Disability

It can be seen from the above analysis that, narrative methodology has the potential to provide understandings into the active, self-shaping qualities of human thought and the power of stories to create and refashion selves and identities in their multiple guises and different contexts. Rather than reducing people to simply passive recipients of an embodied behaviour and storyline, narratives also have the potential to investigate agency and structure (Goodley, 2004). At the same time, Atkinson (2004) used narrative approaches with people with learning disabilities as a means of hearing their accounts, this approach Atkinson argue, can empower the person with LD by enhancing their knowledge and understanding of the world and their place in it. The enabling factors for the people with LD are, as Atkinson (2004) argues, time, space, support and practice, and including others with whom to share the experience and reflections. Thus enabled, Atkinson’s participants told and used personal stories to make bigger points, challenge people and events in their lives, and provide alternative social histories. Narrative research, through being particularly concerned with the person’s unique identity and history, means they cannot be depersonalised; it enables participants to emerge as people not cases. In my own opinion, this approach helps to reclaim their lives as their own and to provide counter-narratives. Observing young children with learning disabilities provides insights that cannot be gleaned in other ways. Being young (and disabled) does not mean that children have ‘nothing to say’ (Thomson, 2008), just that we may need creative ways of listening.

Until very recently, student voice has been marginalised or neglected by educational ...

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...and linguistic narratives.

Conclusion

This paper looked at the concept of narrative research and its conceptualisation, and attempted to justify why one chose it as a research methodology to explore the experiences of students with LD within a science education context. The paper also considered the issues surrounding narrative inquiry and criticisms encircling this genre. Finally, good practise with regards to field work (interviewing) was looked at. If we accept that our insight into disability issues are best achieved by trying to understand how life is seen by those living it rather than by accepting uncritically the perspectives of researchers, we have to begin to listen more systematically to disabled people. Narrative research is wholly dedicated to celebrating the voices of the silenced; it is the way of research that gives audience to marginalised voices.