ABSTRACT
The case studies that supplied our evidence in Part B give rich insights into the processes that underpin the role of learning in making a difference to people’s lives. Our approach enabled us to locate learning in a wide range of individual biographies, pointing to its critical roles in life changes of varying dimensions and kinds. Such transitions generally, but by no means exclusively, represent positive steps forward in the life course, in the domains of employment, family life, health and civic activity. Taken in aggregate, our cases shared patterns of experience relating learning to personal and social benefits, through which our core organising principle of transforming and sustaining effects emerged.
