Improving biographical work with non-traditional adult learners from marginalised communities

The topic of the paper is a project we are developing in Bicocca University with students involved in higher education paths. The frame is the EU Grundtvig programme and the project "European biographies. Biographical approaches in higher education". The general aim of this project is to enrich and improve methods of biographical work with adults; different partners institutions from different countries are carrying out pilot projects where autobiographical work is aimed to reach and integrate socially marginalized persons into society. Bicocca university take part in this project with a group composed by Phd students and students that are reaching their second degree in educational sciences; the group is lead by prof. Laura Formenti and dr. Micaela Castiglioni. This group, in the last months, has experienced autobiographical based session in order to approach autobiographical work and to project autobiographical laboratories. These laboratories are now being addressed to other students of Bicocca University belonging to different faculties and that wehad identified as non-traditional students. The idea is to gather learning stories from students that have some a-tipicality in relation with the usual university expectations. For example we looked for adult students that decided to re-enter in higher education after (or during) a work period, or students that changed their learning paths shifting their faculty course. In the institutional thought these kind of students are often viewed as a social cost or a difficult category to deal with: faculty changes are viewed as "error" and worker students are viewed as non-attending students. In fact, many university efforts are directed to prevent these "errors" in higher educational paths. We want to listen these students stories, their relation with learning and with the university institutions. We are convinced that these stories could tell many information about students agency, copying abilities and sensemaking. Our aim is to collect these narrations in a virtual archive and to bring them to the institution; in fact many university policies are decided without listening the voices of their "inhabitants" and particularly of some invisible inhabitants. As far as it concerns students, we think that autobiographical laboratories could contribute to their sensemaking and to strenghten their agency in relation to their learning way. Sharing their own story and listen to other experiences could be an opportunity to open new views and new considerations on their learning life history.