Connecting Bourdieu, Winnicott, and Honneth: Understanding the experiences of non-traditional learners through an interdisciplinary lens

Abstract

This paper connects Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, dispositions and capital with
\na psychosocial analysis of how Winnicott’s psychoanalysis and Honneth’s recognition
\ntheory can be of importance in understanding how and why non-traditional
\nstudents remain in higher education. Understanding power relations in an interdisciplinary
\nway makes connections – by highlighting intersubjectivity – between
\nexternal social structures and subjective experiences in a biographical study of
\nhow non-traditional learner identities may be transformed through higher education
\nin England and the Republic of Ireland.