Narrative:

Approaches in research and

professional practice

EDUCATIONAL & CHILD PSYCHOLOGY

VOLUME 29, NUMBER 2

Guest Editors
Tom Billington & Liz Todd
Contents
4 About the Contributors
Guest Editorial
Tom Billington & Liz Todd
8 Narrative therapy and outsider witness practice: Teachers as a community of
acknowledgement
Sarah Walther & Hugh Fox
18 Positioning among the lines of force in schooling: An issue for psychologists and
counsellors in schools
John Winslade
30 ‘When the powerfulness isn’t so helpful’: Callum’s relationship with autism
Dr Jennifer Alison Gilling
39 The professional practice of educational psychologists: Developing narrative approaches
Charmian Hobbs, Rachel Durkin, Gillian Ellison, Jennifer Gilling, Tracey Heckels, Sarah
Tighe, Barbara Waites & Carol Watterson
51 Reading Rosie: The postmodern disabled child
Dan Goodley & Katherine Runswick-Cole
65 How can the use of petit narratives create space and possibility when shorthand is used in
educational psychology practice?
Daniela Mercieca & Duncan P. Mercieca
75 Engaging with young people through narrative co-construction: Beyond categorisation
Kate Warham
85 Narrative analysis of former child soldiers’ traumatic experiences
Paul O’Callaghan, Dr Lesley Storey & Dr Harry Rafferty

Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2 3

© The British Psychological Society, 2012
About the Contributors

4 Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

© The British Psychological Society, 2012
 About the Contributors

Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2 5

Guest Editorial
Tom Billington & Liz Todd

6 Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

© The British Psychological Society, 2012
 Guest Editorial

Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2 7

Narrative therapy and outsider witness
practice: Teachers as a community of
acknowledgement
Sarah Walther & Hugh Fox

When people meet together to hear, respond to and acknowledge the preferred accounts of people’s lives, it is
referred to in narrative therapy as ‘outsider witness practice’. In this paper, we describe how the outsider
witness practice framework can support staff in educational settings to acknowledge preferred accounts of
identity. We summarise the broader orientation to life, identity and relationships that inform narrative
therapy as a context for locating outsider witness practice. We then describe the outsider witness practice
framework and scaffold in some detail and illustrate this with an example of a piece of therapeutic work
with a young man.
This paper is intentionally written in the first person. This reflects our wider commitment as narrative
therapists to inviting and promoting a sense of personal agency, ownership and accountability.
Keywords: narrative therapy; schools; community; outsider witness.

I
T HAS BECOME COMMON for people’s
identities and selves to be understood as
an essentialist part of them, with the self-
located as a core part of a person. This core
self is variously theorised to be the result of
personality traits, characteristics, uncon-
scious motivations, drives and so on. These
are known as structuralist understandings of
identity; that is, identity is determined by the
internal structure of the individual.
As narrative therapists, we are interested
in a different understanding of personhood,
a non-structuralist understanding – also
referred to as post-structuralist understand-
ings, in some contexts – in which identity is
seen as being shaped in social and relational
contexts:
Post-structuralist understandings account for
identity as a social and public achievement –
identity is something that is negotiated within
social institutions and within communities of
people – and is shaped by historical and
cultural forces. (White, 2000, p.62)
We are also interested in the idea that narra-
tives are the means by which our identities
are shaped in these social and relational
contexts; the stories or accounts that we tell,
and that are told about us, shape not only
how we think about ourselves and others but
our actions and living practices.
As no single account or story can ever
reflect our entire lived experience, narrative
therapy holds an understanding that life is
multi-storied: That there are many possible
accounts that can or could be told about who
we are and how we live. However, some
stories about our lives are told and heard
more than others; they can become domi-
nant in defining our sense of self and limit
the actions available for us to take. We do not
always get to author these accounts or have a
say in which ones are told. This is particularly
the case when problems or difficulties are
around and when the people who are
sharing problem stories about our lives are
in relative positions of power.
Schools shape identities
Schools may just be one community in which
a person’s identities are storied, but they are
a very significant community. Staff rooms are
an informal but powerful social and public
setting in which problematic identity conclu-
sions about children are shared and
sustained. In more formal contexts, accounts
of children written by educational profes-

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© The British Psychological Society, 2012

sionals carry power and a truth status that
other accounts of a young person, authored
by their friends, for example, do not carry.
School events and teacher opinions are
frequently documented, circulated and
understood as truths to people outside the
school context. They are told and retold
throughout and even beyond a person’s
educational career as part of their ‘record’,
having significant effects that can extend
into the future.
It is in these sorts of ways that problem
stories can begin to become the dominant
influence in a person’s life. They can seem to
speak a truth about who we are and have the
power to totalise our identities, marginal-
ising all other possible narratives. A person’s
life can be reduced to this problematic
account and become single-storied; their
preferred sense of who they are – what is
important to them and how they wish to live
their life – goes unacknowledged and
becomes invisible even to themselves.
In these situations, narrative therapy
seeks to bring forward these alternative
‘preferred accounts of identity’ with the
understanding that, once these are made
visible, the person can more clearly see ways
forward that are congruent with how they
wish to live their life. However, it is difficult
for a person to step into these alternatives
unless they are noticed and honoured by
others. It is more likely that people will be
able to sustain and develop their preferred
living practices if their efforts to live these
preferences are recognised and told by audi-
ences; if they are put into circulation and
acknowledged.
Narrative therapy and acknowledgement
Narrative therapy is often referred to as a
therapy of acknowledgement. We try to
make visible the ways that people would
prefer to see themselves and would prefer to
be seen by others. In addition, we invite
others to recognise and acknowledge these
preferred accounts.
It is in having these alternative stories of
‘who they are and how they might become’
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Narrative therapy and outsider witness practice
acknowledged by others that the person can
experience this story as authentic and
credible, which in turn enables it to be influ-
ential in shaping their life. It becomes an
option for how they may seek to live their
life, an option not available when the prob-
lematic account of identity is the only
account and is taken to be true.
Although Michael White and David
Epston (White & Epston, 1989) had been
recruiting audiences during their work for
some time, White writes of the significance
of the work of cultural anthropologist
Barbara Myerhoff in developing a ‘fuller
understanding of the significance of the
audience’s contribution’ (White, 2007):
Unless we exist in the eyes of others, we may
come to doubt even our own existence. Being is
a social and psychological construct; it is
something that is made, not given.
(Myerhoff, 2007, p.31)
This idea is a key principle of narrative
therapy and reflects the shift away from indi-
vidualised approaches towards the more
social and relational orientation that narra-
tive practice embodies.
Acknowledgement by the therapist
Most people who seek counselling have their
lives storied by dominant problematic
accounts. Alternative narratives are often
asked about, made visible and acknowledged
in the first instance by the therapist. For
example, a young person may be seen as
aggressive and unco-operative by those
around them – parents and teachers and so
on. However, in therapeutic conversation
between the young person and a counsellor,
it may emerge that actually there are many
actions they take that do not fit with this
description; there are likely to be many occa-
sions when they might have caused trouble
in school but did not. These actions are
expressions of something other than aggres-
sion and unco-operativeness and can be
asked about further. They may turn out to be
expressions of a wish to learn and a determi-
nation to make something of their life, but
this determination is rarely seen, existing as
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Sarah Walther & Hugh Fox
it does in the shadows of the dominant story
of aggression and lack of co-operation.
In noticing and asking about these occa-
sions, the therapist can then confirm and
explicitly witness the preferences they
reflect:
So this episode, where you could have gone off
in class, but you kept quiet and got on with
your work, that was because you want to make
something of your life. Have I understood that
right?
This response is highly acknowledging of the
young person’s alternative ideas of what is
important to them, and by acknowledging it
in this way it starts to make it possible for the
young person to see this identity claim as
one that is possible or authentic.
Acknowledgement by others
If identity is understood to be a social and
public achievement, rather than an intrinsic
characteristic of a person, then it is even
more powerful when these alternative iden-
tity claims are publicly acknowledged by
people other than the therapist. Narrative
therapy does not centre the therapist as
heroic. It privileges the macro-world of life
over the micro-world of the therapy room,
based on the principle that it is in social
contexts that we are able to authenticate our
identity claims more richly.
As the lives of the people with whom we
meet are often dominated by the telling and
retelling of problem accounts, in narrative
therapy we work to create relational contexts
that are authenticating of preferred identity
claims by recruiting audiences who can offer
acknowledgment. We refer to these
recruited audiences as ‘outsider witnesses’.
Identifying teachers as
outsider witnesses
There are many possibilities for recruiting
wider audiences from various aspects of the
person’s life, including friends, neighbours,
colleagues, family members and so on.
Teachers make particularly good outsider
witnesses when they are open to hearing
alternative accounts of a young person’s life.
10
They are people of power and status in that
young person’s life and, as such, their contri-
bution will be highly significant to the young
person. Also, they may be able to respond to
the young person outside the therapeutic
context, that is, during the ‘ordinary’ macro-
world of school life, in ways that are
supportive of this preferred identity. Further-
more, they may be a means of spreading the
news of this alternative identity more widely
within the school community. The more
widely this account is spread, the more it can
contribute to shaping the young person’s life
and to giving a sense of authenticity to their
preferred identity claims.
The person who is to be at the centre of
this audience should be consulted about
their interest in the process and about who
they might like to have listen to and witness
their stories:
Who in your school might have had a glimpse of
your determination to make something of your
life? Would you be interested in inviting them to
come and hear about the efforts you have been
making to make something of your life? And in
me asking them some questions to find out what
they think about what they have heard?
Teachers identified in this way may be
thought of as having the potential to form a
community of acknowledgement, a commu-
nity that will support the life of the young
person’s preferred account of their identity.
Recruiting teachers as
outsider witnesses
Once a teacher has been identified as a
potential outsider witness, there are many
ways to invite that person into the process.
However, it is important to confirm that they
will indeed be able to contribute to an
enrichment of the young person’s preferred
identity. The therapist can begin by
explaining their connection with the young
person and the conversational context in
which the potential outsider witness was
identified. This acts as a foundation for
enquiring about the outsider witness’ knowl-
edge of the person’s preferred story and
their willingness to share this explicitly:
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

I have recently been speaking with a young
person about his life. He has told me that
although many other teachers seem to see him
as a person who doesn’t want to learn, he
thinks that you may be one of the few people
who noticed who has something different about
him, who may have guessed that he does want
to learn. Is that right? What have you noticed?
How come you have been available to this?
The length and type of conversation at this
stage can vary and may include other aspects
of narrative practice. However, the intention
is always to ensure, as far as possible, that the
outsider witness will be available to hear and
acknowledge preferred accounts of identity
rather than seeing this process as another
opportunity to relate the problem story.
Outsider witness practice and
definitional ceremony
Meetings of outsider witnesses are structured
in particular ways to form a ‘definitional
ceremony’. This description is again drawn
from the work of Barbara Myerhoff, who
recorded her connection with a community
of elderly Jewish people in Venice, Cali-
fornia. She observed their practices for
‘telling and retelling, performing and re-
performing the stories of their lives’:
When cultures are fragmented and in serious
disarray, proper audiences may be hard to
find. Natural occasions may not be offered and
then they must be artificially invented. I have
called such performances Definitional
Ceremonies. (Myerhoff, 1982, p.105)
Myerhoff also writes:
Definitional ceremonies deal with the problems
of invisibility and marginality; they are
strategies that provide opportunities for being
seen and in one’s own terms, garnering
witnesses to one’s worth, vitality, and being.
(1982, p.267)
In summary, a definitional ceremony was
described by Barbara Myerhoff as an ‘artifi-
cially invented’ occasion that provides a
space for audiences to contribute to a
person’s ‘worth, vitality and being’. Michael
White developed outsider witness practice as
a form of definitional ceremony specifically
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Narrative therapy and outsider witness practice
for use in contexts of narrative therapy or
community development. Witnesses are
gathered together to hear the preferred
accounts of a person’s life, and are invited to
make responses that lead to rich description
of these preferred accounts.
The outsider witness practice
framework: Tellings and retellings
The overall outsider witness process consists
of three stages (White, 2007, p.185). Firstly,
there is a conversation or interview with the
person at the centre of the definitional cere-
mony. During this interview the outsider
witnesses sit in the room listening, having
been invited to notice what they are particu-
larly drawn to.
Secondly, the outsider witnesses are inter-
viewed using the outsider witness scaffold
and, whilst this is happening, the person at
the centre sits listening. The outsider
witnesses talk with the interviewer and do not
address their responses to the person at the
centre of the ceremony. This puts the person
at the centre in the ‘listening position’, where
no demands are made on them to respond to
what the outsider witness is saying since the
structure discourages them from doing so,
and they can, therefore, simply think about
the responses without having to either agree
or disagree with what has been said.
Thirdly, the person at the centre is re-
interviewed to elicit their responses to what
they have heard from the outsider witnesses.
These three stages can be thought of as:
● A telling of the significant life story by the
person for whom the definitional
ceremony is performed.
● A retelling of the story by the people
invited to be outsider witnesses.
● A retelling of the outsider witnesses’
retellings by the whom the definitional
ceremony is performed.
In addition to this, a final part of this process
may consist of everyone talking together to
discuss their experience of the definitional
ceremony, ask questions about the process
and generally deconstruct and make trans-
parent what has been happening.
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Sarah Walther & Hugh Fox
The outsider witness practice scaffold
Just as care is taken to recruit outsider
witnesses who will be open to hearing and
acknowledging the alternative accounts of
people’s lives, so too it is important that care
is taken to elicit helpful responses during the
definitional ceremony. It cannot be assumed
that the responses that people make sponta-
neously will necessarily be helpful and
contribute to rich description. A definitional
ceremony is not an ‘anything goes’ situation,
but a carefully constructed witnessing.
Rather than doing ‘what comes naturally’,
witnesses are invited to respond in carefully
structured ways; ways that are structured by
questions asked of them by an interviewer.
Michael White (1995) developed a scaf-
fold of questions that may be used to elicit
outsider witness responses that both
contribute to rich description and also lead
to the embodiment of the responses. The
interviewer is responsible for interviewing
not only the person at the centre, but also
the outsider witnesses. In doing this, the
interviewer takes responsibility for ensuring
that the outsider witness responses remain
non-structural and contribute to a rich
description of the preferred accounts of
identity of the person at the centre of the
definitional ceremony.
In order to be able to perform this
responsibility, it is helpful for the interviewer
to negotiate at the start of the outsider
witness interviewing that they, the inter-
viewer, may interrupt if they think that the
outsider witness responses are going off
track in some way. In our experience, people
who are recruited as outsider witnesses are
only too glad to accept this suggestion as
they are often appropriately concerned that
their responses should be as helpful as
possible and that they should not ‘say
anything wrong’.
The outsider witness scaffold has four
parts:
● identifying the expression;
● identifying the image;
● identifying resonance;
● identifying transport.
12
Identifying the expression
This is an invitation for the outsider witness
to say to what they have been drawn in the
conversation they haves just been an audi-
ence to; out of everything they have just
heard, what expression in particular stood
out for them: ‘Whilst you were listening to
this conversation, what did you hear that you
were most drawn to?’
It is important that the interviewer draws
out some actual words or phrases used by the
person at the centre of the ceremony, as this
forms the foundation for the rest of the
conversation. It also ensures that the
outsider witness response stays connected to
what the person at the centre of the cere-
mony has said, rather than being connected
to the hypotheses or interpretations of the
outsider witness.
If the outsider witness does respond with
an interpretation or hypothesis, for example,
‘I thought they were brave’, then it is impor-
tant to follow up with a question such as:
‘What was it that you heard that suggested to
you this idea that this person is brave? What
was it she actually said?’ If the outsider
witness’ assertion about bravery is not
connected with the stated experience of the
person at the centre of the ceremony, the
assertion may seem without credibility and
possibly patronising.
Identifying the image
In this part, the outsider witness is encour-
aged to speak about the way that the expres-
sion to which they were drawn affected how
they see the person at the centre, in terms of
what they might give value to in life and any
connected visual images this painted of the
person for them. Whilst not all outsider
witnesses find it easy to come up with pictures
or visual images, these visual images are often
very powerful for the person and are remem-
bered in different ways from verbal responses.
As you heard this and as you listened to this
account, what did it suggest to you about what
might be important to this person? Or what
hopes they might have for their life? Or what
aspirations they might have?
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

As you think about this what images or
pictures of this person come to mind?
During this stage, the person at the centre is
able to hear the witnesses speak in ways that
authenticate aspects of their identity. These
expressions by the outsider witnesses are
linked directly to what the person has said in
the first stage of the process and, therefore,
have credibility.
Identifying the resonance
If the outsider witness has been drawn to a
particular expression, then there must be
some resonance with their own experience
of living. This resonance may be with events
of their personal life or, where appropriate,
with previous therapeutic conversations in
which they have taken part. White (1995)
refers to the witnesses’ interest as being
‘embodied’; by enquiring about this interest,
it is made explicit that the outsider witness
responses are personal responses based in
their experience; that they are not authorita-
tive truths based on abstract theory. We
might ask: ‘What is it about your own experi-
ence that meant that you were drawn to
these things in particular?’
It is important for both the outsider
witness and the interviewer to make and
respect distinctions between what is personal
and what is private. The intention is not that
outsider witnesses should feel compelled to
share personal information that they regard
as private. If making these distinctions is
difficult, it is perfectly permissible for an
outsider witness to ‘pass’ on this question.
However, when embodied and personal
responses are elicited, they connect the life
of the person at the centre to the life of the
outsider witness through shared themes.
This connection around shared themes
contributes to the rich description of the life
of the person at the centre. Where an
outsider witness is a professional and shares
a resonance based on their work experience,
then the life of the person at the centre may
be connected through shared themes to the
life of someone else the witness has worked
with.
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Narrative therapy and outsider witness practice
In this stage, as witnesses recount events
from their own lives, they are likely to re-
enter into those experiences and it is partic-
ularly important for the interviewer to
ensure that the witness does not become the
centre of the ceremony by telling more and
more about their own lives. The interviewer
has the responsibility for re-centring the
response and may interrupt with other ques-
tions to do this, for example:
It is very interesting to hear how you to have
experienced something similar. As you think
about how the account you have just heard of
how this person has responded to these
circumstances, how does your own experience
affect how you are seeing them?
The interviewer also needs to remember that
this is not a forum for the witness to indi-
rectly instruct the person how to deal with
their problem, perhaps by recounting how
they themselves dealt with a similar difficulty.
The interviewer can again carefully interrupt
if this becomes the case, to avoid the possi-
bility that the person at the centre of the
ceremony understands this as a criticism
about their inability to manage or a direction
about what they should do.
Identifying the transport
It is rarely acknowledged that therapy is a
two-way process and that not only is the
person at the centre affected by the process,
but those who are in the position of ‘helper’.
If the witness has been drawn to certain
expressions, and if these expressions have
resonated with events in the witness’ own life,
then their own experience of these events
will have been re-contextualised through this
process; they will have been moved in some
way from where they were previously and will
have been taken to places where they would
not otherwise have been taken. White (1995)
refers to this as ‘transport’ and we can ask a
range of questions about this:
Where has listening to this conversation
taken you?
Having heard this conversation, what new ideas
has this bought up for you that you might not
have had without hearing this conversation?
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Sarah Walther & Hugh Fox
What has this left you thinking or planning
to do?
What might be possible in your own life as a
result of hearing this account?
Not only does hearing the responses to these
questions acknowledge the two-way nature of
therapy, it positions the person who has
come for consultation as someone who has
affected the lives of other people. This
enhances a sense of agency and the signifi-
cance of their life.
The effects of outsider witness
practices
The last three stages of this outsider witness
process can each be of great significance to
the people on whom they are centred.
Hearing others respond to and acknowledge
what is important to them, when this has not
been previously acknowledged, can be an
almost overwhelming experience. Hearing
that others, particularly where these are high-
status professionals such as teachers, have
also struggled with the issues that they are
struggling with can be a revelation. Similarly,
understanding that their life can be influen-
tial in the life of others can give people a
sense of agency and an enhanced under-
standing of their ability to have an impact on
the world around them that is new.
Practice example:
Callum, Max and Mrs Taylor
I was first introduced to Callum during a
‘Team Around the Child’ (TAC) meeting.
Callum had decided not to come, so my
introduction to him consisted of multiple
verbal accounts by the ‘Team’ around the
absent ‘Child’.
Although these accounts were multiple,
they were not multi-storied. Rather, they were
multiple tellings of a narrowly storied
description of Callum: That he was aggressive
and cared for no-one but himself; that he
only attended school when he wanted to; and
that he would not engage with services. This
account not only defined who Callum was in
the present, but also extended into the future
to predict that he would ‘end up in prison’.
14
As these accounts were told, I became
interested in a number of inconsistencies;
events that didn’t quite ‘fit’ with some of
these broad descriptions. In particular, one
worker present, Max, had sustained a long-
term connection with Callum. I asked a few
questions about this:
What was it that Max was doing, that meant
that Callum wished to continue in this
connection with him?
Why was it important to Max to continue to
offer this to Callum?
What was Callum doing, that meant that
Max wished to continue in his connection with
Callum?
What might this say about what was
important to Callum in this connection?
Max thought that Callum might be inter-
ested in these sorts of conversations and a
week later I met with them both.
Identifying alternative accounts of
Callum
I learned that Callum had met with many
professionals over the years, but that many
people only wanted to talk with him about
problems. Max was one of the few people who
Callum had found helpful. This was because
he had consulted with Callum about what he
wanted to happen; treated him like a young
man, rather than a child; noticed things that
he was interested in; supported Callum in
speaking up; and offered him respect.
Max spoke about some of the things that
he had learned about Callum over this time:
His sense of humour; that he took opportu-
nities; and that he kept going with stuff, even
when things were very hard.
Identifying an outsider witness
This context offered a foundation to ask
Callum about other aspects of his life:
What was it that was particularly important
for Callum to keep going with, even when
things were hard?
Who else would know this?
This last question is a way of identifying
potential outsider witnesses in the macro-
context of Callum’s life. The connections
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

