Researching adult transformation as autobiography

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Abstract
Literature on adult learning research generally underplays imagination in its explanations of how meaning perspectives and life‐worlds are transformed. The use of autobiographical accounts, telling the story of stability and change, is proposed here as a promising source for research into adult learning. As literary texts, they make the investigation of imaginative forms such as metaphor, image and symbol both possible and warranted. This article raises the question about appropriate methods for this autobiographical approach to the study of adult transformation. An interpretive approach to the texts of research conversations in a co‐operative inquiry is appropriate for researching both their content as literature and the processes by which the narrators construct meaningful accounts of their adult transformation. Some proposals about research into autobiographical learning are presented on the basis of this writer's work in progress.

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