qualitative evidence is presented from interviews with students with different life experiences, which explored issues of belonging and identity in the context of lifelong learning. While there is some evidence that students from some minority ethnic backgrounds do less well at university than would be expected, there is little research that looks at the reasons behind this discrepancy. The research suggests that ethnicity does interact with other variables such as socio-economic status, age and gender to affect student outcomes. However, what is significant from these life stories is that even middle-class minority ethnic students have a different engagement with their universities to their White British peers.