between people in outsider witness groups
can be present in many different helpful
ways, but when the witnesses are part of that
person’s ongoing life they can continue to
notice, witness and support the actions
people are taking to live their preferred
identity projects.
Callum told me that he always went to
school (even if sometimes he was a bit late)
and that he liked cookery. He explained that
he always went to cookery classes as he
wanted to be a really good chef and make a
good life for himself. He thought that his
cookery teacher, Mrs Taylor, would know
about this as he was one of the few people
who turned up at cookery lessons with all the
ingredients!
Recruiting Mrs Taylor as an
outsider witness
With Callum’s agreement I contacted Mrs
Taylor. My intention was to invite her contri-
bution to Callum’s preferred story and to
offer some preparation for her role as an
outsider witness. I explained that Callum
thought she might have noticed some things
about him that other people didn’t seem
interested in noticing. I asked about what
these were and whether Callum was correct
that she might have noticed. I also asked a
little about what it said about her preferred
way of being as a teacher, that she took the
time to notice these things:
We’ve spoken about how there are lots of ways
to be a teacher. What does this ‘taking time to
notice’ say about what is important to you in
terms of how you want to be as a teacher?
What difference do you think that this makes to
your student, that you take the time to notice?
What does it mean to you, as a teacher, that
your students notice that you notice?
Would you be interested in other ways of letting
students know what you take the time to notice
about them?
The definitional ceremony
A week later, Mrs Taylor and Max acted as
outsider witnesses to a conversation between
me, Callum and Max. This is the letter I
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Narrative therapy and outsider witness practice
wrote following this meeting, which docu-
ments the telling and retelling that
occurred:
Dear Callum
It was good to meet with you yesterday. We
spoke again about school and you told me that
your favourite lesson was cookery. You told me
that getting all the stuff together for cookery
lessons required quite a bit of planning:
● You have to use your own time (not school
time) to get the ingredients.
● You often have to go to a lot of different
shops.
● You don’t give up if you can’t find the
ingredients straight away – sometimes you
have to blag a lift from your aunty to the
supermarket!
When I asked why you chose to make such an
effort (in your own time) for a school lesson,
you told me again that you want to be a really
good chef. You said that the effort you made for
cookery lessons reflected a commitment – not
just to the cookery lesson, but also a
commitment to yourself and to your own future.
If you have a good job, then you can have a
good life and give your family a good life.
Max said that he had noticed you showing
commitment, not just to yourself but also to
other people. He talked about how your friend
had been feeling really low and fed up, but that
you had continued to go round to your friend’s
house and see if he wanted to go out. Max said
that he thought that your actions and
commitment to this friendship – not giving up
on your friend when he is having a difficult
time – had made a big difference to him feeling
better and being able to go out again.
Mrs Taylor told us that she REALLY
appreciated the efforts you made, because not
very many students always turn up with the
ingredients. This gave her a real sense of how
important it is to you to put effort into things
– she had an image of you as a character in a
computer game, trying to find ways round
obstacles to collect all the cookery ingredients
you need, with a little ‘ting’ sound every time
you got one!
15
Sarah Walther & Hugh Fox
She said that this really stood out for her
because it made such a difference when people
wanted to get the most from her lessons: it
supported her belief that what she was doing
was a worthwhile thing and that lessons were
not ‘just about ticking boxes, but about giving
people hope for life’. Mrs Taylor ended by
saying that on the way home, she’d be thinking
about all the young people she’d taught over
the years who might now be able to cook meals
for themselves or their families.
Callum, I hope I have included in this
letter the things that you wanted to be written
down and I look forward to seeing you again
next week.
With best wishes
(first name of author)
Outcome
I met with Callum just one further time.
I heard that Mrs Taylor had put Callum in
touch with a cookery club and had also
connected with his form teacher about how
they might support Callum to access cookery
as a GCSE. I also heard from Max that Callum
had been speaking up more about his prefer-
ences. This had led to an organisational
takeover and radical restructure of the ‘Team
around the Child’: now re-named ‘Team
Callum’ and strictly by (Callum’s) invite only.
Conclusion
It is usual for a paper to end with a conclusion
and we wish to honour this academic tradi-
tion. However, we also wish to honour alterna-
tive ways of thinking, writing, reflecting on
and sharing practices that are congruent with
narrative therapy and the understanding that
life identity projects are fluid and ongoing
processes, full of possibility and without
conclusion. So this conclusion is in two parts.
Firstly, rather than informing you what
you should have concluded from this paper,
we invite you to consider the following ques-
tions:
● What is it that you have been most drawn
to in reading this paper?
● What does this say to you about what is
important in this way of working?
16
● Why is it you were drawn to this in
particular? What is it about your own life
or work that meant you were drawn to
this?
● Having read this paper, what might you
find yourself thinking or doing in the
next few days or weeks that you may not
have otherwise?
Secondly, we wish to conclude with a begin-
ning: An invitation to ongoing practice possi-
bility in the form of a brief practical guide
for outsider witness recruits. We welcome
your comments and reflections on this paper
and would be particularly interested in
hearing about your experiences of outsider
witness practices.
An insider guide for outsider witnesses
What to keep in mind that you want to do
● Listening for the expression – what do
you appreciate most about what it might
take to live with the story that is being
told and in the context in which it has
been lived? What is this resonating with
for you? How are you responding? What
reflections or thoughts are evoked?
● Noticing what pictures come to mind as
you listen to or recall the accounts of
those at the centre.
● Acknowledging preferred stories and
identities; what matters to the person,
what they give value to, their hopes and
aspirations, etc.
● This is an interviewing process and is
conversational.
● Bringing the conversation back so it is
centred on the person who is the subject
of the process.
What to keep in mind that you want to avoid
● applause/pointing out of positives;
● pronouncing/giving opinions/advice/
hypothesising;
● monologue;
● positive reinforcement;
● imposing values;
● sharing how you solved it;
● processing your own issues.
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

Address for correspondence
Sarah Walther & Hugh Fox
The Institute of Narrative Therapy.
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Narrative therapy and outsider witness practice
References
Myerhoff, B. (1982). Life history among the elderly:
Performance, visibility, and remembering.
In J. Ruby (Ed.), A crack in the mirror: Reflexive
perspective in anthropology. Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press.
Myherhoff, B. (2007). Stories as equipment for living.
Michigan: The University of Michigan Press.
White, M. (1995). Reflecting teamwork as defini-
tional ceremony. In M. White (Ed.), Re-authoring
lives: Interviews and essays. Adelaide: Dulwich
Centre.
White, M. (2000). Reflecting-team work as defini-
tional ceremony revisited. In M. White (Ed.)
Reflections on narrative practice: Essays and inter-
views. Adelaide: Dulwich Centre.
White, M. (2007). Maps of narrative practice. London:
Norton.
White, M. & Epston, D. (1989). Narrative means to
therapeutic ends. New York: Norton.
17
Positioning among the lines of force in
schooling: An issue for psychologists and
counsellors in schools
John Winslade

Schooling and education are not the same thing. Reproduction theory attempted to explain how schooling
often serves a social sorting function, not just an educational one. This article traces how differences that
arise from developments in a poststructuralist analysis of power relations reshape theories of reproduction
and resistance. It also asks how these ideas can inform the practice of counsellors and psychologists in
schools. Positioning theory is argued to be useful as an analytical tool for sorting out how such relations
are negotiated on a daily basis, rather than given in advance. Finally the article traces how these
perspectives fit neatly with a narrative orientation to psychological practice.
Keywords: social reproduction; poststructuralism; resistance; positioning theory; narrative therapy.

I
N ORDER TO ESTABLISH a foundation
for psychological practice in schools, a
concern of this article, it is important to
begin with a distinction between education
and schooling. School is about education –
but it also serves other purposes. Although
these two are often conflated and many
people speak about them as isomorphic,
people engage in much activity that we
recognise as educational in many places
other than the institutions we call schools.
Families of all kinds, for example, are social
institutions within which children routinely
accomplish some of the major educational
achievements of their lives – learning to
speak, to form intimate relationships, to
master basic skills of living and to engage
with ethical lessons of how to live.
Conversely, it is also true that schools
serve functions other than their espoused
purpose of educating children. For example,
schools might be said to serve the purpose of
childcare for parents who are needed in the
workforce. Or they might be thought of as
holding pens for adolescents who are not yet
ready for full participation in the modern
world of work (or for whom the world of
work is itself not yet ready). The sociology of
education (see Giroux, 2001, for a summary)
has articulated particularly how schools in
the modern world serve a sorting function
for society. They allocate identities to
children that will serve as the basis for their
becoming as social and economic beings.
These functions have often been referred to
as the ‘hidden curriculum’ of schooling.
Henry Giroux defines this hidden
curriculum as:
…Those unstated norms, values and beliefs
embedded in and transmitted to students
through the underlying rules that structure the
routines and social relationships in school and
classroom life. (Giroux, 2001, p.47)
For some, the identities allocated through
schooling are springboards of opportunity.
They can trade in what they learn at school
for social recognition and take their place in
professional or business worlds that reward
them handsomely. For others, the identities
produced by years of schooling predomi-
nantly underline a sense of personal failure,
and instill a sense of worthlessness. Still
others fall somewhere in between these two
poles. Tom Billington (2000), for example,
shows how psychologists can deliver assess-
ments of children’s pathologies that effec-
tively rule out many potential options for
those children’s chances of wealth-making.
If they are to serve the purpose of education,
psychological workers in schools (school or

18 Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

© The British Psychological Society, 2012

educational psychologists and school coun-
sellors) might at times find themselves pitted
against the aspects of schooling that are
about the function of sorting students into
differential pathways (Billington, 2000;
Burman, 2007; Giroux, 2001). In order to
embody a stance that is consistently in favour
of an educational agenda for all students,
psychological workers need to develop a
careful analysis of how they are positioned in
relation to the lines of force in schools and
to make conscious choices of action on the
basis of this analysis (Billington, 2000, and
Corcoran, 2007, make similar points).
Reproduction theory
According to ‘social reproduction theory,’
the differential outcomes for students
produced by schools are to a substantial
degree unrelated to the merits of hard work
or personal ability so often invoked in the
‘cheery mainstream discourse of educational
opportunity’ (Giroux, 2001, p.57) to explain
how individuals fall across the dividing lines
that schooling produces. The division of
students into different paths of becoming is
explained in reproduction theory primarily
in terms of the influence of race, social class
background, or gender on educational
outcomes. To say this is not to deny that
students differ in their abilities and motiva-
tions, or that their parents differ in terms of
the degrees of family support that they are
willing to provide, or that many manage to
break out of traditional straitjackets. Nor is it
to deny the existence of social mobility. It
most certainly does not defend any assump-
tion that children from backgrounds of
poverty cannot learn. Rather it seeks to
explain the degree to which social mobility
and social change does not happen. The
majority of students still end up in social
class positions that are similar to those of
their parents; racial divisions remain largely
in place from one generation to the next
(despite the election to the White House of
Barack Obama); and many occupations still
fall along gender lines, despite considerable
efforts to change this pattern. Constraints
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Positioning among lines of force
upon change need to be understood if we
are not to fall prey to a simplistic discourse of
blaming students for their lack or merit,
teachers for their inadequate instruction, or
parents for their failure to support.
When we start to inquire into just how
schooling achieves the function of sorting,
things start to get more complicated. There
are a variety of explanations available and
they each represent the worldviews of their
authors as well as the actual functions of
schools. In order to establish the basis for the
kind of narrative perspective that I want to
emphasise, I shall quickly run over some of
the major perspectives on social reproduc-
tion and outline their contributions and
limits.
For economists Stanley Bowles and
Herbert Gintis (1976), schools reproduced
inequality by mirroring the social relations
of the workplace. Schools reproduced the
differential skills needed by the labour force
and selected students to fit those differen-
tials along social class and gender lines. They
also reproduced the consciousness and
values necessary for people to participate
willingly in the economic institutions of a
capitalist society. The mechanism that drove
this process of production was what they
called the ‘correspondence principle’ that
they identified in classroom relations
between teachers and students. Such rela-
tions were argued to mirror relations in the
factory when the teacher acted as the boss
and students acted like workers, sometimes
compliant and sometimes alienated.
This structuralist economic account
allowed for a modest degree of autonomy for
the actions of teachers and students in its
analysis of schooling but the possibility of
autonomous action was relatively minor in
comparison with determining economic
forces and was largely less than decisive.
Bowles and Gintis nevertheless performed a
service by countering the assumption that
schooling served a neutral function and that
students were individually at fault if they did
not succeed at school. The vision of
schooling Bowles and Gintis offered was for
19
John Winslade
working-class students, however, uniformly
bleak and oppressive. As Giroux (2001)
points out, it depicted a working class that
was totally subject to the crushing weight of
domination and without any creative
impulse toward self-creation. There was
scarcely any room in this account for resist-
ance to what was being done to them. The
possibility of human action and agency in
the production of their own lives was
consigned to a trivial status. Nor was there
any room for teachers to make any effective
difference in students’ lives. In Giroux’s
words, such an analysis was ‘reductionistic’,
‘simplified’ and ‘overdetermined’ (p.84).
A more sophisticated culturalist account
of how social reproduction operates was
articulated by Pierre Bourdieu and Claude
Passeron (1977). For them, schools were not
direct mirrors of what went on in the rest of
the economy but were able to exercise a
more substantial degree of autonomy. The
process of reproduction they articulated was
more to do with the transmission of culture
than with structural positions. Middle-class
families inculcated a cultural worldview and
a familiarisation with linguistic modes, forms
of knowing, styles of presentation and dispo-
sitions that were recognised and rewarded in
schools. The cultural capital or habitus that
middle-class students acquired in their
homes and communities was routinely
mistaken in schools for natural talent (rather
than being regarded as absorbed from their
cultural milieu). Recognition by teachers of
especially middle-class cultural capital led to
higher grades and educational qualifications
that could in turn be traded in for jobs that
produced actual capital. As Nick Crossley
(2003) put it:
The school thus launders cultural advantages,
albeit unwittingly, transforming them into the
hard and clean currency of qualifications. As
such it perpetuates, disguises and naturalises
the socially rooted inequalities which shape it.
(p.43)
Rather than relying on a correspondence
principle, Bourdieu and Passeron argued
that ruling classes repeatedly exert symbolic
20
force to impose their definition of what
counts as meaningful knowledge in schools
and this knowledge in turn becomes what is
rewarded among their children.
One difference in this account is that it
describes an active process of power rela-
tions in which dominant social groups tend
to succeed in maintaining their dominance
from one generation to the next, but the
outcome is never assured and can be
affected to some degree by the actions of
teachers (and of counsellors and psycho-
logists). As with Bowles and Gintis, however,
the process of hegemony envisaged was uni-
directional and was represented as perhaps
too monolithic. It still allowed little room for
the exercise of agency by those who were
subject to the operation of the ‘symbolic
violence’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992,
p.167) done by schools, much less any
opportunity for transformative action on
either the individual or social levels. (For a
fuller account of this point, see Giroux,
2001, pp.89ff.)
A stronger account of the possibilities of
agency was introduced by Paul Willis (1981)
in his research into expressions of ‘resis-
tance’ by working-class ‘lads’ in an urban
English housing estate. Willis took seriously
what the ‘lads’ had to say about their own
lives and about their experience of schooling.
He showed that these young men were not
just victims of the forces of social class domi-
nation. They were actively choosing their
own position in response to it. Yet theories of
resistance by Willis and others have been
critiqued for romanticising resistance and
failing to distinguish adequately between
mere oppositional behaviour and expres-
sions of conscious political resistance (see
Giroux, 2001). Sometimes, as Foucault
(2000) has noted, resistance can be
‘muddled’ (p.155) or become a ‘simple
appropriation and display of power’ (Giroux,
2001, p.103). Resistance theories have also
been critiqued for their preoccupation with
dynamics of social class to the relative exclu-
sion of other modes of domination and for
their failure to provide the basis for a trans-
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

formative vision of possibility. Giroux (2001)
argues for an account of resistance that is
both sensitive to a range of modes of domina-
tion and also focused on the effective expres-
sion of ‘moral and political indignation’
(p.107). He starts from the assumption that
the oppressed are not passive in response to
expressions of power. Through their actions,
they are capable of mediating the effects of
schooling in their lives.
A poststructuralist analysis of
power relations
We are now ready to take into account the
shifts that were enabled by the poststruc-
turalist movement of thought and ask ques-
tions about what they have added to the
predominantly Marxist orientation of the
social reproductionists of the 1970s. Michel
Foucault’s (1978) analytics of power rela-
tions are critical to this development. For
Foucault, power is not simply repressive but,
in the modern world, primarily productive in
its functioning. It is not just ‘the law that says
no’ (Foucault, 2000, p.120) but ‘it makes
people act and speak’ (Foucault, 2000,
p.172). Schooling acts thus to produce forms
of consciousness in students through a
process of internalisation. His analysis of the
panopticon as ‘one of the characteristic
traits of our society’ (Foucault, 2000, p.70) is
central to this analysis.
As in the modern prison, schools are
panoptic sites that produce ‘good’ students
through constant surveillance that culmi-
nates in the internalisation of self-moni-
toring and the production of docile and
compliant behaviour. Such surveillance
operates through three main processes:
‘supervision, control and correction’
(Foucault, 2000, p.70). The effective tech-
nologies of power are not so much the acts
of punishment and repression as those of
testing, student files, school reports, parent
interviews, psychological testing, and so on.
Another distinction from the social
reproductionists in Foucault’s analytics of
power lies in his emphasis on the role of
discourse as the foundation for power rela-
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Positioning among lines of force
tions in the modern world. The Marxist
emphasis on control of the means of produc-
tion was partially replaced by control of
discourse.
Discourse transmits and produces power,
reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes
it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to
thwart it. (Foucault, 1978, p.100)
Foucault traced how a range of dominating
discourses established multiple dividing lines
through society and these were by no means
all reducible to relations between social
classes. It was not that the forces of social
reproduction could now be ignored by those
who took up a poststructuralist perspective.
They could instead be reconfigured through
a poststructuralist lens, through which they
look slightly different. From a poststruc-
turalist perspective, a more nuanced field of
multiple competing discourses came into
view. To be sure, some have to do with where
one is positioned in relation to social class
divisions. But other relations of power are
constituted along dividing lines based on
orders of discourse organised on the basis of
gender, disability, sexual orientation and of a
host of more local discourses within partic-
ular communities and families.
For Foucault (1982), power relations are
ordinary and are based on the practice of
taking action ‘upon the actions of others’
(p.220). They are about attempts to influ-
ence others. In this sense power is present in
every utterance, as people try to produce
each other. It is an account of power that
renders it diffuse and dispersed on the one
hand but still frequently concentrated and
systematically organised on the other. Where
attempts to influence others become prob-
lematic is where they become systematically
organised around a pattern of domination.
Foucault’s colleague and friend, Gilles
Deleuze (1988), takes up Foucault’s account
through the use of slightly different termi-
nology. He talks about ‘lines of force’ that
run through a social world, sometimes in
slightly chaotic, healthy competition, but
often becoming ‘striated’ through institu-
tionalisation into rigid lines of force.
21
John Winslade
From this analysis, we can now conceive
of a vision of schooling as a complex web of
relations, expressed through discourse, in
which competing agendas seek expression in
the lives of teachers and students. One line
of inquiry might focus on how the neoliberal
agenda of schooling (Apple, 2004; Davies &
Bansel, 2007) that currently dominates
educational discourse internationally may be
shown to have largely displaced the formerly
dominant progressive agenda. But we can
also appreciate how this agenda is always
being contested. It continually has to
struggle to assert and reassert its dominance.
Another line of inquiry might focus on
how subjectivities are produced in students
according to the specifications of particular
discourses (for example, the discourses of
adolescence, or of human development, or
of the normal family, or of how educational
success is defined). The role played by
discourses of individual deficit is particularly
important here and has been commented on
by a number of writers (for example,
Billington, 2000; Corcoran, 2007; Gergen,
1994). This line of inquiry would also,
however, need to focus on how individuals
resist the production of such subjectivities
and mediate the effects of domination in
their own lives (see Billington, 2000, for
some accounts of student resistance to their
own production as students with disabilities).
So what has all this to do with the work of
school counsellors and school or educa-
tional psychologists? I am aware that the
audience to which I wish to speak is
constructed differently in different coun-
tries. My own background is in school coun-
selling in both New Zealand and in the US,
but I also know that in Britain and Europe
the work of counsellors overlaps with that of
school or educational psychologists. My aim
here is to address all of these professionals
together. I would argue that it is crucial for
psychological workers, as I propose to refer
to them so as not to get caught in differences
of nomenclature, to develop a sharp enough
conceptualisation of what is happening to
young people in the course of their
22
schooling to be able to help them make
agentic choices of how to position them-
selves in relation to the dominant discourses
at work. It would not be enough for such
psychological workers to simply serve the
interests of schools as institutions, given that
the discourses of schooling do not always
serve the interests of students.
Often the actions of psychological
workers and the roles they are trained to play
are beholden to discourses that serve other
purposes, such as social sorting, that are
anything but democratic and just. Many
forms of psychological discourse concentrate
on the intra-psychic or cognitive world of the
student without attention to the social forces
that are internalised in the student. For
example, Billington (2000) demonstrates
how assessments of pathological conditions
in children are frequently driven by forces of
government and economic stringency more
than by scientific knowledge. As Corcoran
(2007) also notes, the assigning of deficit
conditions functions to ‘normalise the prac-
tice of marginalisation, and to reinforce the
teacher’s perception of the action’ (p.120)
often at the expense of the child’s own
perception. A certain kind of blindness
results that lacks a sharp enough analysis of
what is happening to overcome its effects.
A critical focus, however, seeks to study and
to work directly with the internalised effects
of social processes.
Such a focus invites psychological
workers to make choices about where they
will assist in the production of power rela-
tions to the detriment of students or where
they will work with students to resist such
discourses. This kind of work would involve
psychological workers in particular kinds of
conversations with young people that help
them stay alert to what processes of produc-
tion are at work on them and what opportu-
nities exist for the expression of personal
agency (including conscious resistance).
Two sources of ideas for how to work in
this way seem, to my mind, to hold the most
promise: one theoretical and one practice-
oriented. The first is positioning theory
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

