Narrative strategies in educational research: reflections on a critical autoethnography

Abstract

This article consists of critical reflections on an inclusion story I wrote about my own practice as a local education authority educational psychologist in the United Kingdom. The aim is to shed light on the process of producing stories and possibly also on criteria for judging them. As a critical reflective practitioner, I saw myself as writing an autoethnographic story of ‘resistance’ but also one of ‘hope without illusions’. In an extended commentary on samples of writing, I address issues to do with form and style in relation to the overall purpose of the story and the intended audiences. A number of concepts are identified that were found useful in constructing a narrative: life‐world; hegemony and discourse; aesthetic merit; reflexivity; polyvocality; autobiography/autoethnography; confession.