Colley’s (2007) typology life-as-transition was renamed transitions-as-becoming in Gale and Parker’s (2012) review
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Gale and Parker (2012) defined becoming as “a perpetual series of fragmented movements involving the whole-of-life fluctuations in lived reality or subjective experience, from birth to death” (p.4). This notion of becoming is not to be confused with Lave & Wenger’s familiar notion of “becoming an old-timer with respect to newcomers” (1991, p.56) through Legitimate Peripheral Participation. In situated learning frameworks, becoming implies more linearity than this typology. Lave & Wenger (1991) described the process of becoming through a framework of social participation rather than more complex focus on lived experiences. Becoming an ‘old-timer’ within this framework can be mapped onto normative ‘pathways’ and ‘stages’ as students move between Communities of Practice. Unlike Lave & Wenger’s (1991) notion of becoming, transition-as-becoming is not preoccupied with the development of identities within educational and occupational contexts. Its distinct differences are drawn from a notion of becoming that has a rich tradition in social theory and philosophy (see, for example, Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Grosz, 1999).If, on one hand, the typologies of induction and development show transition growing from firm roots, becoming on the other hand, portrays the dynamics of transition as rhizomatic (Gale & Parker, 2012). Grosz (1994) reflected this dynamic when describing the process of ‘becoming women’ in which “Becomings are always specific movements, specific forms of motion and rest, speed and slowness, points and flows of intensity; they are always a multiplicity, the movement or transformation from one “thing” to another that in no way resembles it” (p.173). In this sense, becoming is “the operation of self-differentiation, the elaboration of a difference within a thing, a quality or a system that emerges or actualizes only in duration” (Grosz, 2005, p.4). When underpinned by this notion of becoming, transition is therefore intimately connected to the entire duration of a student’s life as well as the emergence of difference and multiplicities.
This theoretical literature has been drawn upon in many ways to “depict transitions as something much more ephemeral and fluid, where the whole of life is a form of transition, a permanent state of ‘becoming’ and ‘unbecoming’, much of which is unconscious, contradictory
and iterative” (Ecclestone, 2010, p.8). This contradictory and fluid notion of becoming and unbecoming was initially developed into a perspective of ‘life-as-transition’ (Colley, 2007; Colley et al., 2007; Ecclestone 2006, 2007, 2009; Ecclestone et al., 2010; Quinn, 2010). Both transition-as-becoming and life-as-transitions are suitable terms for expanding this typology. However, to avoid confusion, to direct attention away from Lave & Wenger’s (1991) notion of becoming, and to emphasise the extended spatiotemporal dimensions of transition the later will be adopted from this point onwards.
Gale and Parker (2012) suggested that the propositions contained within life-as-transition are in many ways a rejection of ‘transition’ as a useful concept, at least in how the term is often understood within HE (as induction or development). Following this line of thought, life-as- transition cannot be aligned with one of the established metaphors, pathways, and trajectories. Although it would be correct to trace this typology back to postmodern and poststructural traditions (Ecclestone et al., 2010), the unconscious and contradictory nature of transition it espouses means that the terms navigation and structured individualisation do not neatly fit either. This is a view Quinn (2010) partially outlined by suggesting that this perspective replaces the idea of pathways with a notion of constant flux. Ecclestone et al., (2010) also distanced the theory from the notion that transitions are trajectories, stating that it challenges the idea of transition as a rite of passage and movement through developmental life stages (ibid). None of the previous metaphors are suitable to this theory of transition. Instead, transition must be “understood as a series of flows, energies and movements and capacities, a series of fragments or segments capable of being linked together in ways other than those that congeal it into an identity” (ibid, p.8).
Whilst life-as-transition rejects these established metaphors, it accepts transition as a perpetual state of flux in which young people imagine multiple futures and experience contradictions throughout their life. Complexity, crisis and contradictions are not, however, necessarily considered problematic (Quinn, 2010; Gale & Parker, 2012). These elements are instead considered to be a symptom of transitional experiences. All transitions are complex, encounter moments of crisis and produce contradictions. Moreover, transitions are seen to have no tangible start or end points. Instead, transition is an “unending and fragmented process, which is neither
linear nor simplistically circular: while one contradiction may be resolved, a new one will surface” (Colley, 2007, p.438). Grounded in her qualitative data, Quinn (2010) argued that transition is a process that “involves a number of zigzag or spiral movements within a web of contradictions” (Quinn, 2010, p.122). Worth (2009) added “it is important to see time as more than linear chronology - time can be difference, time can be past, present and future at once” (p. 1055). This theme of the temporalities of transition will be discussed further in 6.2d.
Life-as-transition is therefore better equipped to explore messy processes and outcomes of transition (see Chapter 1). It recognises the multiplicities that are present in any transitional periods or stages throughout the duration of students’ lives. In this sense, life-as-transition does not narrowly restrict the transitional process to segments of change within tightly bounded times and spaces (Colley, 2007; Ecclestone et al., 2009). Rather, it challenges implicit notions of linearity, chronology, time and change that are built into inductionist and developmentalist perspectives (Gale & Parker, 2012). Three tenets summarise this challenge: (1) transition does not occur during a phase or at a stage; (2) transition is not a linear progression towards a unified product; (3) change is a symptom of everyday experience and not the result of a singular transition - transitions are always situated within the students’ life and wider cultural/ educational environments. Each of these claims “undermines assumptions that ‘becoming somebody’ involves a unified subject capable of being transformed” (Ecclestone, 2007, p. 5). Students are not entities that can be moulded to change through transition, but rather they are seen as fluid processes that are themselves always in transition. In developing a critical stance, I would also argue that these processes are always enabling and constraining in contradictory ways.