(Davies & Harré, 1990) and the second is
what has become known as narrative practice
(White, 2007; White & Epston, 1990;
Winslade & Monk, 2007).
Positioning theory
Positioning theory provides the best bridge
I know of between the work done by larger
social forces and the particularities of
psychological practice with individuals and
families. As Drewery (2005) argues, posi-
tioning theory is focused on ‘the constitutive
effects of conversations’ (p.306). It derives
from Foucault’s (1978, 1980) notion of a
subject position and was developed by Davies
and Harré (1990) into a concept that is
useful for studying the production of selves
in discursive contexts. When people make an
utterance, they both establish a moral claim
within a discourse and also call addressees
into some kind of subject position within the
relation that is invoked by the offer. For
example, an utterance may establish a posi-
tion for the speaker as a benign, middle-class
helper and for the addressee as an at-risk
student in need of assistance. In this way a
relation is established, even if only momen-
tarily, a perspective on the world is invoked
and a form of subjectification is produced.
Each utterance also acts in some small, or
not so small, way to produce the social or
relational world into which we are acting.
Our utterances serve to position us in rela-
tion to others and also to call others into
position in relation to us. Positioning theory
thus provides a bridge between the local
moral order of a relation and the wider
social discourse in which it is but one
example among many.
Positioning theory articulates just how
the social world becomes mapped onto the
subjective experience of individuals in the
context of conversation. It is, therefore,
about the development of a sense of self
always in relation to the ‘moment by
moment oughtness’ (Linehan & McCarthy,
2000, p.442) of relationship with another
participant in a conversation. It implies the
possibility of agency from a place in history
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Positioning among lines of force
and culture, that is, from a place that is
already structured within limits, but also
from a place that is a beginning point for
acting into the cultural world (Laws &
Davies, 2002). The concept helps us analyse
how it is that people ‘do being a certain kind
of person’ (Davies & Harré, 1999, p.52).
By way of distinction, let me pause for a
moment to acknowledge the work of Jack
Martin (2011) who, in concert with Alex
Gillespie, has developed a related approach
called ‘life positioning analysis’. Martin
claims that life positioning analysis incorpo-
rates a discursive approach to personhood,
but distinguishes this approach from Davies
and Harré’s (1990) version of positioning
theory on the basis of: (a) focus on ‘direct
experiences with particular, significant
others’ (p.2); (b) theorising about life posi-
tioning arising as a ‘direct result of our evolu-
tionary and cultural history’ (p.3); and (c)
targeting eventually a ‘thematic analysis of
positioned experiences and perspectives
across the different phases of the person’s
life’ (p.5). There are points of overlap with
the use of positioning I am alluding to here,
but I am less interested in the narratives that
span a person’s whole life than in the negoti-
ation of discursive influences in particular
moments of interaction. I am also not
convinced by the distinction between discur-
sive and concrete forces that assumes an
unnecessary hierarchy of influence. Discur-
sive forces are just as materially powerful as
those called ‘concrete’. And the link between
evolutionary development and cultural posi-
tioning is too grand and sweeping to be
convincing to my personal taste.
Positioning theory in the Davies and
Harré mode, however, allows us to theorise
how students and teachers move each other
around through the deployment of discourse
and thus produce each other’s responses in
conversation. As a concept, it is useful in the
analysis of exactly how power operates at the
local and particular level in the school. It
accounts for how people are positioned in
relation to, say, gendered or social class
subjectivities, or in relation to categories of
23
John Winslade
pathology, and then take these up, even to
their own cost. It also accounts for practices
of exclusion from speaking rights in which a
person may take up or be offered a position
that does not entail full participation as a
legitimate social agent. Positioning is there-
fore about social constraint as well as about
social legitimation.
With the aid of positioning theory, we
can conceive of the work of psychological
workers in schools as engaging daily in the
production of students’ lives through the
practice of talk. At the same time there is a
sense in which such talk always invokes the
moral order of one or more available
discourses. Foucault (1989) spoke of the
‘great anonymous murmur of discourse’
(p.27) that lies in the background of all
social practice. We pluck pieces from it and
position ourselves, and each other, in rela-
tion to it. It should not be surprising, then,
that the discourses drawn upon would often
call students into positions in social class
relations, gender specifications, or cultural
worldviews based on ethnicity or race, or
into particular categorisations of disability.
On the other hand, we might expect that on
many occasions a person might choose to
resist the ‘oughtness’ of a discursive position
and take up a stance of difference in opposi-
tion to it. When students are caught between
two motivations, or express ambivalence, or
seem uncomfortable about how teachers are
speaking to them, psychological workers
might profitably consider (and then inquire
into) how they are being positioned by the
discourses and lines of force at work in the
school. As Billington (2000) argues, this
might involve listening for the story of the
students’ response to the larger social forces
onto which their localised ‘behaviour’ is
being mapped.
The value of thinking in terms of posi-
tioning then lies in how it invites us to
examine and deconstruct (Derrida, 1997;
White, 1992) the lines of force at work in a
student’s life, some of which might work in
the student’s interest and some of which
might work against this interest. Counsellors
24
and school psychologists should not assume
that relations in the school are consistently
benign. If life in a school is a terrain across
which lines of force contest with each other,
then the decisions about how to position
oneself in relation to them are critical. Such
decisions produce futures in students’ lives.
What then are the processes in which
students are commonly positioned in the
course of being schooled? Bronwyn Davies
(2006) describes the process of ‘subjectifica-
tion’ that schooling offers through posi-
tioning people as good or successful
students. She draws on Judith Butler (1997)
to refer to this process as achieving the dual
or ‘paradoxical’ purpose of producing simul-
taneously ‘mastery and submission’ (p.425).
In order to master learning in school, one
needs to submit to (or become positioned in
or subjected by) a set of practices that consti-
tutes the identity of ‘successful student’ to a
degree that is recognised within the institu-
tional interactions of a school. Davies’s
insight (after Butler) is that becoming a
subject with agency is a creative achieve-
ment, an ‘accomplishment’ (p.425) of the
very act of submission to the lines of force
that run through schools. As agents, rather
than as determined objects, persons can still
‘reflexively and critically examine their
conditions of possibility’ and can ‘subvert
and eclipse the powers that act upon them’
(p.426). This is the possibility of resistance
that lies at the heart of the production of
governmentality (in Foucault’s 2010 terms).
Deleuze (1995) refers to it as the possibility
of a ‘line of flight’.
Davies also introduces a qualification to
this account. She warns that:
Mastery is not continuously available nor is it
available to everyone. Students are constantly
at risk of being recognised as inappropriate
and incompetent. (p.434)
There is thus an edge to the process of
schooling. Students risk being produced as
educational failures, as ‘naughty boys’ (p.428)
in one of Davies’s examples, as slow learners,
as at risk students, as behaviour problems, as
pathologically disabled, and so on.
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

The existence of such possible lines of
subjectification urges us as psychological
workers to continue to strive to understand
the processes at work in the formation of
students’ lives. These processes are complex
and involve an interplay of competing lines
of force, of mastery and submission, of
government and resistance. They do not
simply start and finish in the cognitive world
of the student (Billington, 2000). The
reflexive, ethical question that Davies there-
fore proposes is a telling one:
We must understand our own contribution to
creating and withholding the conditions of
possibility of particular lives. We must
constantly ask what it is that makes for a
viable life and how we are each implicated in
constituting the viability or non-viability of the
lives of others. (p.435)
I read this statement as emblematic for
psychological practice. It invites us to
consider reflexively how we are being posi-
tioned and how we might position ourselves
in relation to the lines of force and the
expressions of resistance in schooling. It asks
us to learn to read the processes of submis-
sion that students are entering into as they
master being either a good student or an
educational failure. It requires the exercise
of judgement about which lines of subjectifi-
cation in schooling will produce non-viable
lives and it also suggests that we develop the
knowledges and skills that enable us to work
actively alongside students against those
lines of force.
Narrative practice
So far I have been talking in theoretical
terms with little regard for practice. Now it is
time to introduce a practice orientation. The
form of practice I shall represent here is
known as narrative practice. I am attracted to
it precisely because it appears to offer the
most potent leverage in the process of
subjectification through schooling. Narrative
practice has the advantage that it takes
account of the politics of meaning making in
relations between people. It does not assume
that psychological practice is apolitical or
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Positioning among lines of force
neutral in relation to lines of force. Nor does
it focus the attention of psychological
workers exclusively on what is happening
inside the psyche of the student without
taking account of discursive lines of force.
Instead, it draws explicitly on a poststruc-
turalist analysis of how power relations work
to produce students’ lives.
Developed by Michael White and David
Epston originally in family therapy contexts,
narrative therapy has since been articulated
in relation to the institutional forces at work
in schools (Winslade & Monk, 2007;
Winslade & Williams, 2012). It has been elab-
orated in the school context for a range of
counselling purposes, including work with
at-risk youth (Ungar, 2006), with young
children (Freeman et al., 1997), with people
diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperac-
tivity Disorder (ADHD), (Nylund, 2000),
with grief group counselling in schools
(Granados et al., 2009); with mediation prac-
tices (Meyers, 2011; Winslade & Williams,
2012); with restorative practices in schools
(Waikato University Restorative Practices
Development Team, 2004); with trans-
forming bullying relationships (Beaudoin &
Taylor, 2004; Williams, 2010); with peer anti-
harassment mediation (Cheshire et al.,
2004), and so on. Here I shall select some
key practices of narrative practice and draw
connections with the foregoing conceptual
principles.
The term ‘narrative’ is, as most labels are,
only partially accurate and to some degree
limiting. It refers to the concept of a story
rather than to discourse. The two terms are
not completely analogous, but may often be
substituted for each other. It is also easily
possible to refer to how a person is posi-
tioned in a storyline as in a discourse. One
advantage the concept of narrative does
have, however, is the sense of something that
moves through time from a beginning, to a
middle, to an end. Let me continue by refer-
encing a selection of key ideas that may be
employed in schools.
A first key idea is that students’ lives are
multiply storied. Psychological workers need
25
John Winslade
not accept any single description of a student
as totalising of that student (Winslade &
Monk, 2007). Instead, any account of a
student’s identity is regarded as partial.
Where such an identity story is problematic,
either for the student or for a teacher, the
existence of a counter-story (Nelson, 2001)
may be sought out and grown. Multiplicity,
rather than reductionistic integration, is a
mainstay of narrative practice and it applies
to social class designations as well as to other
descriptions. Students are not simply
members of a social class, or of a racial or
gender group, or of a category of disability.
They are positioned in multiple discourses
with varying degrees of systematicity or speci-
ficity. These positions are constantly shifting
and changing. Therefore, it makes no sense
to understand them from a singular under-
standing of what it means to be an oppressed
person, for example.
A second key concept is the practice of
double listening (White, 2007). It involves
attuning one’s ears to hear the ambivalence
and complexity in students’ communications
about their lives in school. Double listening
allows a psychological worker to hear at the
same time students’ experiences of what is
problematic and their experiences of
resourcefulness. It pays attention simultane-
ously to processes of domination and resist-
ance, subjectification and agency, to that
which is explicit and that which is implicit, to
positioning and refusal to be positioned.
Double listening invites students to express
the effects of the operation of lines of force
in their lives and also to articulate their
response to such lines of force, including the
moments when they can identify a ‘line of
flight’ (Deleuze, 1995; Winslade, 2009).
Deconstructive questioning is also a
feature of narrative practice (White, 1992).
Such questioning does not tackle power rela-
tions through head-on critique but aims to
‘render strange… familiar and everyday
taken-for-granted realities and practices’
(White, 1992, p.121) by inviting students to
develop reflexive consciousness of the forces
operating upon them and inquiring into
26
their preferences for response. It is founded
on the principle of naïve inquiry and
curiosity about how a student relates to
particular meanings, rather than on analy-
tical critique.
Such deconstruction is substantially
enabled by the emblematic practice in narra-
tive counselling of externalising conversa-
tion. In this approach, problems are
personified and spoken of as if they were a
third party. The practice is an example of the
creative use of what Jeff Sugarman (2009,
p.10, after Ian Hacking) refers to as
‘dynamic nominalism’. The student is posi-
tioned as a recipient of the effects of the
problem and as an agent who might respond
to these effects. For example, candidates for
externalisation include: diagnoses (such as
ADHD, autism or conduct disorder),
academic struggles (exam failure or learning
difficulties), social problems (violence or
bullying), infringements against school
ethics (truancy, cheating, misbehaviour) or
major social discourses (such as racism or
sexism). Students might then be invited to
choose how to position themselves in rela-
tion to the effects of these problems.
Michael White’s (1989) aphorism, ‘The
person is not the problem; the problem is
the problem,’ (p.6) captures the spirit of
externalising and directs attention to the way
in which problem issues in students’ experi-
ence at school are better considered as posi-
tions in discourse, rather than as essentialist
expressions of students’ nature. For
example, ADHD deficit disorder, when
externalised, is referred to as a problem that
visits and affects a student and is fed by a
cultural world that increasingly exposes
children and young people to overly stimu-
lating electronic environments. To only refer
to such a mental health issue in terms of the
chemistry in students’ brains ignores the
discursive world that students must negotiate
and find positions within. Thus a student
might be asked, ‘How does ADHD work its
mischief on you? What effect does it have?’
This is an alternative to the totalising
discourses of diagnosis that frequently posi-
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

tion students without the chance of their
making an agentive response. Behaviour
trouble can be externalised as a force that
seduces students into its field of influence at
times when they feel the need to protest the
internalising effects of marginalising failure
that is being imposed on them at school.
Bullying might be read as a position in a rela-
tional narrative rather than as essential to
any particular person’s nature (see Winslade
& Williams, 2012).
A final key concept that I shall reference
here is the idea of building a counter-story to
any kind of school problem. The counter-
story embodies in narrative practice the
impulse toward resistance in an intentional
construction of an identity story. It stresses
the value of agency and is potentially trans-
formative of students’ experience of lines of
force. A story of resistance may be read as an
expression of a hope for something better.
Rather than just hearing the expression of
opposition to how one has been positioned
in a discourse of social class, or gender, or
race, or disability, double listening encour-
ages us to hear the other side of the story:
The expression of a person’s hopes and
dreams, the desire for something more, the
preference for social justice, or the assertion
of a transformative narrative. Narrative prac-
tice is about noticing this expression and
inquiring into it, detailing it more fully, and
growing it into a line of flight that leads to a
new territory. The narrative practitioner
identifies raw points of difference and,
through crafting of a careful sequence of
questions, grows such difference into a
narrative of resistance to a power relation.
A detailed account of how to do this is
beyond the scope of this article, but has been
articulated elsewhere. I would refer espe-
cially to Michael White’s (2007) Maps of
Narrative Practice. My own articulation can be
found in Narrative Counselling in Schools:
Powerful and brief (Winslade & Monk, 2007).
At stake in this article is a vision that
might overarch the particulars of psycho-
logical practice. I have been concerned here
to articulate a vision of this practice that
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Positioning among lines of force
capitalises on the developments of poststruc-
turalist thinking. These developments at the
same time build upon and complexify the
idea of social reproduction that arose in the
sociology of education a generation ago.
Potentially, however, they also make the
operation of power relations more available
for psychological practice. Hence they are
more useful to practitioners who are working
with particular students in particular
contexts. My hope is that, armed with such a
vision, psychological workers can articulate a
clear project in their work that starts from
the basis that students and teachers are
being made subject to lines of force at work
in their lives. They are, however, constantly
working to resist, modify and sometimes
transform these lines of force.
The spirit of this project lies in the possi-
bility of identifying a power relation, under-
standing how students are positioned within
it, and then facilitating the construction of a
viable counter-story. This spirit is embodied
in a remarkable comment by Michel
Foucault (2000):
…the most intense point of a life, the point
where its energy is concentrated, is where it
comes against power, struggles with it,
attempts to use its forces, and to evade its
traps. (p.162)
If helping students deal with ‘the most
intense points’ of their school lives is where
psychological workers focus their work, then
they will be doing highly relevant and impor-
tant work. If they are doing so in an acknowl-
edgement of how students are positioned in
power relations within the school, they will be
less likely to themselves become inadvertent
agents of lines of force. If they help students
to use such forces and evade the traps that lie
within them, then they need not automati-
cally be working in opposition to other
teachers in the school. If they concentrate on
the effects of positioning and on power rela-
tions, then they can avoid making either
students or teachers into problem persons
while still responding to the power of prob-
lematic lines of force to produce students’
lives in transformative directions.
27
John Winslade
Address for correspondence:
John Winslade
College of Education,
California State University San Bernardino,
5500 University Parkway,
San Bernardino,
California, 92407, USA.
Email: jwinslad@csusb.edu
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29
‘When the powerfulness isn’t so helpful’:
Callum’s relationship with autism
Jennifer Alison Gilling

Diagnoses of autism continue to be a focus of educational psychologists’ work. Discourses surrounding

autism can, unfortunately, present limited views and ways of working with these young people when
individual assessment and reliance on checklists is organised so deviance from ‘normality’ can be
identified. This often impacts on the complexities of disclosure for the young people themselves and the
relationships they have with the professionals that should support them.
There is a wealth of autobiographical accounts from individuals who have been given a diagnosis of
autism. A narrative approach, which views young people as the experts on their lives and the collaborators
in our future understanding of their relationship with problems, is one way of privileging ‘insider-
knowledges’ and guiding professionals towards constructing a different understanding of autism.
This paper documents a piece of educational psychology casework that explores one young person’s
relationship with autism from a social constructionist perspective. The paper considers the implications of
viewing such ‘problems’ within a structuralist versus post-structuralist framework. In challenging global
truths and the ‘medical model’ of autism, it provides an example of how a young person’s preferred identity
can be constructed through a narrative framework. The paper concludes by considering alternative ways
for professionals to practice in which there is a move away from limitations and impairments towards
reconstructing views about problems and understanding individual experience.
Keywords: narrative therapy; re-authoring; autism; social constructionism.

