Working Creatively with Stories and Learning Experiences

Engaging with Queerly Identifying Tertiary Students

Michael Crowhurst, Michael Emslie

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9783319697536
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319697543
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

Stories are a valuable vehicle for practitioners in research, education, human services and the arts to enable individual and cultural change. The authors describe and deploy a variety of methods that can be used by teachers, researchers, artists, youth and community workers, and other professionals to analyse stories in ways that can promote learning and wellbeing and enhance professional practice. Offering a concise and user-friendly assemblage of techniques on how to creatively engage with stories, the authors explore and exemplify these techniques through the narratives of Queerly Identifying Tertiary Students. This practical and innovative volume will appeal to readers, researchers and practitioners alike.

© The Author(s) 2018

Michael Crowhurst and Michael EmslieWorking Creatively with Stories and Learning ExperiencesCreativity, Education and the Artshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69754-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Michael Crowhurst¹ and Michael Emslie²

(1)

School of Education, RMIT, Bundoora, VIC, Australia

(2)

Youth Work, RMIT, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Abstract

In the introduction, we explore the question: What is a narrative? We also explore ways that practitioners can use stories to enhance practice. We describe our method of data collection and then explain our process of writing the book. Finally, we outline what we do in the book and suggest to readers how they can use the book.

Keywords

Narrative enquiryQueerly identifying tertiary studentsWorking with storiesCoherence

End Abstract

Stories are a valuable vehicle that professional practitioners in research , education , welfare and the arts use to enable individual and cultural changes (Tassoni & Thelin, 2000). Freire (1993) described a critical method he deployed in educational and community contexts that involved the exploration and analysis of narratives . Teachers , students and community members would come together in a shared dialogue to identify problematic aspects of cultural context , to promote consciousness raising and action. White and Epston (1990) pioneered narrative therapy that uses story in creative ways to promote healing and recovery in individuals and the transformation of broader cultural contexts . Stories are also pivotal to the work of feminist theorists such as Richardson (2001) and Davies (2015), who use discourse analysis to interrogate stories with a view to expanding opportunities. This book adds to this genre. We describe and deploy a variety of methods that can be used by teachers , community workers, researchers , artists and other professionals to analyse stories in ways that can support change, promote learning and well-being , and enhance professional practice .

What is a Story? What is a Narrative?

In concert with Kohler Riessman (2008) and Liamputtong (2009), we use the words narrative and story interchangeably. There are many ways of understanding story, and the word can be used quite broadly or in rather specific ways (Barthes, 1972; Clandinin, 2007; Kohler Riessman, 2008). It can be argued that everything might be thought of as involving story or that everything is capable of being constructed via the use of story (Buchbinder, 1994). We share this view and see certain advantages in adopting it.

Policy might be thought of as a story. A city might be storied. Paintings might be thought of as telling stories . The ways that we conceptualize young people might be thought of via the idea of story. Schools might be thought of via story. The ways we describe countries might be thought of as stories. Everything might be thought of as including elements of story.

While defining story in such a broad fashion enables this conceptual tool to be used in a wide variety of situations, it might also mean that it loses some of its usefulness because it lacks a degree of focus or precision.

Kohler Riessman puts this debate on the table, reminding us that while ‘narrative is everywhere … not everything is narrative’ (2008, p. 4). She argues that as well as defining story broadly, a story might also be thought of in more focused ways, for example, ‘a story consists of a sequenced story line, specific characters, and the particulars of a setting’ (2008, p. 5). We also adopt this viewpoint. Readers might note at this point that we have adopted multiple and perhaps contradictory viewpoints. We do not have a problem with such multiplicity because it reflects our view that stories are complex, multifaceted and sometimes contradictory events.

Stories may be understood as personal accounts of action, identity, experience and meaning. These accounts might be written, spoken, visual, embodied, danced, painted or performed. They many also be implied, subtle, direct, first-hand, or second-hand. Stories also have political dimensions—they may be heard, ignored, valued or discarded. Stories may also take different trajectories—they might be linear , fragmented, consistent or contradictory.

Drawing on practice theory (Shove, Pantzar, & Watson, 2012) and poststructural theory (Youdell, 2010), stories can also be understood as complex assemblages of connected, interdependent and constantly shifting diverse elements. These elements may include characters and identities, plots and action, confusion and stasis, and may entail intentions and emotions, conflict and resolution, contradiction and coherence. Stories may also be thought of as carriers of, as enabled by, as mediated by and as productive of cultural systems (Bruner, 1997).

In addition, we might think about story as being composed of conscious and unconscious elements (Freire, 1993) or of interior elements and exterior dimensions (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Sellers , 2013, p. 62) or of a relation between the present, manifestly absent and Other (Law, 2004). There are parts of any story that are unspoken and there are parts that are exterior to the key narrative . These parts might be thought of as negative spaces that function in relationship with the conscious narrative —they might be thought of as encircling ‘it’.

These two dimensions of the unspoken—the unspoken within and the unspoken around—are key parts of the complex space that is the story. These spaces are also integral to the production of the illusion of coalescence or unity—the production of the effect whereby the complex event that is the story comes to be positioned as a single unitary event.

Narrative enquiry is a technical term used to describe and frame research projects where the primary data collected and analysed is stories . Kohler Riessman (2000, p. 4, 2008, p. 6), for instance, suggests that ‘[n]arrative analysis is the systematic study of narrative data’ and further that ‘[n]arrative analysis takes as its object of investigation the story itself.’ We broadly connect with such traditions in this project. Specifically, we are interested to articulate a variety of methods that can be deployed to analyse stories .

Why Explore Ways That Practitioners Can Use Stories to Enhance Practice?

Stories are an inescapable element of practice—to work with people involves working with stories. McLeod (Hockings, Parry, Kenway, & McLeod, 2011) suggested that researchers use stories in all sorts of ways, and that we ask stories to do a lot of work. The same can be said for practitioners in education , health and welfare . Some of the ways that stories can be put to work include:

as a means to communicate experience,

as a starting point to identify structural /contextual factors that impact individuals,

and as a guide to strategizing.

Stories can also be used by practitioners to understand and respond to marginalization; that is, they can serve political ends. Walker (1988), f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Discourse Analysis
• 3. Performative Analysis
• 4. Assemblage as Analysis
• 5. Analysis to Identify Contradictions
• 6. Reading Aloud as Generative
• 7. Conclusion
• Backmatter