Experience and Life History. Roskilde University Life History Project Paper.

The Life History Project at Denmark's Roskilde University is a 5-year research project that was initiated in 1998 to examine learning and participation in adult and continuing education from a life history perspective. The project was designed to build on a broad range of qualitative interview studies and case studies into learning processes. The research methodology designed for the project was grounded in the critical theory tradition and in the following premises: (1) the need to adopt a "holistic" approach that takes the learner's perspective; (2) the notion of experience and the specificity of the learning subject; (3) the need to move beyond conventional hermeneutics to "in-depth hermeneutics," which involves looking for meanings and implications going beyond the knowledge or intent of the acting, knowing, or speaking subject; and (4) the notion that a learning subject is a historical product of modernity and the need to relate it to a dynamic-utopian concept of a learning individual. (Contains 12 references.) (MN)