T
HIS PAPER has been constructed
through a piece of educational
psychology casework with Callum (not
real name), aged 10. Callum was given a
diagnosis of autism and recently his behav-
iour, as viewed by others, has impacted on
his relationships with school staff who intro-
duced Callum to me as cheeky and rude,
physical towards other children and not able
to take ‘no’ for an answer. I was also
informed that Callum has also recently
moved into a different class with a different
teacher, and has a new baby brother after
being an only child for nine years. When I
first met Callum, I knew little else about him.
At Callum’s annual review, school staff,
parents and other professionals raised the
issue of Callum’s autism with regard to his
peer relationships. Some thought that if the
class were told what autism is and why
Callum does what he does, his peers may be
more sympathetic towards him while others
disagreed. Callum’s father also asked
whether he should encourage Callum to
think that autism is something really good
that he should want to ‘have’. The tension
between the different values of the individ-
uals involved prompted me to work with
Callum using a narrative framework (White,
1995) and this subsequent exploration of
understandings and relationships that
people have with labels, diagnoses and indi-
vidual difference.
In this piece of work I take a relativist
ontological stance that assumes there are no
objective realities; rather, individuals
construct their own interpretations of their
experiences. My intention is to explore the
lived experiences of individuals, take an
interest in their world view and consider,
through a phenomenological perspective
(Willig, 2008), how they make sense of
‘problems’ in their lives. This is considered
in opposition to other practices that lead to
social marginalisation and pathologising of
anyone seen as ‘different’. These ‘global

30 Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

© The British Psychological Society, 2012

knowledges’ or ‘objective realities’
constructed from scientific and cultural
discourses (Foucault, 1979) fail to recognise
the importance of ‘local’ or ‘insider knowl-
edges’ (White, 2007) that individuals hold
about different phenomenon. The experi-
ence for both Callum and those in his local
system cannot be measured or assessed – it
can only be shared in telling. The focus of
educational psychologist (EP) practice with
teachers and teaching assistants should move
away from identifying global characteristics
of autism and associated generic practical
approaches and solutions. Instead, by
moving towards ‘looking from the inside-
out’ (Williams, 1996, cited in Barrett, 2006)
and gaining young people’s own experiences
of the world, it may reposition existing struc-
turalist ideas and practices, enable adults to
forge better understandings and relation-
ships with these young people and recon-
struct views about the nature of their
‘problems’.
What is important to note is that Callum
does not know about his diagnosis. The main
purpose of this piece of work is to privilege
Callum’s story.
Narrative perspectives on problems
This paper moves away from a focus on
essentialist truths in the diagnosis of autism
and the often held view that labelling can
help to understand, create a social identity
and open up opportunities for support. In
contrast, the narrative view is that identities
are not fixed and our lives are ‘multi-
storied’, that is, narrative captures non-
essentialist identities and we may have
different stories (events that are linked in
sequence, across time and according to a
plot) about different aspects of our lives.
While narrative therapy draws on post-
modern and post-structuralist ideas, it is not
to say that ‘everything is arbitrary’. This over-
simplification can lead to the view that narra-
tive therapists do not believe autism, for
example, exists. The issue is not whether a
problem exists, but asks ‘What sense does a
person make of their problem?’ and ‘How
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Callum’s relationship with autism
might their relationship with the problem be
changed as to make it less troublesome?’
(White, 1995). Callum did not have a clear
understanding of autism, but had a sense
that some aspects of his life were becoming
troublesome and ‘too big’ to manage. So
while I am not arguing whether autism exists
for Callum and other children, I want to
begin by questioning some of the dominant
ideas that surround autism.
Characterising the problem:
Why use autobiographical accounts?
The concept of autism as a spectrum condi-
tion consisting of a triad of impairment to
encompass social communication, relation-
ships and imagination is well documented
(Dickerson Meyes et al., 2001; DSM-IV,
American Psychiatric Association, 1994) and
as such will not be focussed on in detail in
this paper. Indeed, there is yet to be any
conclusive evidence to identify a single core
‘deficit’ in autism, with both cognitive and
emotional perspectives being considered.
Discourses surrounding autism often present
limited views and ways of working with these
individuals and their families; historically, in
the practice of EPs, individual assessment
and reliance on checklists have been organ-
ised in ways where deviance from ‘normality’
can be identified.
What will be considered in this paper is
the view of Billington (2000) that the people
themselves (children or their families) are
the experts on their autism and should be
the collaborators in our future under-
standing of it. The reliance on deficit models
of impairment of people with autism rather
than those in which individual difference is
celebrated can mean the experiences of indi-
viduals are lost in therapeutic exchanges.
Billington (2000) describes the need for
complex accounts, not simplifications that
locate children with such difficulties into a
one-size-fits-all category. He explains that
rather than patterns of behaviour it is the
challenge to the relationship with the young
person that disturbs teachers the most. By
exploring the dialogue and collective
31
Jennifer Alison Gilling
thinking through narrative autobiographical
accounts, a different kind of relationship
may be constructed.
Todd (2006) writes that there is little
evidence of any real participation of
children and parents with services, and in
some cases children are often the ‘absent
special guest’ in reports and meetings that
form professional practice (Todd, 2003).
The selected aspects of the children and
their situation presented by professionals
may not be those preferred by the children
or their parents. Until the Children Act
(1989) was passed, legislation on the issue of
child voice had limited existence. Following
this, the Code of Practice (Department for
Education, 1994) and the revised version
(Department for Education and Employ-
ment, 2000) stated more clearly that
children have a right to be heard and should
be encouraged to take part in decision
making. Hobbs et al. (2000) outline a
number of consultative approaches that
educational psychologists can make in elic-
iting children’s views, drawing on psychology
that emphasises the importance of indi-
vidual meanings and the social construction
of understanding. Todd (2006) calls for
more ‘enabling’ practice, that which
includes young people and parents in profes-
sional processes without focussing on the
child as the source for change. Non-enabling
practices (those that view problems as
‘within-child’) in early intervention could
lead to children becoming labelled at an
early stage, growing into that label and living
their life accordingly. Consider Callum: He
does not know he has a label, but the profes-
sionals around him do. His teachers seek to
identify behaviours that they would associate
with autism. This becomes all he is identified
by and the story of Callum is autism. What
would happen if Callum and his peers also
learn of this label? It is important to consider
the theory behind enabling practice in order
that essentialist ‘truths’ are not how we
continue to define young people like
Callum.
32
Post-structuralism: Challenging the
foundations of knowledge
Post-structural theory explores individual
perspectives and critically analyses the
themes or discourses that underlie and
attempt to govern actions. Social construc-
tionism, a postmodern discipline on which
narrative is informed, insists we take a critical
stance towards our taken for granted ways of
understanding the world, including
ourselves (Burr, 2003). It allows us to be
critical of the notion that our observations of
the world are objective and unbiased and is
in opposition to positivism and empiricism
in traditional science. Society is seen as both
constructing of, and constructed by, people.
The constructed ideas – themes, narratives
and discourses – often come to be given
‘truth’ status. These versions of an event
brings with it the potential for social prac-
tices, for acting in one way rather than
another, and for marginalising alternative
ways of acting (Foucault, 1979). Discourses
are not abstract ideas; they are intimately
connected to institutional and social prac-
tices that have a profound effect on the way
we live our lives, on what we can do and on
what can be done to us (Willig, 2001).
Through modern power, these truths come
to define a person (White & Epston, 1990).
Foucault (1979) argued that a principal
effect of power through truth is that it
engages people into actions around their
individuality and that this makes global truth
claims about how we all ‘ought’ to be. This
privileges the knowledge of scientific disci-
plines as an objective reality. Thus, Foucault
argues that power cannot be gained in a
society without supporting global knowl-
edges and engaging with objective realities
constructed by science; the privileging of
global knowledges is in itself an exercise of
power as this unavoidably restrains local
knowledges. Language may be the mode by
which meaning is created, but discourse
includes the ways in which social and polit-
ical power influences what is and is not said
in certain contexts. According to modern
power (Foucault, 1979; White, 2007), prob-
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

lems arise when people feel they ought to act
a certain way, fashioning their lives
according to constructed norms. This
recruits people into the surveillance and
policing of their own and others’ lives,
putting themselves under pressure to do
something and ‘get it right’ (White, 2002).
Olinger (2010) questions the drives behind
the behavioural goals that professionals
determine for children affected by autism
and whether they assist interaction in a world
that frowns upon difference and that by
training children to act ‘normally’ we are
perpetuating a greater lack of acceptance of
individuality and difference.
As language is not passive but actively
helps to construct identities, post-struc-
turalism gives us a way of reflecting on the
terms we have constructed around young
people such as Callum in order to see how
this could help or hinder enabling practice
(Todd, 2006). The categories we use to
understand ourselves may be bound by
cultural normative prescriptions, so our ways
of understanding are historically and cultur-
ally relative. For example, what we under-
stand as ‘behavioural disorder’ is a
phenomenon that has come into being
through the exchanges between those who
have difficulties with interaction and
responding to routines, and those who may
teach them or offer diagnostic tests. There-
fore, what we regard as truth may be thought
of as our current accepted ways of under-
standing the world. These are a product of
the social processes and interactions in
which people are constantly engaged with
each other and can lead to how people come
to define themselves.
Personal identity and disclosure:
‘Doing autism things’
People have said I’ve got autism.... I don’t
know what that is but I don’t like the word.
My dad has said it to me before but he was just
winding me up. Other children say I’m ‘doing
autism things’. They think I do that but
I don’t know what it is. (Callum)
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Callum’s relationship with autism
The social power created in constructing
identities may lead professionals or peers to
act as if people can be defined in absolute
terms, with labels that can become fixed.
These discourses or ‘totalising identities’
lead individuals to be defined solely in rela-
tion to one problem and becomes the only
story about that young person. For Callum,
all people are beginning to notice are his
‘autism things’. Huws and Jones (2010)
explored the perceptions of lay people about
autism, following work with parents who felt
stigmatised because of the lack of knowledge
people have about autism and reports from
young people experiencing bullying by
people with little or no knowledge of autism,
like the teasing experienced by Callum.
Interestingly, and supporting the views of
Callum’s teachers and parents, Chambres et
al. (2008) concluded that revealing a child
has autism can help reduce negative atti-
tudes of adults towards that child.
Authors revealing their own autobio-
graphical accounts of their relationship with
autism consider issues of personal identity
and social understanding. Gerland (1997)
writes: ‘I screamed and bit and kicked and
no one could help me… no one could
explain why there was so much I didn’t
understand’ (p.40).
Other authors suggest that people with
autism lack a sense of self or strive to become
a ‘somebody, somewhere’ (Williams, 1994,
cited in Bagatell, 2007). As traditional deficit
views of autism suggest individuals have diffi-
culty with social interaction and communica-
tion, it might be assumed that identity
construction is of little significance. Yet for
some people deemed to have ‘high func-
tioning’ autism (this term itself being a
metaphoric construct of ‘mental retarda-
tion’), concealment and disclosure can
encompass complex strategies in order to
manage identity and what might be a good
way to ‘come out’ (Davidson & Henderson,
2010). Contrary to Chambres et al.’s view
(2008), individuals are concerned that
revealing autism will lead to more negative
attitudes towards them, as was the case in a
33
Jennifer Alison Gilling
study by Swaim and Morgan (2001) who
found that children held less positive atti-
tudes towards a child actor presenting with
autistic behaviours than when not engaging
in such behaviours, and that this persisted
even when information about autism was
given.
Broderick and Ne’eman (2008) explored
metaphors surrounding autism. While
historically metaphors about autism
constructed from non-autistic communities
have deemed it as a disease, ‘alien’ or with-
drawn from the outside world, those
constructed by the autistic community
metaphorically frame autism within a model
of neurodiversity. Autism metaphors have
served to create both narratives around aeti-
ology and cause, and about appropriate
responses and interventions. In order to do
this, the metaphors rely on cultural notions
of ‘normalcy’ and ‘abnormalcy’ (Broderick
& Ne’eman, 2008). Recent developments in
this area have reframed the triad of impair-
ments not as inabilities but as positive attrib-
utes of people with autism, skills that
non-autistic or ‘neurologically typical’ (NT)
individuals are seen as lacking (Brownlow,
2010a).
In contrast to the view that people have a
difficult and confusing relationship with
autism and the world, Kim (1999, cited in
O’Neil, 2008) writes: ‘Autism is home. It is a
place where I belong. I always have. It is
protection against the overwhelming sensory
information coming at me from all over’
(p.788).
Autism can, therefore, be understood by
those people affected by it as a central part
of who they are and not as something bad,
but rather associated with a number of skills
(O’Neil, 2008). Brownlow (2010b) is careful
to note that in making such reframings, that
binary categories of ‘us and them’ (autistics
and NT) are moved away from and instead
capture difference in terms of ‘neurodiver-
sity’ and and alternative construction of
‘autism as difference’.
34
Narrative therapy:
Re-authoring preferred identities
While discourses were understood by
Foucault as a political construction rather
than a personal one, they do not necessarily
have to determine one’s identities; identities
can be adapted and resisted (Bagatell, 2007).
Narrative explorations of discourse free
people from totalising structuralist self-
judgements (‘I’m not normal, there must be
something wrong with me’) and enable
them to make judgements of their actions
according to whether it fits with how they
believe it is good to live their life and what is
their preferred identity (Morgan, 2000).
White (2007) believes that for every
power, there is some point of resistance;
even the expression of struggling in life is an
example of taking action and responding in
some way. By expressing what is problematic
or troublesome, people are doing something
other than going along with the problem.
These actions are founded upon preferred
accounts of life and identity (Carey et al.,
2009). By taking a different action, this may
in turn construct a new relationship with,
and understanding of, the problem.
The ‘perspectival’ knowing underpinnings
of narrative therapy move towards curiosity
and away from an emphasis on objectivity.
Gergen (1991) suggests on this assumption
that people make conclusions and interpreta-
tions based on a ‘particular community of
interpretation’. That is, when we say some-
thing is true, we understand this as saying a
sufficient community currently accepts this
information as true at that time. The develop-
ment of preferred identities is crucial to inclu-
sion since it suggests that there are many other
stories about a young person that are available
but often pass unnoticed in the relationships
between staff and young people.
Hermeneutic approaches in narrative
therapy facilitate people’s dialogue with
many co-existing internal and external
narrative stories rather than stepping more
fully into any single particular narrative. This
creates a haven for exploring these different
voices to respond in more satisfying ways.
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

The assumption that there are many
possible experiential realities created
through discourse (Foucault, 1979) has been
cited by White and Epston as being a major
impact on the development of narrative
practices (Besley, 2002). While the stories
that are constructed give meaning, they are
only partial (Freedman & Combs, 1996). No
story can encompass all of the lived experi-
ence. However, the stories that are selected
indicate what experiences we give more
meaning to. Significance is attributed to
certain moments, while others are ‘written
out’. Meanings that are derived depend on
the distinctions between what is presented to
us (privileged meaning) and what is written
out (Derrida, 1978).
Narrative ways of structuring conversa-
tions develop what is known as ‘thick’ rather
than ‘thin’ descriptions – more complex
stories where, for example, autism is just one
aspect. By using externalisation in the
hermeneutic exploration, it locates prob-
lems as separate from the young person and
names the problem. By careful use of
language, the young person can be assisted
to talk about their relationship with the
problem, what effect it had, what they think
of this effect and whether they take a partic-
ular stand on their problem. From this
unique outcome, occasions when the
problem has not been so prominent can be
explored, leading to the eliciting of values
and preferred stories.
The epistemological assumption under-
lying hermeneutics and narrative – that
language and a presumed ability for abstrac-
tion is integral to understanding – may be
seen as posing a challenge when working
with people with autism, given that some
believe their primary method of information
exchange is visual rather than linguistic
(Newman et al., 2010). However, Cashin
(2008) presents evidence of narrative being a
successful and changing approach to therapy
with people with autism. He describes it as
going beyond giving someone a social story
(Gray, 2000); social stories are not a form of
narrative therapy as there is no presumption
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Callum’s relationship with autism
of working on individually constructed mean-
ings. Using narrative in such a way could
engage young people as co-authors to work
on the isolation of a discrete problematic
area of behaviour. Externalisation may be
helpful in such a case as, by giving the
problem a form and turning it into a
concrete entity, it removes the problem of
seeing a more abstract vision of the problem.
Concrete thinking is often stated as an
element inherent in the way of being-in-the-
world represented by autism (Cashin, 2008).
Once the problem is defined, the young
person is scaffolded through taking a curious
exploration of plausible concrete means of
action against the problem. It is this method
that I used with Callum to explore the action
against his problem.
Callum’s preferred story
As I stated at the beginning of this article, my
main focus was to privilege Callum’s insider
knowledge, that is, not what professional
discourses say about autism but to listen to
his life experience and give it as much status
as professional or global knowledge. Insider
knowledge may reveal untapped resources
that allow a different understanding of who
he is, what his stance on his autism things is,
and what he wants others to have noticed.
I wanted to remain de-centred and not to
take on an expert role but to be curious
about what Callum wanted to share.
Callum and I met for a narrative session
in his school. He said he had remembered
me from his annual review. Callum spoke
about two things that were important to him
at the moment – his baby brother and his
interest in Star Wars. We began a conversa-
tion about ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’ in
Star Wars and, using strength cards, we
explored what qualities he might share with
the ‘goodies’, where these might have come
from in his life and what values they repre-
sented. Callum identified that he was organ-
ised and protective, both of which he needed
when helping his mum to look after his
brother. He also thought he was humorous
and liked to make people laugh as this
35
Jennifer Alison Gilling
helped him to feel included in the play-
ground. He talked a lot about friendship, the
importance he placed on having friends and
being a good friend himself and that his
friends would not be surprised to hear he
has these skills and qualities.
On my second visit, I asked Callum who
else would not be surprised to hear about his
strengths. He talked about the relationships
he has with his mother and her partner, and
his dad and his partner, who seem to under-
stand who he is without focussing on autism.
Callum likes having people around him but
would not be friends with people if they did
not like Star Wars. The only person he speaks
to who does not like it is his mum, because ‘I
have to speak to her, she is my mum’. Callum
said his dad has mentioned autism ‘to wind
him up’ and Callum could not think why dad
might have done this. Callum was keen to
talk about Star Wars again so I asked which
character he was most like. He likened
himself to Anakin Skywalker because they
are both powerful and, like Anakin, Callum
described how he sometimes ‘turns to the
dark side’. Through externalisation, Callum
was able to tell me when ‘the powerfulness
isn’t so helpful’ – when he ‘turns to the dark
side’. The effects of this has him being
cheeky to staff and pushing people in the
playground. He feels that sometimes the
powerfulness takes over him and stops him
from ‘being good’ and has him doing
‘autism things’ instead. Callum did note that
his mum tells him to stop flapping, which he
thought might be an ‘autism thing’.
However, Callum does not notice he is flap-
ping and he feels it does not get in the way of
him getting on and doing what he wants.
The only effect it has is that he does not like
being nagged about it; he cannot see why
other people are bothered by it if he is not.
Listening to Callum, it struck me that he was
stuck in a battle of ‘disciplinary power’
(Foucault, 1979). His mum had developed a
normalising discourse about flapping behav-
iour, and Callum struggled to police himself
into that way of being. Fisher and Goodley
(2007) explored this phenomenon in their
36
work around the counter-narratives of
mothers of disabled children.
Callum identified that when the power-
fulness is not so helpful, it teams up with
anger. Callum thinks this makes him do
naughty things and makes him not want to
be friends with people, despite him placing
value on having friends. It also makes him
cross when he has to do what other people
say, although an exception, or unique
outcome, has been the times he has done
things for mum when she has asked, such as
washing up. From this it is evident that
Callum’s position on the powerfulness is that
he does not want it around in his life. The
effect of this on other people is that they say
he has autism, something he neither wants
to have nor fully understands.
During our third session I was curious to
find out more about Callum’s values around
not going to ‘the dark side’. He said that, like
in the film of Star Wars, he needed to chal-
lenge the dark side and that he didn’t want to
be seen as evil anymore. Through our conver-
sation in which I scaffolded distance, Callum
seemed to move from a position of not
knowing (‘I don’t know what I’m not good at’)
to what he is able to come to know (White,
1995). He recognised that he is good at
making friends quickly, being polite (Callum
always complimented me in our sessions) and
good at teaching others (especially about the
rules of Star Wars games). Most importantly he
came to know that he can be nice to people
and that sometimes power is helpful if he
channels it into this preferred story.
I have not finished my work with Callum
and am curious to explore much more into
the underlying values that Callum has about
having more helpful powerfulness. I think
what my work has highlighted is that the
story of Callum that I heard when I first met
his teachers and other professionals was very
different to that I have come to know from
Callum himself. I aim to expand this work in
order to share the preferred story with
others and develop more reflective practice
that considers and constructs a new relation-
ship with Callum and ‘autism things’.
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

Conclusion
Based on the work presented here with
Callum and the consideration of the litera-
ture around narrative ways of working and
privileging autobiographical accounts and
insider knowledges, I aimed to highlight that
young people like Callum have an under-
standing of problems in the context of their
own lives (whether this is labelled autism or
not) and are able to articulate their own
experiences and values. By exploring which
people and what relationships support the
problem as well as the preferences people
have in their lives, it may reduce the possi-
bility of people viewing themselves as
‘abnormal’ or having a problem that stops
them from forming positive relationships.
Professionals need to consider alterna-
tives to the negativity of the discourses of
professional practice that focuses on limita-
tions and impairments. Fox (2002) believes
that, in an evidence-based world, research,
professional experience and client values
should combine to create the most credible
model to use. Although narrative therapy is
founded on the assumptions of language
creating meaning, evidence has shown its
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Dr Jennifer Gilling
Educational Psychologist,
Tyne House,
Hepscott Park,
Morpeth,
Northumberland
NE61 6NF.
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Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
The professional practice of educational
psychologists: Developing narrative
approaches
Charmian Hobbs, Rachel Durkin, Gillian Ellison,
Jennifer Gilling, Tracey Heckels, Sarah Tighe,
Barbara Waites & Carol Watterson

People (parents, carers, teachers, adults, other professionals) seeking the involvement of an educational
psychologist (EP) frequently bring longstanding and difficult concerns. Usually, many ways have already
been tried to address the difficulty and generally these have been felt to be unsuccessful. The problem then
often becomes one that is described as belonging to the person or setting – the angry child, the bad parent,
the weak teacher, the inexperienced leader. Once labelled as such, it becomes less likely to remedy a concern
that has become part of someone’s identity – the label becomes an established fact. The problem is stuck.
Narrative approaches construct problems in a different way; the educational psychology team in
Darlington has been interested in applying narrative ideas to the practice and ethos of the service over a
number of years. Narrative approaches (White, 2007) view problems as separate from the person or setting
and as such are one story amongst many that people have in their lives.
This paper presents a reflection on the work of Darlington Educational Psychology Service (DEPS) in
developing narrative approaches to practice. The work is considered through a number of case studies
including direct work with children and young people, training to bring about organisational change and
research. It is suggested that a narrative approach provides a challenge to prevailing socio-cultural
narratives and offers alternative richer understandings of behaviours often characterised as problematic.
Keywords: narrative approaches; narrative therapy; social constructionism; educational psychology
service; externalising.

