Integrating into higher education: Understanding adult students’ motivation from their life stories

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This qualitative study was to explore how Korean adults’ personal as well as contextual factors led them to enter higher education and what their choice of action meant to them. While most of the approaches on adult’s motivation use quantified survey research, this study used qualitative interpretive approach, focusing on adults’ life stories and their construed meaning of participation in higher education. Twenty adults, who were over 30-years-old and enrolled in or graduated from universities or colleges, were selected for this research. In-depth interviews and focus group methods were conducted.
The adult students’ motivation to attend higher education was much more complicated than the simple pursuit of vocational goals to gain practical benefits. Their motivation was, rather, an endeavor for 'socializing' and 'integrating' into certain social groups, roles, and gaining status. Becoming a 'college student' or a 'college graduate' was perceived as fulfilling the 'holes in their lives' and as actualizing the kind of self-image that they had been idealizing for a long time. It was also an endeavor for seeking their own way of preparing themselves for social change.

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