Abstract
There is a tendency in academic literature concerning children from diverse social and linguistic background to concentrate on failure within the school system. It is only in recent years that this is beginning to change. In this article the author argues that if we are to motivate children towards success we need to have a clear picture of the kinds of cultural and linguistic understandings they are bringing into schools. Central to this is how they perceive themselves in terms of identity. Much has been written about this area. However, little of it has been empirical or systematic and that which is empirical has been from a positivistic viewpoint. In this article the author describes a non-positivistic analysis of the life stories of several academically successful people and analyses them systematically to demonstrate how they now ‘story’ their identities.