Aspirations and attainments : tensions in the ‘borderland’, the place of becoming

Mature age learners who enrol in pre-university Enabling programs are virtual border crossers (Giroux, 1992), journeying from one habitas (Bourdieu, 1990) or lifeworld (Habermas, 1984) to another. Yet this physical and conceptual ‘crossing’ is inevitably prefaced by a period of time in a physical, psychological, emotional and cognitive territory that can be referred to as the ‘borderland’. Premised on findings of a small scale qualitative case study theoretically framed by transformative learning theory (Cranton, 2000, 2006; Dirkx, 2001, 2008, 2011) and borderland d/Discourse theory (Alsup, 2006; Gee, 1990, 2005), the paper presents three important findings that pose significant implications for educators who seek to enhance the aspirations and attainments of their students in the formal learning arena.