Edinburgh Napier University

  This research explores the nature and context of students’ participation in post-experience education, with a focus on the experiences of those engaging in a Masters level, professionally accredited qualification. This study presents a single open framework that considers the reasons for, the challenges to, and the enablers of participation across defined contextual dimensions (the psychological, the professional, the practical and the personal), for the purposes of understanding the context of post-experience participation. Viewed through the lens of the framework, findings demonstrate that participants chose to engage and continue with the learning activity as a result of a diverse range of influencing factors. The transferability and usability of the framework and its potential to contribute to wider practice will be explored. It is proposed that the open, exploratory framework can be applied to a variety of different learning activities, across a variety of disciplines, as a means of identifying areas of improvement or change in learning support practice.