Identity Struggles of Adult Returners

Abstract

This article addresses a perceived gap in higher education literature: there is very little writing that successfully combines the issues of individual learners who dropped out and then returned to higher education – the adult returners. To address this problem, the article draws upon data from the qualitative part of a larger research project that deals with non-traditional students in the Czech Republic. This article analyzes data from eight subjects with drop-out experience chosen from the initial corpus of thirty non-traditional students. The results indicate that adult learners have to deal with three central identities and with potential identity struggles as they interact: student identity, work identity, and familial identity. The final result of the interaction between these identities can be either the integration or the disintegration of identities, whereby one of the possible consequences of identity disintegration is to drop out from higher education.