Narrative, voice and identity
Narratives and life history allow us to explore the worlds of others and offer insights into the experiences, their identities, their life worlds and their knowledge. Using a narrative approach allows us to listen attentively to how others see and represent their worlds.
Group members
- Professor Ivor Goodson
- Professor Avril Loveless
- Dr Carol Robinson
- Mark Price
- Dr Keith Turvey
- Dr Mike Hayler
Current work
Projects:
- Developing Narrative Theory
- Cambridge Primary Review Network
- UNICEF project on Children’s Rights
- Beatbullying project
- Hangleton and Knoll project
- Brighton and Hove community Action Project
- Creative Educators
Themes:
Major longitudinal projects
Our work builds on projects conducted at the university: the ESRC funded Learning Lives project and the EU funded Professional Knowledge project.
Narratives and life histories
A broad understanding of the methodologies and their application to learning and teaching.
Life worlds, voices and identity
The focus of this strand is on realising and developing an understanding of the beliefs, values, attitudes, practices, activities and experiences which are representative of the everyday lives of individuals or groups. Central to this area is developing a deep understanding of the social and cultural reality which individuals / groups have constructed and which give meaning to the world in which they live.
Creativity and learning
This theme focuses on understanding the relationships and interactions between creativity, learning and pedagogy in a variety of subject areas and settings. Our particular research interests include digital technologies as tools for creative activity and narratives of learning in the lives of creative people who teach.
Individual experiences
Narrative approaches lend themselves to representing lives in ways that give agency to research participants and allow us as researchers to map individual experiences against social, political, economic and cultural backdrops.
Narrative approaches
These can be useful in working with community partners who are seeking to illustrate the ‘distance travelled’ of often marginalised groups at the receiving end of community work interventions. For funding purposes community groups have to demonstrate value and outcomes of provision – narrative approaches can help them to demonstrate the subtle (and not so subtle) changes in lifestyle, attitudes, behaviour and identities of participants as they engage with particular provisions.
The student’s story
Through narrative enquiry and associated auto-ethnographic work, other research interests explore and analyse the student’s story and journey to professional selfhood, encouraging students to become researchers of their own professional lives.
Expansive pedagogies and digital technologies
This research uses narrative methods to capture the human-centred nuances, often not explicitly visible in professional pedagogical contexts with new technologies. It seeks to understand the complex personal and professional stories that lie behind the ways in which some educators create innovative and transformative learning opportunities with new technologies.