Storying schools: issues around attempts to create a sense of feel and place in narrative research writing

Abstract

Narrative research writing often seeks to create a sense of feel and place. The aim is to convince an audience that the researcher has ‘been there’ and that they could have been there too. This article presents a story about a visit to a secondary special school for boys judged to have emotional and behavioural difficulties, and then goes on to discuss issues around ‘othering’ experienced by the author when writing it. The problems of first visits and the way in which personal identities influence perceptions of research settings are considered with reference to othering. The article concludes with the suggestion that, when the intention has been to work ‘ againstOthering, forsocial justice’ (Fine, 1994: 81), maybe one has to recognize that some concerns can probably not be relieved, and to ‘simply attempt to do the best [I] can’ (Smith and Deemer, 2000: 891).