The name is absent

major change in their parental role faces them with challenges that they may need
help in meeting. At the same time, historical changes in family structures within a
multicultural context generated tensions at different levels (those of the wider family
and of her personal marital relationship) which she seems to have been able to
resolve. The link between her immediate family and the community has been
strengthened by her participation, albeit at the possible expense of the wider family.
This generational impact will carry on through to her own children, who will have her
example in front of them, and is already impacting on other parents. We can only
speculate on what might have happened within her family, both nuclear and extended,
if she had not had access to learning opportunities to cope with both these types of
change.

10.3 Lydia

Lydia is a professional dance teacher of Greek origin. She organises a programme of
study for dancers, which involves coordinating the work of a number of tutors. She is
married with two boys (aged 14 and 5). She speaks with passion about dancing,
learning and life in general.

Lydia’s secondary schooling was at a huge 1300-strong all-girls comprehensive in
Islington - “pretty awful, because I was surrounded by girls who basically just
wanted to bunk off the whole time.” It followed a primary education that had been
rather disjointed because of parental divorce. She had a lot of traditional support from
her Greek background and mother but her mother was also on antidepressants. After
leaving school Lydia did three years’ very intensive dance training, and many more
classes. But she regards her whole life as learning - and makes a pretty good case for
it. Her current education is a Diploma in Teaching and Learning in Adult Education.

The course, around which her account is mainly built, is designed to enhance her
skills as an adult educator (in her case as a coordinator and trainer of dance teachers).
It has been a marked success, professionally and personally. One aspect of this
success links closely to Juliet’s experience, since the course served to validate Lydia’s
existing competencies as well as to enhance them. The effect was powerful:

“ ... it formalises my experience because I’ve been teaching for about 15years
and as a dancer or movement person teaching, there’s nothing out there really
that tied in with the way that I teach or the work that I do ... I thought no, I can’t
carry on like this because I do need to progress forwards in some way where my
teaching is recognised ... Though I have my beliefs and my values I thought
there’s something else behind all this and of course there was. There’s a world
of information that within the first lesson I walked away transformed. ”

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