ABSTRACT
This book has its origins in a seminar series on transitions through the lifecourse which was part of the UK Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP; see www.tlrp.org). It aims to bring together and evaluate insights about educational, life and work transitions from different elds of research and a range of theoretical orientations. The book responds to the injunction that researchers need to chart ‘what individuals actually do and how this is changing’ as a ‘rst step to understanding what it means’ (Bynner quoted by Hayward et al. 2005: 115). In different ways, the chapters that follow explore the concept of transitions and its contemporary importance in policy and educational practices. In doing so they enable the book to address the following questions:
What are the main characteristics of transitions depicted in policy, practice • and research? How do different ideas and perspectives about transition, people’s agency, • identity and the effects of structural conditions help us to understand transitions better in research, policy and practice? Why are transitions a problem for some individuals and groups and, • conversely, for whom are transitions not a problem? What interventions, activities or practices are seen as useful in dealing with • transitions? What aspects of transitions are contested from different perspectives?•
This book arose from a recognition that the research eld around transitions is fragmented both historically and between disciplines and theoretical orientations. The book does not claim to represent a unitary view about transitions in the lifecourse. Rather, it brings together policy, professional and academic concerns about transitions in the lifecourse through the conceptual lenses of identity, agency and structure. The theorising and ndings about transition, and the questions they raise about new forms of support, management and pedagogy, offered in the book, are meant to provide a basis for further thinking and empirical study.
