| Abstract: | The starting point for this paper is the current ambition in Norway and other countries to increase the rate of entry into higher education of mature students. Intransigency amongst suppliers of higher education on entry standards means that any such increase must involve a greater preparedness amongst adults to pursue access to higher education via participation in higher secondary education. The purpose of this paper is to improve our understanding of the preparedness of adults, or lack of it, to pursue access to higher education through participation in the examination‐based higher secondary education (HSE) for adults. In doing so we must confront the general underutilization of theory in research into participation in adult education coupled to the failure by researcher and theoretician alike to acknowledge the heterogeneity of the field. The article develops a conceptual framework of perspectives on participation in HSE for adults within which the core perspectives are derived from the prevailing theoretical approach to understanding participation in adult education, viz. the motivation‐barriers paradigm. We argue, however, that these perspectives are ultimately only of intermediary status, and that a conceptual framework that does not include their major causal antecedents would be overly reductionist. The framework contains therefore perspectives of a sociological character that not only shed light on the development of the necessary motivation for participation in HSE for adults, but that also seek to account for the structural forces that hinder participation. |
