As we have emphasised, our primary concern in this book is to present the results of our research in an accessible form. Rather than beginning with normative questions about what a ‘learning society’ ought to constitute, the principal concerns in this book are with what the patterns of participation through the life course actually are and how best to understand their determinants. This is important not only to strengthen the social science of this field, but also to provide a proper basis for the formulation of policy.

To evaluate the various policies for fostering lifelong learning and the intellectual rationales that underpin them, which we sketched out in Chapter One, we need to have a firm knowledge of people's actual patterns of participation in lifelong learning. We also require an understanding of the factors that shape these patterns of participation. In short, therefore, we concur with Coffield (1997) that the development of an adequate social theory of lifelong learning – however complex – is a necessary precondition of understanding and creating a learning society.

In this chapter we present an overview of our preliminary theoretical model of the determinants of lifelong learning. It is this model that shaped the way in which we approached our empirical research. We then present an explicit account of the methodological strategy that informed the principal of the research studies on which we draw.

History, place and biography

Previous analysis of why people undertake education and training during their adult lives has tended to isolate individuals from the social and economic contexts in which participation in learning takes place. The dominant mode of theorising in this field has been human capital theory (HCT), where individuals participate in lifelong learning according to their calculation of the net economic benefits to be derived from education and training (Becker, 1975). Given the dominant policy consensus about the general direction of economic change towards more knowledge-based forms of production (as outlined in Chapter One), it follows that a worker will seek to participate in lifelong learning in order to capitalise on the benefits that will flow from skills renewal and development.

Hence, on this view, the principal issue that government policy needs to address is to ensure the removal of the ‘barriers’ that prevent people from participating in education and training.