T
HE SERVICE MODEL and delivery of
Darlington Educational Psychology
Service (DEPS) has undergone signifi-
cant transformation over the past 10 years.
Psychology had been available to schools,
children and young people through psycho-
metric assessment, direct referrals of
children to the psychology service or
through access to an amount of educational
psychology time allocated to each setting.
A change of direction came about with the
introduction of a model of service delivery
based on consultation (Wagner, 1995);
moving away from the role of the psycholo-
gist as the ‘expert’ and focusing on collabo-
rative working with those who can bring
about change. The service then explored
solution-oriented approaches (O’Hanlon &
Beadle, 1996), embracing the belief that
people have solutions and resources to
address concerns in their lives. The interest
and desire to extend practice in this direc-
tion led to exploring narrative approaches
(White, 2004), through which a shared ethos
has evolved within the service, underpinned
by a belief in community rather than profes-
sional solutions to problems. Individuals and
groups can then be supported in acknowl-
edging what is important to them and in
developing alternative pathways and possibil-
ities in their lives.
The fundamental aim of the educational
psychologist (EP) is to support children and
young people, listen to children, young
people and adults and facilitate a process of
solution finding and problem solving when

Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2 39

© The British Psychological Society, 2012
Charmian Hobbs et al.
lives become ensconced in difficulty
(Gersch, 2004). Effective EPs strive to
achieve this aim through the creative and
innovative application of psychology within
schools and the wider community
(Cameron, 2006). The narrative model of
service delivery that has been developed in
DEPS reflects recognition of the impact that
EPs can make on individuals, groups and
systems as a result of a common ethos that
prevails across all aspects of statutory and
non-statutory work. As a team, practice and
service delivery has continued to grow
through training, continuous professional
development (CPD), research and peer
support.
This paper gives a brief overview of narra-
tive therapy and then sets out to illustrate how
narrative approaches have been applied by
DEPS using examples of work with individ-
uals, groups and systems. Some of the applica-
tions described were not originally
conceptualised in a way that would seem to be
in keeping with narrative ideas, however the
way in which they have been used by DEPS
has been in accord with narrative principles.
Principles of narrative approaches
Narrative approaches are more than a set of
therapeutic skills; they reflect the inter-
locking of theory, respectful speaking,
listening and practice concerned with
different ways of understanding the self.
Narrative therapy is concerned with the
significance of relationship, context and
community in influencing thinking, action
and meaning. Realities are socially
constructed; categories given to understand
ourselves may be bound by cultural norma-
tive prescriptions so our ways of under-
standing are historically and culturally
relative (Burr, 2003). For example, what we
understand as behavioural, emotional and
social difficulties (BESD) reflects a phenom-
enon that has come into being through the
exchanges between those who have partic-
ular difficulties with social adaptation and
others who may teach them or offer diag-
nostic tests.
40
Morgan (2000) provides a summary of
the key principles of the approach, detailed
within Table 1.
Through discourses, realities are created
that comprise a set of meanings, images or
stories that form a particular version of events
(Foucault, 1972) and are maintained
through narratives. This brings with it the
potential for the influence of modern power
on social practices; modern power deems
what is permissible for people to do and for
how they may treat others. This power makes
global truth claims about individuality by
constructing what is ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’
in everyone. This privileges belief in objective
realities based on scientific disciplines and
marginalises alternative ways of acting.
Narrative, however, is based on social
constructionism that proposes that there are
no essential truths (Burr, 2003). If we accept
that alternative versions of events are poten-
tially available through language, there may
be a variety of different discourses repre-
senting any event. Narrative approaches
explore the interaction between commonly
accepted objective knowledge and subjective
knowledge to understand what interpreta-
tion and meaning people construct.
White (2007) believes for every form of
modern power there is some point of resist-
ance; even the expression of struggling in
life is an example of taking action. By
expressing what is troublesome, people are
doing something other than going along
with the problem. These actions are founded
upon preferred accounts of life and identity
(Carey et al., 2009). Stories do not ‘happen’;
rather, they are actively constructed in
people’s heads. This intentionality is central
to narrative therapy.
The process of therapeutic conversations
draws on Vygotsky’s (1986) theory of scaf-
folding, viewing therapeutic questions as
stepping stones for people to learn previously
unknown things about themselves through
unexplored preferred stories. Scaffolded
questions enable people to move from what
is ‘known and familiar’ to ‘what is possible to
know’. This provides the chance to develop
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
 Developing narrative approaches

Table 1: Principles of narrative therapy, adapted from Morgan, 2000.

● It is a respectful, non-blaming approach that centres people as the experts in their lives.
● People have skills, competencies, beliefs and abilities that will enable them to change their
relationship with their problems.
● The key metaphor of narrative practice is that life is storied; stories are events that are linked
in sequence, across time and according to a plot. Stories are socially constructed and
maintained and bring into play culturally embedded themes. It is through the telling of these
stories that one’s experiences become meaningful.
● Our lives may be multi-storied; that is, narrative captures non-essentialist identities. In
conversations with professionals, people often favour problem-saturated stories.
● Certain events are selected and privileged over others and linked to form a dominant, ‘thin’
story. Other events outside the dominant story, such as those of success and strength, remain
hidden or less significant. Subsequent experiences are likely to be interpreted in accord with
this thin story.
● In challenging the problem story, problems are separate from people; that is, the problem is
the problem, not the person. This process of externalising names and objectifies problems
such that they are no longer an intrinsic part of the individual. In being separated from the
problem, the person is placed in a position of greater agency to reflect on and challenge the
problem without attacking themselves.
● The effects, origins and actions of dominant, problem stories (thin descriptions) on a
person’s life are explored through deconstruction. This creates the opportunity to identify
and challenge the beliefs underpinning the ‘thin’ story.
● Conversations offer people the opportunity to notice ‘unique outcomes’ that contradict the
dominant story.
● These preferred stories are constructed and brought to the fore and can be ‘richly described’
to produce a ‘thicker’ alternative (re-authoring).

ideas about who we are and in turn have a
sense of directing or influencing our lives.
Evidence base
When considering the evidence base for the
effectiveness of narrative approaches in
addressing difficulty, it is important to recog-
nise the prevalence in many current
psychologies of ideas about ‘internal states’
that are often related, in therapy, to weak-
nesses, deficits, disorders or pathologies.
Successful interventions in these psycholo-
gies are then usually evaluated against a
reduction in behaviours associated with
these difficulties, and those that are seen as
most effective are where significant numbers
of individuals show less or no inappropriate
behaviour. Within narrative therapy, there
are none of these ideas about ‘human
nature’, a sense of ‘self’ as central to
personal identity or the use of normalising
terms; the focus is on engaging in conversa-
tions that will contribute to rich descriptions
of peoples’ lives and the meanings that they
hold. Evidence for the effectiveness of narra-
tive therapy is demonstrated through the
case studies, detailed transcripts and
commentary showing how individuals have
been facilitated in constructing new under-
standings of their intentions and identity.
Such evidence is increasingly available in
many publications (Denborough, 2008;
Freedman & Combs, 1996; White, 2004,
2007). There is also an increasing research
base that has examined the use of narrative
approaches in establishing a richer under-
standing of the label of Attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (Tighe,
2010) multi-agency working (Heckels, 2011)
and behaviour difficulty (Gilling, 2011).

Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2 41

Charmian Hobbs et al.
The following sections illustrate profes-
sional practice in DEPS as further examples
of the ways in which using a narrative
approach can offer a different lens through
which to view presenting concerns. All
names have been changed to maintain confi-
dentiality.
Narrative approaches and the
individual
Narrative practice serves as a powerful and
effective approach to working with individ-
uals in both mainstream and specialist
primary and secondary settings. It offers a
focused opportunity to collaborate with a
young person or adult in the progressive
enhancement of their awareness of the alter-
native pathways and possibilities in their
lives, placing them in a position of agency
and control. The United Nations (UN)
Convention on the Rights of the Child
(Office of the UN High Commissioner for
Human Rights, 1989) stated that:
…the child shall have the right to freedom of
expression; this right shall include freedom to
seek, receive and impart information and ideas
of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either
orally, in writing, or in print, in the form of
art, or through any other media of the child’s
choice. (Part 1, 13:1)
Such a statement is indicative of a moral obli-
gation on the practitioner to find a way to
enable the child to express and address their
views. However, children are not necessarily
in a position in which they have the power to
make themselves heard by the adults around
them. DEPS has acknowledged the need to
‘find ways to position ourselves so we can
hear children’s stories’ (Hobbs 2000, p.114)
and believe that narrative approaches to
conversing with individuals represent an
opportunity to achieve this and to enable
children to take control in a process of
defining the experiences of their lives. The
following case examples are intended to
illustrate this and provide readers with a
sense of the impact of narrative practice on
children, young people and families.
42
Irene’s story. Irene was a Year 7 pupil with a
diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder
(ASD). Her parents sought the involvement
of the school’s EP due to Irene’s ‘tears,
tantrums and refusal to co-operate’, leading
to what they perceived as a ‘dysfunctional’
family home.
Through engaging parents in an initial
narrative conversation, Irene’s parents had
the opportunity to explore their values and
beliefs around family life and the origins of
their expectations of the behaviours of their
child. Narrative conversation facilitated
them in deconstructing and examining the
problem that they had raised by considering
its history, its appearance and its impact.
Such an in-depth analysis of the challenges
that people are facing is perhaps rare in
today’s educational settings; narrative
conversation, therefore, offers an acknowl-
edgement of the effect of adversity that may
not be encountered otherwise. The curious
and exploratory nature of the narrative
approach provides individuals with whom
EPs work with a potentially novel, critical
and reflective context and thereby begins to
develop an openness that enables new
perspectives to emerge.
A narrative conversation with Irene
commenced with the externalisation of the
problem. The problem became ‘the
nagging’ and was thus located to a position
outside of Irene’s identity. How ‘the
nagging’ affected Irene and her relation-
ships with family members was ascertained;
she shared how ‘the nagging’ brought
tension, stress and annoyance into her life,
encouraging actions such as shouting,
hitting and not doing homework. Facili-
tating Irene in exploring the effects of ‘the
nagging’ enabled consideration of whether
such effects fitted in with her hopes and
plans for the future. Consideration of the
times when Irene was working towards her
hopes and plans facilitated the identification
of times when ‘the nagging’ and its effects
were less evident, thus beginning the devel-
opment of an alternative story of family life
and relationships in which ‘the nagging’ was
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

not so dominant. The process of externalisa-
tion and creative questioning that is
inherent within a narrative approach placed
Irene in a position where she had space from
the problem. Her sense of responsibility,
choice and personal agency was increased
through being able to adopt a more reflec-
tive, appraising stance. From such a position,
she could speak about the difficulty and use
her imagination and personal resources to
expand the meanings that she attributed to
experiences beyond the problem story and
discover new ideas about them (Bruner,
1986; Freeman et al., 1997).
Extending and enhancing the process. Over
recent years the profession of Educational
Psychology has perhaps moved away from
direct work with individuals, possibly due to
its association with cognitive testing and a
perception that it is insignificant when
compared to change at an organisational
level (Dessent, 1992). However, Boyle and
Lauchlan (2009) suggest that this also may
have contributed to a reduction in the
extent to which psychology is applied by EPs.
The engagement with narrative approaches
at Darlington illuminates the way in which
individual casework can evolve to constitute
a part of wider intervention at whole school
or family level (Boyle & Lauchlan, 2009) and
can be grounded in evidence-based psycho-
logy. Narrative conversation with an indi-
vidual can be enhanced by practices that
enable the inclusion of the wider community
in the construction and thickening of an
alternative story of the young person or
adult’s experiences. As will be evident in the
following examples, such practices may be
explicitly grounded in narrative or reflective
of the possibilities that narrative allows for
incorporation of methods from other,
congruent approaches.
Mark’s story. Reflecting teams. ‘Just as
problem stories are constructed in relation
to others, so too can preferred accounts be
witnessed and audienced in relation to
others. In narrative therapy we are interested
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Developing narrative approaches
in thickening the alternative and preferred
identities of children’s lives’ (White &
Morgan, 2006, p.109). Reflecting teams are
an opportunity for invited others to listen to
the preferred account and, through struc-
tured questioning, describe how hearing the
preferred account resonated with their own
thoughts, feelings and experience. This
retelling enables the preferred account to be
more richly described and to be more
connected with the lives of others.
Mark was a 4-year-old pupil about to
make the transition from the nursery class
into the first class in primary school. Consul-
tation with parents and teaching staff high-
lighted a dominant story of Mark being
unable to cope with this impending change
due to his diagnosis of ASD. Observations
that were incongruent with this story seemed
to be marginalised. In order to develop a
richer story of Mark that would include his
strengths, resources and successes, the EP
offered his parents and teachers an opportu-
nity to meet as a reflecting team.
The reflecting team began with the EP
having a conversation with the nursery
teacher about Mark’s ‘learning journey’ –
a collection of photographs and observa-
tions of Mark in the nursery setting that had
been collated over the academic year. Mark’s
teacher was asked to select three images,
observations or both that stood out to her,
reflecting on why this was the case, what it
was that Mark was doing, what this led her to
think and hope about him and her values in
relation to these thoughts and hopes.
Through this conversation a narrative began
to develop that detailed Mark as a child
beginning to engage in social interaction,
who was able to overcome his fears of
accessing the outdoor environment and who
maintained a great interest in books. The
reflecting team members – Mark’s parents
and a trainee EP – listened silently at this
time before being asked to express what had
stood out to them about what they had heard
and why this resonated with them, thus
enhancing the emerging alternative story.
43
Charmian Hobbs et al.
Mark’s parents commented on their
pleasure at hearing Mark spoken about in
this way and having the opportunity to speak
about their experience of his development at
home. They felt reassured and supported in
learning of the school’s understanding of
their son. Mark’s teacher felt that she had
learned more about Mark’s family and their
hopes for his future, commenting on the
value of a conversation about Mark’s life as a
whole rather than simply focusing on coping
with autism and acknowledging how this
information could be used in planning for
transition. Mark’s teacher also felt that the
reflecting team offered an effective frame-
work for families to hear about and respond
to their child’s learning journey.
Harry’s story: The Golden Book. The
Golden Book is a means of documenting
exceptions from the dominant, problem
story in a child’s life. It highlights actions
and utterances that contradict it and records
what stands out about these and what they
show about the focal person; it provides a
written or illustrated record of an alternative
story, constructed by those who are signifi-
cant to a young person and, indeed, the
young person themselves (McGlone, 2001).
Harry was described as ‘experiencing
difficulties controlling his behaviour and
forming positive peer relationships’. Hitting
and other behaviours considered as aggres-
sive were quickly noticed, whilst alternative
behaviours often went unnoticed. Harry had
become known as the ‘one who hits’.
The Golden Book, although not origi-
nally developed within narrative practice,
was used in such a way to develop an alterna-
tive story that was thickened by those who
participated and shared in contributing to
the book. The Golden Book acted as a
prompt for Harry’s class teacher to notice
exceptions around his behaviour and social
interactions. By considering what these
exceptions demonstrated about Harry, docu-
menting them in The Golden Book and
sharing them with his family by sending the
book home, the events and observations
44
were given an audience and developed
meaning such that they began to form an
alternative story about Harry. This
constructed Harry as someone who asks
questions, seeks help, interacts with others,
remembers facts and loves animals – not as
the ‘one who hits.’ Other staff in school as
well as Harry himself contributed to The
Golden Book; Harry enjoyed sharing time
with his class teacher to record events in the
book and he began to identify things that he
valued throughout the school day,
requesting that they be recorded. Harry’s
parents felt a sense of relief in learning of
the many valued actions of their son in
school and, in association with this, they
acknowledged feeling happier with conversa-
tions with school staff. An increasingly
supportive dialogue between home and
school developed, continuing the construc-
tion of an alternative story about Harry.
Harry himself continued to collaborate in
the enhancement of the alternative story
throughout his daily school life.
Tom’s story: Video Interaction Guidance
(VIG). Video Interaction Guidance (VIG)
(Kennedy et al., 2010) is an approach that
aims to enhance communication within rela-
tionships, usually between parent and child.
VIG involves the EP facilitating participants
in creating, viewing and discussing short
recordings of their interactions that high-
light what is working within their communi-
cation.
During a home visit by the EP, Tom’s
mother described her parenting as a ‘failure’
and herself as a ‘constant nag’. However,
throughout the conversations she alluded to
a range of exceptions concerning pleasur-
able play experiences and talks with Tom
about his school day. When asked why she
valued such instances, Tom’s mother
conveyed her belief in the importance of
having a good, communicative relationship
with her child. She was keen to explore this
further and agreed to engage with VIG.
Tom’s mother was filmed with Tom for
20 minutes within a playroom at school.
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

The EP then selected a range of clips
demonstrative of successful interaction to be
viewed and discussed at a subsequent session
with her. During the review session, the EP
facilitated Tom’s mother in reflecting on the
verbal and non-verbal responses and initia-
tives that she was making towards her son
that were contributing to a successful,
attuned interaction. The discussion that
arose in response to this reflection enabled
the development of a much richer, alterna-
tive story of her parenting, linking her effec-
tive communicative actions, evidenced by
the film clips, to her values and beliefs about
being a mother.
Tom’s mother was surprised to witness
and acknowledge the way in which she could
exert such an impact on her son’s behaviour
by means of her responses to him during
their interactions. She explained how she
had never previously had the opportunity to
reflect on her parenting and notice her
successes. In noticing her own skills, she was
able to identify other times when she might
apply them to develop a more harmonious,
enjoyable environment within the home.
Therapeutic letters. As the dominant story’s
influence diminishes, therapeutic documen-
tation can record the new and preferred
stories that have emerged. Therapeutic
letters are written to an individual that the
EP has worked with, summarising the perti-
nent points from the meeting and including
questions relating to what the individual may
do next in relation to these. The letter serves
as a means of further acknowledgment of the
words of the individual after the session has
ended, making clear that their voice has
been heard and responded to.
EPs working in Darlington write a letter to
the individual young person or adult
following each narrative conversation. The
letter provides a record of the preferred story
that has become more accessible through the
narrative conversation. Young people have
commented on the value of receiving this
affirmation of their comments and described
the impact that receiving a letter has exerted
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Developing narrative approaches
on relationships with their parents. The letter
has provided an opportunity to spend time
together speaking about what is important to
the young person. Parents have commented
that therapeutic letters have provided them
with a unique insight into the life of their
child and often constructed their relationship
in a new, exciting and alternative way. Indeed,
research in the narrative field indicates that
therapeutic letters offer the equivalent of
four-and-a-half hours of talking and signifi-
cantly enhance the likelihood of positive ther-
apeutic outcomes (Freeman et al., 1997).
Narrative approaches and statutory
requirements
The preparation of statutory psychological
advice for the Local Authority (LA) as part of
the Special Educational Needs: Code of Practice
(DfES, 2001) is, to some extent, a part of the
individual casework of every EP. Initially,
however, it may seem at odds with a narrative
model of service delivery that stands against
the structuralist view of ‘needs’. However,
DEPS has successfully incorporated the
preparation of statutory advice within the
narrative framework that prevails within the
service. Narrative is an approach that lends
itself to the gathering of information from
young people and adults for the writing of
statutory advice. It enables a non-judge-
mental, respectful and curious stance to be
adopted in what is a written construction of
the young person’s story for the LA. It illumi-
nates their experiences, current context and
perceptions of their needs without standard-
ised testing and without serving to further
compound what is often a problem-saturated
account of their identity.
A narrative approach to group work
with young people
Collaboration in the construction of shared
understandings and new meanings about
ourselves and the world are key aspects of
the narrative approach. With these princi-
ples in mind, the approach has been helpful
in facilitating effective group work in
schools. Given that the stories held about
45
Charmian Hobbs et al.
ourselves are viewed not only as the product
of individual minds, but as being created and
reached through a shared space (Newton &
Wilson, 2003), group work opens up an
arena in which the community in question
can access deeper understandings of itself
and in which alternative explanations can be
explored.
The following are examples of practice
that demonstrate the possibilities for
including narrative ways of thinking and
working with groups of children and young
people. The first example describes the use
of ‘The Tree of Life’ and illustrates how this
can be successful in facilitating group
thinking and action, whilst the second
demonstrates the application of a narrative
approach to a ‘Circle of Friends’ group, thus
showing how the principles can be applied
to a range of group formats. These pieces of
work suggest that adopting narrative ideas is
not restricted to narrative-based practices;
narrative ideas can be incorporated within
other approaches to group work, for
example, The Tree of Life approach has
evolved from narrative principles, whilst the
Circle of Friends reflects the use of narrative
ideas within a solution-oriented context.
Group work in this instance is more about
principles of working together, sharing
stories and reaching new meanings and less
about the ‘intervention’ itself and its
intended outcomes.
The Tree of Life (Ncube, 2005) can be a
hopeful and inspiring approach to working
with children who have experienced difficult
times. It involves drawing their own Tree of
Life. In doing so, they are enabled to speak
of where they come from and the activities in
which they are currently engaged (roots and
ground), their skills and knowledges
(trunk), their hopes and dreams (branches),
as well as the people that are important to
them in their lives (leaves) and what they
have appreciated about them (fruits). This
provides a context to thicken the preferred
stories in their lives, in contrast to the story
of difficulty or trauma.
46
The Tree of Life is an effective approach
to working with individuals but is also valu-
able when working in the context of a small
group. Groups of children can begin to elicit
a sense of shared investment in their group
by constructing a group ‘tree’ that portrays
their histories, hopes and commitments. In
this case, it seemed particularly beneficial to
apply this approach as it allowed for a shared
understanding of how the group had grown
together and shared a number of values.
Attempting to collaboratively find the words
to include in the ‘tree’ provided opportuni-
ties to describe more richly what is important
to the group. Rather than targeting one indi-
vidual, the aim was for voices to be combined
in order to shape co-emerging stories. The
group ‘tree’ was given a wider social audi-
ence as it was shared with the whole class and
teacher, who were able to respond to the
‘tree’ with their reflections. By engaging with
this wider social audience, there was a sense
of shared responsibility and community.
‘The Circle of Friends approach
promotes the inclusion of individuals who
face the greatest risk of rejection or isolation
from the community in which they live
because of their disability, behaviour or
difference’ (Newton & Wilson, 2003). The
process involves a ‘focus child’ who has been
identified by school staff. The usual process
is to establish a group of the child’s peers
around the focus child to anchor support
and assist with bringing about positive
change for the focus child through goal-
setting. When used in a narrative way, the
‘support’ group meets weekly to highlight
examples of exceptions to the dominant
story and, through discussion, begins to
thicken an alternative story to that of ‘rejec-
tion’, ‘isolation’ or ‘difficulty’.
A group of Year 4 children formed a
network of support around a child who was
seen to need support to get along better with
his peers. The member of staff from the
school who had experience in supporting
him had reported that they had tried a range
of interventions that involved responding to
‘negative behaviours’ that he sometimes
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

