Agency, identity and learning at turning points in women's lives: towards a comparative UK-Italian analysis

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.