Raccontarsi: un paradigma della complessità e della con-posizione per l'apprendimento adulto

This chapter makes a strong statement in favour of self-narration in adult education, both as a method for research and for intervention. A critical view of the most recent developments in the European policies and practices for adult education highlights the limits of a narrowing and reductive concept of lifelong learning, understood as mere adaptation to the labour market, while adult voices need to be listened, chronicled, and recognized. The need to take position, and allow learners to do the same, brings to political education, in its noblest meanings. Self-narration, framed in a critical view, becomes the process to voice alternative stories, silenced stories, and to create the basis for participation. In the last paragraph, qualitative research in adult education, in its more recent dialogical, participatory and critical versions, is signalled as a field to be developed to help policy makers and practitioners to meet academics so as to open possibilities for a better society .