outwardly displayed. Upon reflection on his
apparent difficulties, the staff expressed the
possibility that these may have been mani-
fested through the challenges he faced when
interacting with other children. Therefore, it
was felt that the child would benefit from a
‘Circle of Friends’ group. During the group
sessions, a narrative approach was particu-
larly useful in enabling the children
supporting the child to reach alternative
understandings of themselves and others, in
particular to recognise that individuals have
many strengths, skills and experiences to
offer.
The use of ‘strength cards’ (Deal, 2008),
which facilitate conversation about personal
resources, was particularly helpful in guiding
the group’s thinking towards alternative
stories of the child and away from dominant,
prevailing accounts of the negative behav-
iours. These stories were arrived at through a
shared, rather than individual, focus. Inter-
estingly, it was not just the content of the
group’s discussion that was facilitated by a
narrative approach but also the processes
behind the sessions and structures within
them. The joint working, collaboration and
seeking out support through the immediate
community were underpinned by a narrative
ethos, allowing a group to bring about posi-
tive change with the child. Working in this
way moved the group towards a general,
supportive and encompassing approach
rather than a specific problem-solving
process and gave hope that these skills and
values could be applied in a range of
contexts in the future.
Narrative approaches to systemic work
There has been little research carried out
into the use of narrative as an approach to
systemic working so its use as the basis for
our plans for the implementation of the
Targeted Mental Health in Schools project
(DCSF, 2008) was relatively untested.
The Targeted Mental Health in Schools
project (TaMHS) was a three-year national
pathfinder programme funded through the
Department for Children, Schools and Fami-
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Developing narrative approaches
lies (DCSF), now the Department for Educa-
tion (DfE). It provided an opportunity to
incorporate narrative ideas into training at
an organisational level.
The cluster of schools selected in
Darlington comprised two secondary
schools, seven associated primary schools
and a nursery school. The cluster is well-
developed, had a history of working together
and had already identified ‘emotional well-
being’ as an area for significant intervention.
The expectations of the cluster were that the
training offered through the project would
help staff to identify areas for development
in relation to ‘emotional well-being’ and
build upon, share and disseminate ‘good
practice’.
It was thought that narrative approaches
would form a sound basis for the project as,
nationally, its remit was, ‘…to develop inno-
vative models of therapeutic and holistic
support for pupils at risk of experiencing
mental health problems’. It also emphasised
‘…an ecological approach where children’s
strengths and needs are viewed in the envi-
ronments and structures they are part of…
not simply in relation to the child them-
selves’ (DCSF, 2008).
The project was underpinned by an opti-
mistic, affirmative and preventative
approach that focused on whole school,
class, individual child and staff well-being.
A shift in thinking was encouraged from the
traditional, remedial approach to ‘treating
mental health problems’ to an ecological
and systemic narrative approach that felt
more in accordance with the ethos of a ‘well’
school.
Furthermore, this approach emphasised
the importance of collaborative and commu-
nity based ways of working, where staff were
encouraged to work alongside parents and
pupils, recognising and acknowledging the
richness of their personal strengths, qualities
and experiences. To support this, networks
were founded for the sharing of skills and
the disseminating of ideas across the cluster,
thus thickening new ways of working.
47
Charmian Hobbs et al.
The principal objectives of the project
were, therefore, to motivate and inspire staff
to address whole school ethos and well-being
with narrative principles in mind, whilst
building their capacity and confidence to
adopt community and school-based solu-
tions in addressing issues relating to
emotional well-being. Speakers from
Australia and the UK were invited to talk
about their own experiences and use of
narrative approaches. Specific practices such
as The Golden Book, The Tree of Life and
reflecting teams were introduced as well as
inclusive ideas such as Circle Time and
Circle of Friends, but used in keeping with
narrative ideas and principles.
Based on these narrative principles, the
staff was encouraged to consider the
elements of a ‘well’ school and classroom as
applied to their context. This activity was
helpful in encouraging broader, more
systemic thinking, building upon existing
good practice, identifying gaps and ways to
move forward. Staff worked alongside the EP
to develop individual school action plans,
outlining their hopes, expectations and
intentions for their involvement in the
project and the activities that they would
engage in to facilitate these ideas.
The importance of respectful language
when working with young people and fami-
lies was emphasised and training on narra-
tive practice was provided. The training
encouraged staff to view a young person as
‘facing’ rather than ‘being’ a problem in
order to enable them take a broader view of
a young person that includes their skills,
resources and intentions. Ideas around
social constructionism were introduced to
develop ideas around how labels can become
the sole identity and therefore form a ‘thin’
description of a young person or family.
The training was greatly valued by staff
and was clearly beginning to have an impact
upon not only the well-being of children but
of parents, too:
The child with The Golden Book – mum really
enjoyed it actually. Once you can explain to
the parents what it is, this particular parent
48
really loved it. She was used to just getting
negative feedback, so she was negative herself.
It’s made her feel more positive. It was how she
saw him, how she was describing him. She
could see the different stories, she could see that
he wasn’t just a ‘naughty boy’; he was the
‘caring boy’ and the ‘sharing boy’, all the other,
different things about him. I think that did
make a big impact on that particular parent.
Introducing new ideas like these into a
school community can be challenging, as
such communities are complex with many
initiatives and changes taking place continu-
ously and often simultaneously. The dissemi-
nation of approaches such as narrative is an
ideal with long-term implications, therefore,
expectations and hopes have had to be
modified in accordance with the readiness of
each school to assimilate the principles and
ideas. It is hoped that small changes in prac-
tices and perceptions will be sustained in the
future.
Reflections and closing comments
This article has attempted to convey the ways
in which DEPS has developed in recent years
and applied psychology drawing from the
field of narrative therapy. By providing some
examples of the range of work undertaken
by EPs, it is hoped that readers will appre-
ciate the impact of engaging with the use of
narrative approaches as a shared ethos and
within a broad range of contexts. It is diffi-
cult to provide the depth of the rich conver-
sations that have been shared at an
individual, group and systemic level;
however, such conversations have been
instrumental in shaping our practice and to
the development of narrative ideas.
As applied psychologists, we were already
committed to the principle that ideas and
identities are socially negotiated within
communities and so we began our shared
journey as a group or ‘community’ of EPs to
explore narrative approaches. Within the LA
context we faced similar dilemmas to those
working in other EP services around how to
practice psychology in a way that fitted with
our beliefs yet deliver what was expected
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

within LA and school settings. However, with
a strong commitment to move away from a
deficit model to one in which practice could
challenge the influences of modern power,
narrative approaches enabled us to work in a
way that fitted with our beliefs. We moved
towards engaging in conversations in which
we were able to help others increase their
awareness of alternatives to dominant stories
about their identity and thereby shift from
what is ‘known and familiar’ to ‘what is
possible to know’.
The attraction of narrative approaches
continued to gain impetus when it became
evident that it was not a therapeutic tool to
be used solely with individuals. It could be
all-encompassing and serve as a way of
working that would enable EPs to deliver a
psychological service to a community of
young people, schools, parents, carers and
other professionals.
Campbell and Groenbeck (2006) believe
that organisations change when personal
positions shift. They go on to say that posi-
tions only shift through dialogue with other
people in other positions. At the heart of the
development of our ways of working was the
decision to meet regularly as a team with the
sole purpose of discussing narrative
approaches. Meeting was critical to devel-
oping our understandings of and capacity to
work in an alternative way. Our ways of
working were enhanced through our inter-
actions and continued reflections, again
emphasising the strength of collaboration.
Our commitment to the development of
narrative approaches becoming the mainstay
of our practice was evident and we identified
and prioritised shared continuing profes-
sional development and whole service
training from practitioners within the field
of narrative therapy. Through our shared
focus we worked alongside others to explore
the uses of narrative approaches with practi-
tioners from other agencies at individual,
group and systemic levels. We embedded the
use of narrative approaches in our ways of
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Developing narrative approaches
working. Areas of our service delivery, such
as statutory advice, that had initially
appeared incongruent with narrative prac-
tice became incorporated within a narrative
way of working.
This article and on-going work
contributes to a growing evidence base for
narrative approaches (Freedman & Combs,
1996; Freeman et al., 1997). Dunsmuir et al.
(2009) proposed that in order to support
high quality evaluation into routine EP prac-
tice there is a need for educational
psychology services (EPSs) to identify the
theoretical frameworks and rationale for
their service delivery structures and present
coherent implementation plans. We would
suggest that narrative approaches could
provide such a rationale and the theoretical
framework through which to do so. This is
supported by Gersch (2009), who stated:
…the profession must be seen to be relevant to
those it serves, using a language that is
appreciated and understood, providing the
national agenda with real solutions rather
than with further problem elaboration or
philosophising. (Gersch, 2009, p.6)
DEPS hope this article will stimulate discus-
sions in relation to how EPSs and other
services working with children and young
people can stand aside from prevailing and
traditional ways of working, adopt a position
of curiosity and consider using narrative
approaches as interesting and innovative
ways of working with individuals, families,
schools and communities.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Ray Murphy
for his valuable comments on an earlier draft
of this article.
Address for correspondence
Dr Charmian Hobbs
28 Heckler Lane,
Ripon HG4 1PU.
Email: Charmian.Hobbs@zen.co.uk
49
Charmian Hobbs et al.
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Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Reading Rosie:
The postmodern disabled child
Dan Goodley & Katherine Runswick-Cole

This paper reads disabled childhoods in a number of distinct ways in order to stimulate debate around the
kinds of stories that researchers and practitioners tell about the children that they work with. Narratives of
bio-power – discourses of the self – have expanded as knowledge from the human and social sciences grow
and institutions of society become more pronounced. Nowhere is this growth of bio-power more evident than
in the lives of disabled children. It is becoming increasingly apparent that distinct bio-political discourses
are building up around disabled children at the same time as these children have become the focus of
participation, policy and service provision. Consequently, we believe the time is ripe to step back from the
current discursive context to question how we as researchers and practitioners understand the disabled
children whom we work with. Our aim, then, is to deliberately and self-consciously read the story of Rosie
– a disabled child we have worked with in our research – guided by four disability discourses, with an
emphasis on making this reading useful to practitioners in the area of childhood and disability.
The first reading attends to the teachings of what we describe below as the autism canon, the second
reading is located in an orthodox social model approach to disability, the third draws on a Nordic relational
model of disability, and the fourth is filtered through what we term a socio-cultural lens. In narrating
‘Rosie’ from different discursive repertoires, our aim is to explicate different understandings of disability
and child that emerge and to warn against the dominance of readings which threaten to pathologise, other
and separate disabled children from their peers, their families and the wider community.
Keywords: children; disability; postmodernism; narratives; critical disability studies; autism.

Children, disability and postmodernity

R
ECENTLY, one of us asked (Goodley,
2011, p.103): Why is the talk of
disability so pathological? How are
common sense ideas about impairment
influenced by professionals and scientists?
What possibilities are there for disrupting
these ideas and offering more enabling alter-
natives? In this paper we attempt to address
these questions. To do so we adopt what has
been termed a poststructuralist disability
studies approach (Corker & Shakespeare,
2002; Goodley, 2011; Tremain, 2005). This
approach recognises what McRuer (2002)
terms the ‘epidemic of signification’
through which the bodies and minds of
disabled people are inscribed with a thou-
sand words that threaten to leave them with
deeply disablist ‘epidermal schema’.
Schemas are relics of societal discourses,
emanating from expert and lay knowledge,
reproduced in institutions of family, school,
prison, disability service and hospital
(Goodley, 2011, p.104). Following Parker
(1992), these discourses are sets of state-
ments that construct objects (‘the intellectu-
ally disabled’), make reference to subjects
(‘intellectually disabled children’), boast
disciplinary histories (educational psycho-
logy, paediatrics), support institutions
(schools, clinics) and reproduce power rela-
tions (adult/child; psychologist/client) with
ideological effects (special or inclusive
education). Discourses fold around people
to give the effects of consciousness (Parker,
1997, p.7), reproducing and transforming
the material world (Nikander, 1995, p.11).
We use concepts such as ‘intellectually
disabled’ as if they were ‘real, naturally
occurring entities’ because they are objects
created by ‘natural’ bio-political discourses
that have come to be known as ‘truth’.
‘Child’ and ‘disability’ are complex

Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2 51

© The British Psychological Society, 2012
Dan Goodley & Katherine Runswick-Cole
discourses, especially when they intersect.
In recent years we have witnessed an expo-
nential rise in the sheer volume of impair-
ment objects (e.g. Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity Disorder, Special Educational
Needs, Autism, Emotional Behavioural
Disorder) that have been applied to
children, who are subjected to a battery of
diagnostic tests that purport to describe
these phenomena objectively (Goodley,
2011, p.114). A strange paradox emerges:
While the child and disabled people are
ever-more present in the cultural psyche, how
they are being understood is becoming
increasingly difficult to unravel.
Simultaneously, while discourses of child-
hood disability permeate cultural locations,
disabled children have been afforded a place
at the policy table. Increasingly, in our post-
Every Child Matters context, disabled
children as service users have been offered
opportunities to participate in debates
around the constitution and running of
services. Disabled children have collectively
participated in children’s panels, service
user consultation meetings and school coun-
cils (Franklin & Sloper, 2007). Individually,
disabled children are supposed to be active
participants in decision making about their
care and education, for example through
individual educational plans. Moreover, the
right to participate has been globally
accepted for a number of years:
Article 13 states that: The child shall have the
right to freedom of expression: this right shall
include the freedom to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas of all kinds, regardless
of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print,
in the form of art, or through any other media
of the child’s choice. (UNICEF, 1989, n.p.)
While there have been many positive
changes, we still view these developments
with scepticism. As Brandon and Towe
(1989, p.20) argued more than 20 years ago:
Participation has replaced ‘community’ as the
fresh aerosol term to tart up descriptions of
jaded services. The professional journals run
endless articles about involving consumers in
services in management, planning and
52
running of project. But does the participation
movement really amount to anything – or is it
simply a new paternalism?
One of the key reasons for suspecting this
new paternalism relates to the kinds of
discourses of disability that congregate
around disabled children. It is becoming
increasingly apparent that distinct bio-polit-
ical discourses are growing around disabled
children at the same time as children have
become more the focus of participation,
policy and provision. Promulgated by the
bio-power of psychology, medicine and
education – and their global reach – these
diagnoses actually construct the very objects
(‘the autistic child’) and subjects (‘the child
with autism’) they seek to describe
(Tremain, 2006, p.186).
From a Foucauldian perspective, there is
no such thing as ‘impairment’ outside of
these discourses (Tremain, 2006, p.190). Any
‘hard biological fact’ that we might want to
point to already has a long history of discur-
sive moulding and institutional usage. The
impaired body is ‘an educated, parented,
observed, tested, measured, treated, psychol-
ogised entity with a long history of being
materialised through a multitude of discipli-
nary practices and institutional discourses’
(Goodley, 2011, p.114). The impaired body
of the disabled child shares all of this
shaping due to its consistent engagement
with a whole plethora of disabling practices
and discourses.
We could argue that disablism is on the
increase. The current British Conservative-
Liberal Coalition Government’s push for a
‘Big Society’ emphasises individual and
familial responsibility for children over the
intervention of the state. Moreover, the
Government has clearly signalled the inten-
tion to end the ‘bias’ towards inclusion
(Runswick-Cole, 2011a). Consequently, we
are witnessing a discursive turn from inclu-
sive and rights-based notions of disabled
childhoods to more traditional and familiar
concepts of the disabled child as passive,
tragic, parasitic and burdensome (see
Runswick-Cole & Goodley, 2011, for more
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

