After a brief historical overview, this paper considers key challenges that arise when biographical approaches are used to explore education. It focuses on a specific context: a doctoral study of mature women studying to work in childcare that developed into a much broader analysis of their ‘integrated lives’. This is an account of the students’ views on learning and teaching that also draws attention to the ways that biographical strategies made visible such views. It reveals the holistic possibilities of biographical interpretation and demonstrates how its inherent flexibility enables the researcher to address issues that really matter to people.