Mature Studentship in Higher Education: beyond a ‘species’ approach

Abstract

It is suggested that major studies of mature student experience are limited by the epistemological underpinnings of their approach and that the representations they offer do not permit an adequate sociological understanding. It is then argued that conceptual tools derived from Bourdieu's sociology can facilitate such an understanding. Two segments of qualitative data from interviews with mature students and their tutors in a UK university department are used to illustrate the potential for a sociological approach which, by focusing on both the constituting and constituted nature of practices, avoids the pitfalls of objectivism and subjectivism apparent in some previous research.

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