discussion of this issue). It seems, at least to
us, that there is a deep contradiction
between these bio-political discourses of
‘child as active participant in decisions
around their lives’ and ‘child as tragically
impaired passive object’.
Consequently, we believe the time is ripe
to move back from the current discursive
context to question how we as researchers
and practitioners understand the disabled
children with whom we work. Such a task is
made even more important since we live in a
culture of service user participation and
consultation. We follow Titchkosky’s (2008)
call to watch our watchings and read our
readings. We ask: What kinds of readings do
we draw upon to make sense of disabled
children? To what extent are our narratives
only partial accounts of the complexity of
‘disability’ and ‘childhood’? Are we in
danger of empowering dangerous readings
that create pathological versions of child-
hood? Paraphrasing Snyder and Mitchell
(2001, p.381), we suggest that by moving
disabled children into a social and political
context and away from their historical
mooring as medical and supernatural oddi-
ties, the stories we tell of those children have
the potential to ‘transform understandings
of physical and cognitive difference from
that of malfunction within particular bodies
to the scenario of a cultural production,
writ large’.
Researching with Rosie
This paper draws on a number of accounts of
disabled children and their parents, collected
as part of a project funded by the Economic
and Social Research Council (RES–062-23-
1138) (see project website: http://post-
blair.posterous.com/) ‘Does every child
matter, Post-Blair: Interconnections of
disabled childhoods’. Our overarching aim
was to ask what life is like for disabled
children and young people and their families
in the aftermath of the changes for children’s
policy and practice since 1997, set in motion
by the New Labour government in Britain.
The research was carried out in England over
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Reading Rosie: The postmodern disabled child
a period of 32 months from September, 2008
to May, 2011.
Overall, our participants included
disabled children, their parents/carers and
professionals who work with disabled
children, including teachers, third sector
workers, health workers and social workers.
Children had been given a range of impair-
ment labels including autism, cerebral palsy,
developmental disability, Down’s syndrome,
achondroplasia, profound and multiple
learning disability and epilepsy. The
researcher (Katherine) acted as research
fellow to the project and was involved on a
day-to-day basis with the design and imple-
mentation of the empirical work (as well as
the analysis), accessing families via parent
support groups and other community
contacts. Our sampling also had an element
of snowballing, as potential families were
informed by word of mouth, emails and via
websites about our research. The ethnog-
raphy involved the researcher attending
children’s birthday parties, bowling and
going shopping with families and was also
invited to impairment-specific leisure activi-
ties, including an autism specific social club,
parent groups, and user consultation meet-
ings set up by local authorities, services and
professionals to access the views of families.
A few of the families involved in the inter-
views were also involved in the ethnography,
but the latter was extended to include
different children and their families.
We interviewed five children from the
4 to 11 and six from the 12 to 16 age
brackets. The children were interviewed at
least three times. In our work with children
we adopted the following principles: To treat
children as experts and agents in their own
lives; to use multi-methods in recognition of
the different ‘voices’ or languages of
children; and to seek to establish a climate of
listening (Morris, 2003). We were aware of
the need to adapt the research tools to suit
each child or young person (Goodley &
Runswick-Cole, 2011). With this in mind we
drew on a range of approaches, using
photography, mapping, drawing and film
53
Dan Goodley & Katherine Runswick-Cole
amongst other methods (see Clark & Moss,
2001; Goodley & Runswick-Cole, 2011;
Runswick-Cole, 2011b). In this paper we
focus on research encounters with 11-year-
old Rosie (a pseudonym).
The researcher met Rosie in her home
four times over the course of about eight
weeks. Consent was sought and gained from
Rosie’s parents, but we also sought Rosie’s
‘assent’ (Cocks, 2006), checking that she
understood what was asked of her and was
happy to participate, throughout the time
spent with her. The meetings were
conducted at a time and place that suited
Rosie; she was given clear choices about
whether or not she wished to take part each
time she met the researcher. Rosie was able
to end the meeting at the time of her
choosing. In the course of the four meetings,
data collected included voice recordings,
photographs and the researcher’s notes.
With Rosie’s ‘data’ spread out before us
we were left with some interesting questions
about how we made sense of its personal and
cultural significance. Our first task was to
write the story presented below. We acknowl-
edge that there is no such thing as a neutral
story and when we turn from data to text we
are already in the process of infecting the
narrative with our own subjectivities (see
Goodley et al., 2004). Perhaps more signifi-
cantly, as we reviewed the story we played
around with a number of readings, identi-
fied a number of possible practitioner,
activist and researcher audiences and asked
how Rosie would come out from our read-
ings of her ‘data’. We deliberately and self-
consciously read our readings of Rosie. We
wanted to consider what distinct epistemo-
logical narratives would tell about her. This
led us to four contrasting readings that we
develop below, but introduce here.
The first account attends to the teachings
of what we describe below as the autism canon;
the second is located in an orthodox social
model of disability interpretation; the third
seeks to utilise a Nordic relational model of
disability; and the fourth is filtered through a
contemporary socio-cultural lens of the
54
contemporary child in a digital age. We
acknowledge that our analyses might be seen
as contributing further to the bio-political
machinations around disabled children.
After all, our research identifies objects of
study (disabled children); it seeks to access
their self-perceptions as disabled child
subjects and we, in some way, are scaffolding
further interpretations around their lives.
However, our defence is that we are aiming
to explicate different understandings of
‘disability’ and ‘child’ that do get used by
practitioners, researchers and policy-makers
to make sense of children like Rosie and to
warn against the dominance of those read-
ings that threaten to pathologise, other and
separate Rosie from her peers, her family
and the wider community. The readings that
we develop are written in the style of case
notes, practitioner-like diagnoses and analy-
tical case studies that draw on our knowledge
of Rosie and her family. The analyses are
deliberately selective, less interested in the
truth of Rosie and more focused on telling
particular tales with specific characters, plot
and destinations in mind. We aim to provoke
and to unsettle. But before we do this, let us
view the ‘story’ on which we will base our
readings. The story we present below
attempts to give some background to Rosie
and her life. We do not present it here as if it
were some theory-free or analytically
untainted extract from the data. We accept
that the way we present Rosie reflects our
commitment to think imaginatively and
thoughtful about her experiences and ambi-
tions. With subjective ambitions in mind we
seek to introduce Rosie to the reader in a
way that gives some insight into her life,
contaminated as it is by our preoccupations
as researchers and writers of this article.
Rosie’s story
Rosie is 11-years-old. When the researcher
met her for the first time, Rosie had just left
her mainstream primary school to attend
secondary school, a special school for
children with ‘learning disabilities’. Rosie
lives in a small terraced house in a town in
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

the north-west of England with a mixed
population and high levels of social depriva-
tion. The streets next to Rosie’s have row
upon row of boarded-up houses, peppered
with graffiti.
Rosie lives with her mother and father
and she has an older brother who has
recently left home to study physics at univer-
sity. The researcher visited Rosie’s parents,
Don and Angela, at home before she met
Rosie. Don is a teacher and Angela works
part-time in an office job; she has recently
reduced her hours to be back in time for
Rosie when she comes home from school.
Rosie’s parents told us that Rosie was given a
diagnosis of autism and learning difficulties
when she was 3-years-old. Don and Angela
felt Rosie had been all right at her primary
school, but they felt that for secondary
school she needed more specialist provision.
The family is a member of a local support
group for families of children with autism.
Angela regularly attends the parents meet-
ings and is on the organising committee.
Don, Angela and Rosie attend organised
trips together, going to a variety of activities
including a children’s farm, the cinema and
bowling with other families with a child with
autism. Don, Angela and Rosie enjoy these
days out. Rosie talked enthusiastically about
her photographs of the farm trip and Don
and Angela talked about how much they
enjoyed going out with other families ‘like
theirs’, where other people ‘understood’ if
Rosie behaved a bit differently. Rosie does
not have many friends round to play at
home; she does not usually enjoy the busi-
ness of other children in the house.
Katherine always met Rosie in Rosie’s
front room. The front room had books
spilling out of the bookcases onto the floor.
Picture books of Greek myths sit alongside
vegetarian and ‘authentic’ Indian cookery
books between a long line of reference
books. There are neatly organised DVDs
behind the television, including The Tweenies,
The Goodies and Monty Python. A hamster
scuttles about in one corner of the room and
Rosie’s flute and music stand occupies
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Reading Rosie: The postmodern disabled child
another corner.
When Katherine and Rosie first met,
Rosie particularly wanted to show the
researcher her photographs of school, holi-
days, outings and birthday parties, so the
researcher took a couple of disposable
cameras (one for to use with Rosie, and one
for Rosie to take away and use later – or so we
thought) for Rosie. Rosie had never taken
photos before but she immediately took to
the disposable camera. Rosie had just
bought a new toy – Kitty, a small soft toy
bought with vouchers saved from a cereal
packet. The researcher showed Rosie how to
use the camera and asked her to take photos
of ‘things she liked’. Rosie immediately
asked her mum, then her dad, to pose for a
photo with Kitty. She then asked the
researcher to pose for a photo with Kitty and
instructed her dad to take a photo of herself
and Kitty. Rosie proceeded systematically to
place Kitty next to her favourite things and
took photos of: Kitty and the hamster, Kitty
and The Tweenies DVD, Kitty and the
Nutcracker ballet programme, Kitty and the
Sylvanians catalogue, Kitty and the Disney’s
Cinderella DVD, Kitty and the television, Kitty
and the ‘old kettle’, until the camera was
full. The researcher gave her the second
camera (the one for later!) and Rosie
continued to take photos until the camera
was ‘finished’, at which point Rosie turned
on the television and the photography
session was over. Two weeks later, Katherine
went back to visit Rosie to give her the
photos she had taken and was greeted with
more photos taken by Rosie of an outing
with the support group.
Reading Rosie
We now provide four readings. We acknowl-
edge that our interpretations are partial yet,
through offering a multiplicity of readings,
we seek to challenge grand, overarching,
totalising narratives that speak of certainty,
deficit and lack.
Our first reading mirrors this attention to
lack and is straight from the autism canon.
In this reading, one that we find problematic
55
Dan Goodley & Katherine Runswick-Cole
to say the least, autism is a biological deficit:
‘a devastating developmental disorder’
(Happe, 1999) resulting from a ‘neurolog-
ical abnormality’ (Frith, 2003, p.1), ‘due to a
physical dysfunction of the brain’ (National
Autistic Society, 1998, p.26). In this view
autism is not a new condition. Indeed, some
suggest that it has been around since Biblical
times (Mathew & Pandian, 2010), but autism
was not formally recorded until the 1940s by
two psychiatrists working independently of
one another – Kanner (1943) in the US and
Hans Asperger (1944) in Austria – the
fathers of autism (McGuire, 2011). In 1985,
Baron-Cohen et al. first posited the view that
autistic people do not have a ‘theory of
mind’, the view that they have ‘mind blind-
ness’ and are unable to read the thoughts of
others or even to recognise that the thoughts
of another person might be different from
their own. In 1991, Wing put forward the
view of autism as a ‘triad of impairments’
(Wing, 1991): Difficulty with social commu-
nication, social interaction and social imagi-
nation. A reading from the autism canon
suggests that ‘autistics’ are commonly
thought to share a number of characteristics
including: a love of routines; sensory sensi-
tivity difficulties; obsessive interests; a lack of
empathy; difficulty making friends; pedantic
speech; and poor non-verbal communica-
tion (Burgoine & Wing, 1983). Autism is
almost universally recognised as a medical
condition that is real and biologically based,
co-morbid with other conditions such as
dyspraxia and epilepsy, and diagnosis has
been considered to be hugely important and
‘liberating’ for sufferers and affected fami-
lies (Shakespeare, 2006, p.71).
The second reading looks through the
lens of the social model of disability. As such
it offers a direct challenge to the view of
Rosie constructed from within the autism
canon – a position that rests on medical and
individual constructions of disability. A social
model orthodoxy challenges traditional
approaches to disability that have been
framed by individual and medical models
(Oliver, 1990). Traditionally, both medical
56
sociology and the sociology of health and
illness literatures were premised on an
understanding of disability as an individual,
medical deficit. As a result, disabled people
have been characterised as deviant and in
lack and, therefore, in need of professional
support. The social model, on the other
hand, rejects individualised and medicalised
understandings of disability. Social oppres-
sion theories of disability recognise disability
not as an individual, medical problem, but as
the product of a disabling society that ‘is
geared to, built for and by, and controlled by
non-disabled people’ (Swain et al., 2003,
p.2). The social model has become central to
political activism and academic inquiry in
Britain (Thomas, 1999) and, as a result, it
has been described as the Disabled People’s
Movement’s ‘big idea’ (Hasler, 1993). In
1976, The Union of the Physically Impaired
Against Segregation (UPIAS) published the
Fundamental Principles of Disability. The
UPIAS definition makes a crucial distinction
between impairment and disability:
…we define impairment as lacking part of or
all or of a limb, organ or having a defective
limb, organ or mechanism of the body; and
disability as the disadvantage or restriction of
activity caused by a contemporary social
organisation which takes no or little account of
people who have physical impairments and
thus excludes them from the mainstream of
social activities. Physical disability is,
therefore, a particular form of oppression.
(UPIAS, 1976 cited in Oliver 1996, p.25)
Research framed by social oppression under-
standings of disability and childhood has
repeatedly shown that disabled children are
more likely to suffer structural and material
disadvantage than other children
(McLaughlin et al., 2008). Recently, the
campaign group, Every Disabled Child
Matters (EDCM, 2007), carried out a survey
of 1800 families with disabled children and
found that only six per cent reported them-
selves to be ‘comfortably off’, with 93 per
cent reporting themselves as being in ‘finan-
cial difficulty’. EDCM identified two specific
challenges in terms of poverty and disabled
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

children. The first was the considerable
extra and on-going costs of caring for a
disabled child, and the second was the diffi-
culty parents and carers had in entering and
sustaining employment, resulting in a signif-
icant income penalty for the family. In this
sense, then, we can argue that families who
boast a disabled child are disabled families,
privy to structural inequalities and marginal-
isation (McLaughin et al., 2008).
The third reading that we develop in our
reading of Rosie attends to a Nordic rela-
tional model of disability (see Goodley, 2011,
for overview). As Tøssebro, (2004, p.3)
explains, in Nordic countries disability has
been defined as ‘a mismatch between the
person’s capabilities and the functional demands
of the environment’ (emphasis in the original).
This suggests that there is a gap between
individual functioning and the demands of
the society or environment that, in turn,
produces ‘disability’. In this sense, disability
is ‘a relationship, and it is relative to the envi-
ronment’ (Tøssebro, 2004, p.3). Tøssebro
(ibid.) gives an example of the relational
nature of disability: ‘A blind person is not
disabled when speaking on the telephone
and is exceptionally able when the lights
have gone out’. By defining disability as the
result of a relationship between the person
and the environment, Nordic relational
models differ from social model accounts
(that firmly locate disability within the envi-
ronment) and functionalist accounts associ-
ated with the autism canon (that place the
problems of disability within the person).
Moreover, ‘normalisation’ principles are a
key element of the Nordic approach.
Normalisation principles suggest that,
through ‘empowerment’, it is possible to
make patterns of everyday living for disabled
people that are as close as possible to the
regular circumstances of life in the wider
society (Traustadóttir, 2004).
Our final reading attends to the photo-
graphs from the perspective of what we term
a socio-cultural stance. One analytical trope
picked up by this perspective is the signifi-
cance of digital culture in the lives of young
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Reading Rosie: The postmodern disabled child
people. Children are great lovers and users
of technology. Marsh (2005) suggests that
children are best described as ‘digikids’.
Technology and pedagogy have become
folded into one another through the
growing use of technology in schools at least
in Global North and rich countries. For
Merchant (2006), an important aspect of
digital technology lies in the ways in which it
is used to demonstrate the user’s relation-
ship to popular culture. Indeed, for many
children, they ‘are apprenticed to digital
writing through informal learning in out-of-
school contexts’ (Merchant, 2006, p.105).
This is an important point because much of
what we know about creativity and learning
for ‘digikids’ and disabled kids alike is gath-
ered in school contexts. Rosie, in contrast,
presents us with insights into a key area of
her out-of-school life: The relatively private
family household. One only needs to speak
to parents of young people to evidence the
centrality of digital technologies in the lives
of young people (perhaps at times in
contrast to parents’ own difficult relation-
ships with technology!) From this perspec-
tive we approach a reading of Rosie that may,
at times, lose the signifiers of disability. We
now ‘read’ Rosie with these distinct perspec-
tives in mind in an attempt to excavate the
ways in which particular epistemological
persuasions will give rise to very different
narratives of Rosie.
(i) Rosie has autism – a reading from the
autism canon. Despite autism affecting three
times as many boys as girls (NAS, n.d.), Rosie
has a diagnosis of autism. Her condition was
identified when she was three as a result of
her parents’ concern about her significant
language delay and lack of social skills.
Ripples of the condition are often found in
families with children with autism, with non-
autistic relatives often displaying autistic
traits (Piven et al., 1997). It is not, therefore,
surprising that Rosie’s older brother is
studying natural science at university. The
data demonstrate that Rosie suffers from
many of the characteristics typical of an
57
Dan Goodley & Katherine Runswick-Cole
autistic child. Rosie is object-focused rather
than people-focused. Rosie took a photo of
her mother, father and the researcher, but
the primary focus of these pictures was her
new toy, Kitty, that is her latest obsession.
This object focus is typical for autistic
children. As she took the photos, Rosie also
demonstrated an obsessive preoccupation
with patterning as she organised the shots in
a systematic way, demonstrating her
tendency to perfectionism (Attwood, 2007).
Encouragingly for her future develop-
ment, Rosie has more than one special
interest. As well as obsessing about Kitty, her
new toy, she also shows an obsessive interest
in Monty Python DVDs and Greek myths.
Rosie has an impressive knowledge of vocab-
ulary on the topic of Greek myths, however,
this seemingly developed area of compe-
tence is a product of her fascination with
mythology and should not distract from an
understanding of the devastating impact of
autism and learning difficulty on her life.
However, it is useful to continue to channel
Rosie’s obsessive interests positively in terms
of her education with the aim of widening
her vocabulary. Rosie is educated in a special
school, as she would clearly be unable to
function in a normal mainstream school.
Unusually, Rosie’s father noted, unlike many
autistic children Rosie does not enjoy
Thomas the Tank Engine DVDs.
Typically for an autistic child, Rosie has
an impressive memory (Attwood, 2007).
Rosie was able to recite the plot lines of her
favourite DVDs in great detail. However, she
struggles with team situations (ibid.) and is
very self-directed, following her own agenda.
Once she had tired of the activity of taking
photographs, it was not possible to re-engage
her attention. Rosie communicates in a typi-
cally autistic monotone that varied little
throughout the research encounter. As the
research encounters took place in her own
home, Rosie was familiar with the sensory
stimuli around her, although she did
struggle when the sun moved round onto
her face.
58
Rosie’s photographs offer a fascinating
insight into the autistic mind and allow us to
enter her world, albeit briefly.
(ii) Rosie is disabled – a reading from social
model orthodoxy. Rosie lives in an area of
social deprivation in a town in the north-west
of England. Rosie’s father works, but, typi-
cally for mothers of disabled children,
Rosie’s mother has been forced to reduce
her part-time work because of difficulties in
finding appropriate and affordable child-
care for Rosie (EDCM, 2007). All of the
research encounters took place in the home.
This is not surprising. For many families
living with disabled children, simply leaving
the house requires the family to overcome a
significant number of barriers. First, there
are often access issues in terms of negoti-
ating doorsteps, accessing public transport
and finding physically accessible locations to
visit. However, for Rosie’s family it is attitu-
dinal barriers that mean that they are
confronted by ‘tuts’ and stares as Rosie
behaves ‘differently’ outside the home
(Ryan, 2005).
Disabling attitudes mean that Rosie is
marginalised in her local community and
subject to the processes of exclusion. Rosie
attends special school, revealing the failure
of schools to implement the principles of
inclusive education (CSIE, n.d.). Rosie’s
attendance at special school also reflects an
inability on the part of her parents to see
that their children could be included in
mainstream education (BCODP, 2005).
While parents can and do act as allies to their
disabled children, they are also the ‘agents
of disablism’ (Thomas, 1999) and this is also
evidenced by Rosie’s parents’ removing her
from mainstream leisure activities and,
instead, accessing segregated leisure activi-
ties for children with her particular impair-
ment.
Rosie’s story demonstrates the continued
presence of the persistent material, struc-
tural and attitudinal barriers to the inclusion
of disabled people and the continued
pressing need for barrier removal.
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

(iii) Rosie has a world around her – a Nordic
relational model reading. Rosie is autistic.
Rosie’s story reveals a happy, playful child
interacting with her parents and the
researcher in her own home. Rosie’s parents
and the researcher are attentive to Rosie,
allowing her to take charge of the camera
and set her own agenda in choosing what is
to be photographed and how. Rosie is
comfortable in her home environment,
supported by her parents. However, when
other children visit the home, the environ-
ment because busy and confusing – there is a
person/environment mismatch that causes
Rosie difficulty. Rosie would prefer to be in a
less busy environment with people in it who
support her. Rosie loves going to the theatre
and watching her favourite shows and char-
acters. This is an environment in which
Rosie thrives.
Rosie enjoys school. She is encouraged to
enjoy her passion for Greek myths and to
enjoy the activities there, including learning
to play the flute. Rosie and her parents feel
the school environment meets her needs.
Caring and enabling professional experts
support Rosie’s inclusion in the special
school environment.
In terms of normalisation, the family is
able to access many of the regular activities
of the wider society, going to the theatre or
the park, but Rosie needs support in these
environments in order to ensure that they
are accessible for her. ‘Tuts’ and stares
suggest that Rosie’s behaviour, status and
appearance are not culturally ‘normative’
(Wolfensberger, 1980) as she stands out in
the crowd. Furthermore, unlike many other
mothers in the UK, Rosie’s mother is unable
to work full-time because of the lack of acces-
sible and affordable childcare. The family is
financially worse off than families without
disabled children living with them with two
parents working full-time. It could be argued
that the family has yet to be empowered
(with professional support) to lead a
‘normal’ life.
1 www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqhlQfXUk7w
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Reading Rosie: The postmodern disabled child
(iv) Rosie has a camera – a socio-cultural
reading. Children are great lovers and users
of technology. Marsh (2005) suggests that
children are best described as ‘digikids’.
Technology and pedagogy have become
folded into one another through the
growing use of technology in schools, at least
in Global North and rich countries. An
important aspect of digital technology lies in
the ways in which it is used to demonstrate
the user’s relationship to popular culture.
Indeed, for many children, they ‘are appren-
ticed to digital writing through informal
learning in out-of-school contexts’
(Merchant, 2006, p.105). This is an impor-
tant point, because much of what we know
about creativity and learning for ‘digikids’
and disabled kids alike is gathered in school
contexts. Rosie, in contrast, presents us with
insights into a key area of her out-of-school
life: The relatively private family household.
The images provide a snapshot into the
rich tapestry of family life. From a Bourdieu-
sian (McKeever & Miller, 2004) analysis we
can make some interpretations about the
social and cultural capital of her family. The
Tweenies, Monty Python and The Goodies
provide a smattering of cultural artifacts
littering the background and composition of
the narratives. There is young and old here –
interests perhaps fashioned by a father
sharing his comedic choices with his
offspring, contrasting with Rosie’s own
choice of film and theatre. The story suggests
echoes of laughter by a father and daughter
at the ‘Minister of Silly Walks’ sketch, with
John Cleese in his prime1. There are vege-
tarian cookbooks prominent, one dedicated
to Indian cuisine, and whole shelves of refer-
ence books for the family to peruse.
The story capture Rosie’s own passions for
Greek myths and, hence, we can detect an
educational background to her life that goes
beyond the usual discussions of special educa-
tional need associated with disabled children.
The out-of-school nature of interests and
learning are alluded to through the images.
59
Dan Goodley & Katherine Runswick-Cole
Discussion: Reading our readings
We remain as unsettled by the readings now
as we were when we wrote them. Reading
Rosie, she is an object of fascination. In
reading her from the autism canon, the
narrative of the autistic child becomes a
totalising narrative that swallows up every
part of Rosie’s story. Rosie and her family are
read as autistic, with the ripples of autism
being detected in her brother’s love of the
natural sciences. Her enthusiasm for taking
photographs, and planning a series of
pictures is read simultaneously as evidence
of her condition; a product of impairment;
and of her obsessive behaviour. In this
reading, there is no space for pleasure or joy,
only a reading that confirms that Rosie has
‘a life-long developmental disorder’. Rosie’s
passions morph into obsessions and her
talents are ‘disordered’ as her abilities are
characterised as typical autistic traits. Alter-
native readings are closed off. The narrative
is so powerful that Rosie’s human value
dissolves into the autistic quagmire as she
becomes an example of the ‘autistic mind’
that allows ‘us’ to learn from ‘them’ what it is
to be human.
In reading Rosie from the social model, a
materialist account dominates. Rosie and
her family are the victims of structural and
attitudinal oppression. Staying at home is
not a choice but a product of disablement.
Her parents’ choice of school and leisure is
the consequence of their disabling attitudes
and those of the wider society. But Rosie likes
her new special school, and she enjoys going
out with her parents and other members of
the group for families with children with
autism. Rosie likes to be at home with her
mum and her dad. A social model account
struggles to accommodate Rosie and her
parents’ choices without casting them as the
product of inherently disabling assumptions
about the nature of impairment and disable-
ment. In this reading, Rosie’s choices and
those of her parents must be the result of
false consciousness and of their having inter-
nalised the oppression.
60
A Nordic relational account confirms
Rosie’s status as ‘autistic’. This is not in ques-
tion, rather the focus is on how her autism
and the environment interact. Rosie is, vari-
ously, ‘disabled’ and ‘non-disabled’,
depending on the extent to which Rosie’s
‘autism’ and the environment match one
another. At home, Rosie is non-disabled as
she is supported by her parents. Disability is
normalised by the family: This is simply how
Rosie and her family do family (Traus-
tadóttir, 1995). Outside the home, she is
sometimes disabled, when the gap between
impairment and environment becomes too
great. Furthermore, the family has yet to
achieve ‘normalisation’ as Rosie’s mother is
unable to work full-time and Rosie’s behav-
iour, status and appearance attract ‘tuts’ and
stares in the street.
Reading Rosie through a socio-cultural
lens, she is not defined by the autism canon,
nor by social model orthodoxy or the princi-
ples of normalisation. Instead, we are asked
to consider her engagements with tech-
nology: As an active ‘digikid’. We are pushed,
too, to consider the wider social and cultural
capital to which she has access, and that
provides her with hobbies, interests and
passions. We get a whiff of the food that
might be cooked in the house, get a sense of
the sharing of cultural markers from father
to daughter, and an idea of the kinds of activ-
ities that this family likes engaging in. Autism
disappears. So, too, does disability. In their
place is a depiction of the particularities of a
household.
Reading Rosie, it is clear that she is an
object of concern. From an autistic reading,
there is hope that she can ‘grow and
develop’ as her obsessions offer potential for
academic learning and the promise of quan-
tifiable achievements. However, from a social
model reading, progress towards empower-
ment seems limited as Rosie is an isolated
social actor, situated in a world of segregated
education and leisure without the prospect
of change. The lack of achievement of
‘normalisation’ – marked by the ‘tuts’ and
stares of others in the community – positions
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

