The hero's journey: stories of women returning to education

This paper draws upon the metaphor of the "hero's journey" to further analyse seven stories of women returning to education. These stories have formed the basis of a recent book publication by the authors (Stone & O'Shea, 2012) and are derived from two complementary but separate research studies (O'Shea, 2007; Stone, 2008). None of the women featured in this article have a parent who went to university and all have a number of competing demands in their lives including families, partners and employment. This paper aims to both frame the richly descriptive nature of these stories within a heroic metaphor and also to indicate how these stories, whilst unique, share common thematic elements and turning points. The paper foregrounds these commonalities capturing a universal narrative and also explores how this mythical framework could be used by both educators and students to conceptualise movements within this environment.