Gendered learning biographies: becoming a teacher in multicultural education
ENResearch presented in the paper focuses on learning biographies and professional identity development of 14 female and male teachers at university colleges in Norway. Biographical narratives reveal subjective accounts and perception of gender rolesand it exposesinteraction of formal, non-formal, informal experiential learning in different cultural contexts (journeys), combination of learning, work and family life. Learning as a lifelong process is inter-woven with distribution of power in society, social stratification, structural economic and labour market processes, social identities (including gender) and relation between various spheres of social life (public and private, work, family and learning, etc.). In the settings of late modernity globalisation and the process of disembedding mechanismsof social institutions allow individualsto experience new cultures, new lifestyles and feeldisembeddedand detachedfrominstitutions. Internationalization of higher education is an example of empowering detachment mechanisms, when people choose to learn in different cultural settings and develop intercultural competence through experiential learning. The aim of the paper is to analyse (re)construction of self-identity in biographical narratives and conceptualize male and female learning biographiesand learning pathsin becoming teachers in multicultural. education.
