Listening to old wives' tales: small stories and the (re)making and (re)telling of research in HE/FE practitioner education

Kendall, Alex and Gibson, M. and Himsworth, C. and Palmer, K. and Perkins, H. (2016) Listening to old wives' tales: small stories and the (re)making and (re)telling of research in HE/FE practitioner education. Research in Post-Compulsory Education, 21 (1-2). pp. 116-136. ISSN 13596748 (ISSN)

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Abstract

In this paper we share the outcomes of a project that sought to take up Nutbrown's challenge to 'push out from the safe(er) boundaries of established methodologies' in early years research. We explore the value of auto-ethnographic storytelling, Lyotard's 'petit récit’, to the processes of doing and learning about research in the context of practitioner education. We offer a rationale for the use of creative methods in (post?) professional learning and describe the process of working with identity boxes and symbolic objects, to produce a collection of auto-ethnographic narratives, the old wives' tales of the title, through which to explore practitioners' experiences of professional identity formation. We consider the opportunities such methods offer for reflexive learning about practitioner positionality within the knowledge-making practices of research and attempt to (re)position ourselves differently as writers and makers of research. Towards a conclusion we review and theorise meanings participant-researchers make about their career trajectories and proffer auto-ethnography as a dynamic modality for practitioner learning. We mobilise Patti Lather's notion of methodological proliferation to re-think practitioner education as a wild profusion of post-professional possibilities. © 2016 Association for Research in Post-Compulsory Education (ARPCE).

Item Type: Article
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1080/13596748.2015.1126933
Dates:
DateEvent
3 March 2016Published Online
19 September 2015Accepted
Uncontrolled Keywords: post-professionalism, practitioner education, research methods, writing differently
Subjects: CAH22 - education and teaching > CAH22-01 - education and teaching > CAH22-01-02 - teacher training
CAH22 - education and teaching > CAH22-01 - education and teaching > CAH22-01-01 - education
Divisions: Faculty of Health, Education and Life Sciences > Centre for Study of Practice and Culture in Education (C-SPACE)
Depositing User: Users 18 not found.
Date Deposited: 15 Nov 2016 09:56
Last Modified: 03 Mar 2022 17:01
URI: https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/530

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