Becoming a Mature Student: Gendered narratives of the self

Abstract This article explores some of the processes of personal and social transformation involved in becoming a mature student, through the construction of four narratives derived from the biographical accounts of 21 students entering higher education. The authors identify different conceptions of self in the four narratives and demonstrate their gendered nature. In particular they highlight the specifically masculine nature of the 'reflexive self', in contrast to the gender-neutral treatment of this concept in the literature. They also draw attention to the connections between these gendered concepts of self and the meanings of education, which they suggest are more complex than the simple gender dichotomies expressed in the literature. In addition they show that an analytic approach derived from narrative analysis can offer more insights into the interpretation of biographical data than more traditional ethnographic methods.