PART D: Recapitulation and policy conclusions
12. Conclusions
This report presents results from over 140 biographical interviews carried out with
adults of very different ages and backgrounds, engaged in diverse forms of learning in
three different areas of England. This final section recapitulates the report’s main
content, and presents a set of policy conclusions.
12.1 Conceptual and methodological issues
Analysing the wider benefits of learning presents significant conceptual and
methodological challenges. As well as presenting empirical results, this report offers
outcomes from the work we did in developing our analytical approach to the
fieldwork. This covers both our preparatory and piloting work, and the execution of
the main body of the research.
First, we constructed a simple analytical triangle around three basic concepts: human
capital, social capital and personal identity (Figure 1, p. 10). The triangle’s three sides
represent different dimensions - roughly speaking, the socio-economic, the socio-
psychological and what might be called the psycho-economic. Within the triangle we
placed the fields we are specifically interested in, such as health or family life. The
framework helps us to trace the complex sets of interactions that exist between the
different fields. We emphasise that the variables identified can be both final and
intermediate - in other words, they can emerge as an effect of learning or as a
mediating factor in a different causal chain. We also emphasise that the framework is
to be seen dynamically; it is available, as it were, for wider use with other variables,
and we shall ourselves modify it in subsequent work.
A second outcome of this kind, emerging from the fieldwork itself, is a simple general
matrix for plotting the effects of learning (Figure 2, p. 12). One dimension runs from
the individual to the collective, the other from transforming to sustaining. This
generates a typology of effects that we have found to be extremely fruitful, and could
be of wider application. In particular, the sustaining function of learning emerged as
immensely important, in ways that are very hard to demonstrate other than through in-
depth study. This might be called the counterfactual problem, in that we may only
learn the full impact of education once it is removed. One of our strongest findings is
that involvement in learning enables people to sustain the quality of their personal
lives or their communities, through acute problems or more routinely.
We used the individual-collective dimension to map out other parts of the work,
notably in relation to self-confidence. Self-confidence, and cognate notions such as
self-esteem or self-efficacy, are very widely reported effects of education; we set out a
spectrum of the different ways in which such an outcome manifests itself.
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