ABSTRACT
The concept of learner ‘trajectories’, as exemplied by the research of Gorard et al. (e.g. 1998, 2001; Gorard and Rees 2002), represents an important attempt to theorize learning episodes through the lifecourse by aggregating individual experiences into sets of typologies. From their analysis of 1,104 education and training histories in post-war industrial South Wales, Gorard et al. identied eleven lifetime learning trajectories, ve of which were highlighted as being particularly salient: ‘non-participant’, ‘delayed’, ‘transitional’, ‘lifetime’, ‘immature’. Employing logistic regression, Gorard and Rees argued that such trajectories were predictable from such key determinants as ‘age’, ‘place’, ‘gender’, ‘parents’, ‘religion’ and ‘school’ with the result that the ‘trajectory an individual takes can be accurately predicted on the basis of characteristics that are known by the time an individual reaches school-leaving age’ (Gorard and Rees 2002: 64). Though representing an important theoretical advance in conceptualizing a diverse range of learning experiences and highlighting some key social parameters and constraints that shape these experiences, Gorard et al.’s approach is also, by the authors’ own admission, highly determinative in nature and allocates a minimal role for individual agency over the lifecourse.1 Furthermore, in an attempt to predict the determinants of workplace learning, Gorard, Rees and Fevre (1999: 15) noted the complexities involved in doing this ‘especially with regard to differing views of its role’. Their conclusions underlined the importance of knowing more about the factors that inuence such trajectories.
