The continuity of experience: examining personhood in practice of British Yemeni young people

The focus of this paper is to explore the learning and development of British Yemeni young people through ideas of personhood in practice. By exploring the continuity of lived daily experiences, the paper focuses on how actions build habits, and how, with the passing of time, such habits may be reinforced or changed, resulting in new forms of learning and development. In this way, the paper examines more experiential notions of agency – one that moves beyond certain statis notions of cultural identity – as a way of understanding lived experiences. The study utilises photo-novella and semi-structured interviews as methods. The findings suggest that, although experience as adaptive habits are embedded in the actions of the participant, the reflexive perception of such experiences, as well as the circumstances and the occurrence of marker events or critical incidents, point to the possibilities of change and development. These changes can be in the form of cumulative-quantitative shifts, in how a young person sees their doing, and through transformative-qualitative changes in personhood. Although the paper directs its attention on examples of learning and development as evident in the experiences of British Yemeni young people, it also provides evidence for how theory can be useful in articulating the conduct of everyday lives more generally.