‘Possible Selves’ in practice: how students at Further Education Colleges in England conceptualise university

This paper reports on a project in the North of England that looks at college-to-university decision-making processes non-traditional students through conceptual lens ‘Possible Selves’, as initially developed by Markus and Nurius (1986) applied to higher education Harrison (2018), Henderson (2019) others. Our data involves in-depth interviews with young people, college staff responsible for advising guiding them, Further Education Colleges from which rate transition university is lower than national average. findings show people talk about their ‘like-to-be’ ‘like-to-avoid’ futures complex self-regulated ways, often moderating how they articulate aspiration align external discourses, such those projected staff. Students also demonstrate keen awareness structural limits, effectively constructing future selves which, though ‘elaborated’, reflect counter-reading dominant narratives around financial self-improvement achieved via ‘full’ experience. The Selves’ approach therefore found be enabling mediating artefact researchers, valuable identifying policy-relevant points tension between