Biasin, C., & Evans, K. (2019). Learning lives in retrospect: What the narratives of middle- aged women in Italy and UK reveal about work, family and learning. In B. E. Stalder & C. Nägele (Eds.), Trends in vocational education and training research, Vol. II. Proceedings of the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER), Vocational Education and Training Network (VETNET) (pp. 85–90). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3371440 Learning Lives in Retrospect: What the Narratives of Middle-aged women in Italy and UK reveal about Work, Family and Learning Biasin, Chiara * University of Padua, Department FISPPA, chiara.biasin@unipd.it Evans, Karen UCL Institute of Education, University of London. karen.evans@ucl.ac.uk Abstract The paper discusses the ways in which women aged 50, in two different cultural contexts (Italy and UK) narrate and portray life relationships and events that have influenced their learning and self-development. The reference paradigm is adopted from Narrative Learning Theory and the approach is qualitative and comparative in analysing the participants’ voice. This inquiry has shown how women’s representations of their life course reveal different propensities to reflect on and learn from their own lives. The research supports the case for approaches that are facilitative of biographical learning to become integral to adult education practices and to the development of adult education practitioners working in areas such as mid-life career change and work-re-entry. Keywords lifelong learning; narratives; women; comparative; Italy; UK Introduction This paper discusses the ways in which women aged 50, from contrasting cultural contexts, narrate their life course, with reference to relationships and events that have enabled and constrained their learning and self-development. Their representations reflect complex sets of motivations, beliefs and dispositions towards learning and their own capabilities for taking action to change their situations (Evans & Waite, 2013). Born in the 1950s, their life experiences and trajectories are rooted in, and intertwined with, 20 th century post-war changes in both UK and Italy in the social organization of initial schooling, access to vocational and higher education and the availability of learning opportunities later in life (Rönka, Orvala, & Pulkkinen, 2003). Furthermore, their biographies are reflective of the frameworks of power and control that produce gender relations they and have shaped their adult life development over the same period (Perrig-Chiello & Perren, 2005). In exploring the narrated experiences of women living in Italy and the United Kingdom, our research questions are: How do middle-aged women represent their learning lives? What * Corresponding author