Rosie’s family as in some way lacking and of
the need for them to be ‘empowered’
(possibly with the help of professional inter-
vention). Yet, reading Rosie through a socio-
cultural lens, Rosie is a distributed self –
intimately connected with and supported by
and to her family, and not an object of
‘concern’ at all.
Reading Rosie: She is an object of bio-
power – a body that should be measured,
administrated, assessed, governed, educated
and at times eradicated by bio-power
(Tremain, 2005). The autistic reading of
Rosie draws heavily on the promises of bio-
power – of assessment, education and reha-
bilitation, if not cure. She is clearly identified
as a target of intervention (Ball, 1990). As
she ‘fails’ to progress typically, the family is
subjected to a process of ‘dividing practices’
(Foucault, 1983), in which the ‘normal’
family is distinguished from the ‘deviant’
(and feckless). Porter (1997) writes:
Viewed in itself… a disabled body seems
somehow too much a body, too real, too
corporeal, it is a body that, so to speak, stands
in its own way. From another angle which is
no less reductive, a disabled body appears to
lack something essential, something that would
make it identifiable and something to identify
with; it seems too little a body: a body that is
deficiently itself, not quite a body in the full
sense of the word, not real enough. (p.xiii;
cited by McGuire 2011, p.145).
As McGuire (2011) argues, in her elegant
analysis of the cultural constitution and
discursive construction of autism, ‘While all
bodily signs must be watched for potential
pathology (a medical imperative), so-called
‘signs’ or ‘red flags’ of autism must be
‘watched out’ for (a moral imperative)’
(p.144). Hence, a reading through the lens
of the autism canon blurs moral and medical
imperatives. ‘Normal’ families can escape
intervention, while ‘deviant’ families cannot.
On the other hand, a social model
analysis insists that the environment must be
changed to remove the barriers to Rosie’s
full participation. At the same time, a Nordic
relational account suggests that both Rosie
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Reading Rosie: The postmodern disabled child
and the environment must change (albeit in
Rosie’s case through ‘empowerment’) in
order to close the gap between the person
and the environment. Through a socio-
cultural lens we witness the makings of
subjectivity, but these appear to be less tied
to the bio-political machinations often asso-
ciated with disability. A socio-cultural analysis
encourages us to read the richness of Rosie’s
family life: Rosie is simply situated in the
social and cultural meaning makings of
family life, laughing at Monty Python.
Conclusion: Towards a multiplicity of
readings
We see Rosie as a postmodern child, a child
of which many stories can be told. Our
account has only considered four. While our
own politics of analysis are most readily asso-
ciated with the last three readings, we do
share misgivings. We struggle with the
pathologising tendencies of the autism
canon; feel unnerved by the structurally
deterministic possibilities offered by the
social model reading; wonder about the diffi-
culties associated with normalisation so
adored by the Nordic relational model; and
feel confused by the ‘disability-lite’ nature of
the socio-cultural narrative.
By failing to engage with the autistic
canon, the socio-cultural reading sidelines
the power of the bio-medical discourse. This
can only be a good thing. And yet, although
the socio-cultural reading has the potential
to release the family from a totalising autistic
narrative, at the same time it denies the
family the potential affirmation of their
biological citizenship (Hughes, 2009) and
celebration of their neurodiverse identity
(ASAN, n.d.). Similarly, by challenging a
materialist account the socio-cultural
account positions the family’s experience
outside a potentially empowering disability
rights discourse.
In promoting a multiplicity of readings,
we seek to accept uncertainty and to
promote potential. By accepting uncertainty
we seek to challenge the tendency of certain
grand narratives to masquerade as truths as
61
Dan Goodley & Katherine Runswick-Cole
they weave themselves in and out of
children’s bodies and minds with potentially
dangerous effects. Indeed, some psycholog-
ical knowledges threaten to essentialise and
pathologise difference within children and
leave untouched wider questions of cultures
and societies that fail to tolerate difference.
By promoting potential, we wonder to what
extent viewing ‘academic theorising’,
‘professional opinion’, ‘expert discourse’
and ‘psychological truth’ as nothing more
than the telling of stories – some more plau-
sible than others, some useful in one context
and not others, some in need of rewriting –
might encourage more reflexive analyses on
the part of researchers and practitioners
working with children and young people.
Such reflexivity might destabilise profes-
sional and analytical certainty, bringing with
it a more politicised perspective in relation
to childhood and society. In reading our
readings, we are attentive to the dominance
of totalising narratives that close down fluid
and alternate readings of disabled children’s
lives. When we acknowledge that discourses
of childhood are always being reproduced in
institutions, by certain institutional actors,
serving particular disciplinary and profes-
sional interests, this leads us to the question
and the ethics and politics of such readings.
In a cultural time when we are witnessing an
epidemic of signification around childhood
difference and diversity, then it is a political
and moral imperative for us to ask whose
interests are being served by these growing
discourses.
Our concern is that the quirky quality,
creative and personhoods of disabled
children are merely understood as signs,
symptoms and signifiers of pathology. This is
a tragic scenario against which we must
continuously refute and battle. We end the
paper by asking you, the reader, about your
relationship with knowledge, children and
disability: How do you read disability and
children? When do your readings of
62
disability and children stifle or enable? At
what moments do we use and refuse our
varied readings? When we constantly ask and
re-ask these questions, perhaps then we can
become as postmodern as Rosie. Our read-
ings of Rosie reveal the complexity of child-
hood (and disability, for that matter), but
also remind us that some readings are sticky,
some indicate possibility, while others limit.
We feel it important to acknowledge that, for
example, the autistic canon and the rela-
tional model readings are popular cultural
stories through which children are charac-
terised. While we may acknowledge the
usefulness of these narratives – at times these
stories provide plausible accounts that Rosie
and her family might draw upon – the social
model and cultural readings alert us to the
politicisation and creative of Rosie’s position
as a disabled child. Indeed, these readings
are often missing from the rich storytelling
to be found in the social arenas of ‘disability’
and ‘childhood’. Our plea, then, is to
consider the ways in which the politics of
disability and childhood are always being
constructed and contested in a host of
familial, professional, academic and cultural
contexts, and to find and address those
moments when we feel unnerved and
confused, in wonder or emboldened by
stories of disability and childhood.
Address for correspondence
Dr Katherine Runswick-Cole
Research Fellow in Disability Studies &
Psychology,
Critical Disability Studies,
Research Institute for Health and Social
Change,
Department of Psychology,
Gaskell Campus,
Hathersage Road,
Manchester M13 OJA.
Email: K.Runswick-Cole@mmu.ac.uk
Website: http://cdsmmu.posterous.com/
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

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Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
How can the use of petit narratives create
space and possibility when shorthand is
used in educational psychology practice?
Daniela Mercieca & Duncan P. Mercieca

In the fast-paced society in which we live, we find ourselves using convenient ‘shorthand’ to help our work
become conveniently more practical. Whether giving a lecture, conducting an assessment or writing up any
of the above processes we resort to shorthand for the sake of efficiency, and sometimes in the belief that it
makes us more professional. In so doing, we risk forgetting the contradictions in the language and practices
that we use as this is suppressed in the shorthand. This paper shows how narrative helps practitioners and
researchers to create spaces in their work where children escape the compartmentalisation. Through
narrative, possibilities are created in the closed spaces that constitute shorthand practices. Using vignettes
of lecturing and assessment, this paper gives examples of how narrative allows for practice that is more
respectful of children. We will be using Lyotard’s writing on grand and small (petit) narratives on
performativity, and Derrida’s idea of aporia.
Keywords: shorthand; aporia; grand and petit narratives; Derrida; educational psychology.

T
HIS PAPER aims to highlight some
spaces in psychologists’ work with
children where we resort to using short-
hand for practicality as a result of pressure of
time, and also to show how narrative helps
psychologists to be with children, notwith-
standing the fixed terms of the shorthand.
This latter term is used to refer to the use of
words, phrases and practices without
acknowledgment of or allowing space for the
knowledge, meaning, implications, indeed
the genealogy of such words and practices.
In today’s fast-paced society, there seems to
be no time or space for the rich history, and
width and depth of discussion behind such
words and underlying the practices where
they are employed. Tom Billington (2006)
writes that words strive for categorical
closure in that ‘in our professional lives, we
often enter into a pretence that all can be
contained in the words, for example, in a
diagnosis, definition or explanation’ (p.78).
We thus find ourselves using convenient
shorthand to help our work become more
practical and efficient.
This paper points out some of the prac-
tices in educational psychology that use
shorthand (on a conceptual level, not just in
terms of language) as a result of frequency,
practicality and convenience, where short-
hand is a system of rapid reporting by means
of signs or symbols. Whether giving a lecture,
assessing a child, conducting research or
writing up any of the above processes, we
resort to shorthand for the sake of efficiency,
sometimes in the belief that it makes us
more professional. We appear to need short-
hand as a common language: it seems stan-
dardised and those who use it feel as though
they are part of a club where everyone
understands each other.
The time element is a factor, as in every
situation involving the urgency to ‘fix’ diffi-
cult situations involving a child. Class
teachers, heads of school, everybody in the
business of education is constantly aware of
the time element, seen as elusive and as ‘not
on our side’. In using such shorthand,
however, we risk forgetting the contradic-
tions in the origins and contexts of the
language and terminology that we employ.
We also put aside the context of children,
who come before our professional scrutiny.
Rather than taking time over such contradic-

Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2 65

© The British Psychological Society, 2012
Daniela Mercieca & Duncan P. Mercieca
tions, children are suppressed in the symbols
that represent them. They are represented
in ways that fit the shorthand and a false
impression is created that we work in a clean
and tidy system where everything and every-
body has a proper name and place. Children
who do not fit the categories and labels that
constitute this shorthand are viewed as
contradictions and may thus be pathologised
even further.
Through the use of two vignettes we
argue that not only is shorthand literally a
shortened version of a history of complexity,
but this shorthand also produces reality and
is reality in itself. Referring to Lyotard, we
argue that this reality becomes meta-narra-
tive through the discourse that is created –
it takes a life of its own, also because of
outside investment in it. Lyotard then helps
us to remember the petit narrative, that is,
what allows us to experience children
notwithstanding these seemingly over-
whelming grand structures. The small narra-
tives live within the grand narrative – they
find their space. We also go to Derrida’s
writing about aporia, as it allows us to see
ourselves as working with contradiction, with
uncertainty and with not knowing.
Lecturing – Vignette 1
An educational psychologist is invited to
lecture a unit on developmental psychology
in childhood. The task seems rather
daunting – how can the lecturer convey to
students, themselves still in late adolescence,
all that contributes to the development of a
child? Furthermore, how to do so in a way
that would enable soon-to-be teachers, youth
workers, psychiatrists and psychologists to
cultivate an understanding of children and
to nurture a respect for the complexity of
each individual child? The lecturer consults
obligingly titled variations of ‘Developmental
Psychology: Childhood and Adolescence’ and
realises that the job is made easier because
the child is laid out in chapters, the first few
dealing with physical development followed
by chapters on sensation and perception.
Language development follows, with a
66
couple of chapters focusing on the develop-
ment of cognition. Invariably, social develop-
ment, growth of self-concept and self-esteem
ensue, with a few chapters dedicated to the
contexts that children generally inhabit,
namely family life, schooling, peers and
friendships and media.
The lecturer’s work seems cut out. It is
only needed to decide which lectures to
dedicate to which aspect of development,
and most of the planning will have been
done. The rest is just putting the points into
a presentable Powerpoint so that visual aids
can support the talk and discussion.
One day before the first lecture, however,
when all is ready and prepared for the
students, the lecturer has qualms. Do the
planned lectures and presentations convey
her sense of children? How are the prepared
lectures, as an educational psychologist, any
different from those of any other person
who would have studied the text well and
could convey it to the students? What can the
lecturer, as educational psychologist, offer to
students that would be different? Are
children really as cleanly divided and cate-
gorised as her lectures seem to convey? How
real are the children conveyed in the
lectures? Will the students recognise
children they know from them? More impor-
tantly, will students remember these lectures
and find them helpful when they are faced
with children professionally?
Assessing – Vignette 2
An educational psychologist has assessed a
young person and written a report drawing
up the results of the assessment and recom-
mendations in terms of concessions made
for examinations. A board made up of
‘experts’ is set up so that a decision may be
reached as to whether the request for
concessions is to be granted. Members of the
board are divided in their opinions, so those
who are accustomed to working with the
numbers listed in the report skim through
them and focus on the interpretation and
professional judgement written beneath the
table of statistical information. Others, who
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

do not normally work with such numerical
data, prefer to consider the information
provided by the figures alone. They ignore
the text that the educational psychologist
had felt necessary to include in the report
explaining the reasons for these recommen-
dations and allowing for contradictions in
the explanation. The figures exceed the
range listed in the examination regulations
allowing for concessions and the results of
the assessment surpass the stipulated cut-off
point, but the psychologist’s report lists the
reasons why the student nonetheless merits
concessions so the disadvantages incurred by
his difficulties can be reduced and the acces-
sibility of the examination paper can be
maximised.
The representative nature of the statistics
and the arbitrariness of the numbers
(notwithstanding the standardisation of
scores) is seen as objective by some.
However, those who regularly carry out
assessments are aware of the dilemmas in
which they sometimes find themselves when
carrying out an assessment. Considering that
these small situations occur regularly in
psychometric assessments, how can figures
be taken in isolation? This is the argument of
the practising psychologist, but this is coun-
tered by the other members of the board
whose clinching argument is that a prece-
dent would be created if allowances are
made for this individual case.
Shorthand producing reality
Both vignettes give everyday instances of
decisions taken according to some logic that
silently overcomes the original aims of the
person acting. Both the lecturer in develop-
mental psychology and the educational
psychologist were earnest in their aims to
convey a sense of the child to their listeners
or readers. This is not to say that there is a
wholeness missing from the aforementioned
compartmentalisation , but that there is the
danger of ironing out the complexity of the
concept of child and children’s situations.
However, constraints caused by what seemed
to be more professional or more efficient,
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Petit narratives in educational psychology practice
indeed, more scientific, make the original,
dare we say, noble motivation turn to ‘what
works now’. Thus, representations are used
without reference to the historical, cultural
and political processes that produce them.
Dividing the lectures mentioned in the first
vignette into clean, separate aspects of devel-
opment seems to be the most practical way of
presenting the unit to students. The need to
fit it all in supersedes all, so the complexity
of individual children and their environ-
ment is sometimes left aside ‘for later’,
a time that never comes. The shorthand
gives us a closed picture of the child – the
‘otherness’ is left out.
Our argument is that, in using this short-
hand, we are in turn being produced by it.
Jean-François Lyotard’s work, particularly
The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowl-
edge (1984), helps us question the nature of
the knowledge that the shorthand produces
in relation to his writing on narratives. The
age of modernity is characterised by its
search for what can be validated and legit-
imised: Lyotard argues that we have resorted
to grand or meta-narratives to legitimise
science, as scientific knowledge is more
valued and privileged than narrative knowl-
edge that is seen as primitive – not sophisti-
cated and only fit for women and chidren.
There is the necessity of imparting scientific
knowledge to others – therefore, education
becomes central. This also implies a total-
ising knowledge at the expense of silencing
otherness and difference.
The modern event is thus seen by
Lyotard as concerned with establishing a
grand narrative that ‘claims to be the story
that can reveal the meaning of all stories, be
it the weakness or the progress of mankind’
(Readings, 1991, p.63). It is ‘a global or total-
ising cultural narrative schema which orders
and explains knowledge and experience’
(Stephens & McCallum, 1998, p.17). Its legit-
imisation comes from establishing itself
through the power others (such as the state,
universities, etc.) invest in it, revealing the
singular truth that is inherent. Grand narra-
tives are a ‘conceptual instrument of repre-
67
Daniela Mercieca & Duncan P. Mercieca
sentation’ (ibid.) in the sense that every-
thing is read, interpreted and understood in
relation to the production and transmission
of meaning created by the grandnarrative.
They do not allow for any other possible
interpretation or understanding of knowl-
edge besides the dominant one.
Following Lyotard’s idea of grand
narrives, we would like to argue that short-
hand in psychology is in itself a grand narra-
tive. Institutes, centres, universities, journals,
training courses, support services and state
institutions are created with titles that
present themselves as specialised and that
promise expert professional support. Invest-
ment and funding is relatively easily allo-
cated to such initiatives, as they promise a
feeling of safety and security for children
and their needs, for the educational environ-
ments and the people working in them. In
return, the shorthand terminology is created
and implemented, and thus validated. An
example that comes to mind is a recent
debate that one of the authors had with a
person working within a service provider for
children with autism. The psychologist was
told that some of the behaviour of the child
in question fell within the spectrum, but
since the child was coping with minor
support, the mother expressed that she did
not want to stick on a firm label. The
meeting was held to make a plan to convince
the mother to tell the child that she had
autism. The ensuing debate with the
consulting psychologist at the meeting
concerned the tenuousness of this label, with
the autism service provider insisting that if
the child is not formally diagnosed with
autism, he could not get involved. The
psychologist pointed out the dangers of such
a position, wondering whether it was ethical
practice to push a case that did not fit
towards autism for the sake of being eligible
for support. It seemed to be a fallacy of the
vicious circle (petitio principii). Happily, the
service provider left the meeting ruminating
and later sent an email thanking the other
participants for a debate that had been
something of an eye-opener. This is an
68
example of the validation of the shorthand –
bureaucratic and administrative require-
ments encourage its use and the system
becomes self-perpetuating, so that there is
an economy of exchange where shorthand
users and shorthand itself are caught in a
cycle of validation and corroboration. In
fact, Lyotard writes how the State invests ‘to
enable science to pass itself off as an epic:
the State’s own credibility is based on that
epic, which it uses to obtain the public
consent its decision makers need’ (Lyotard,
1984, p.27–28).
Law’s (2004) writing on methodology
can be applied in this context as he reminds
us that the statements we use are not just
‘about reality’ but also produce the realities
themselves.
It is not just a philosophy of method, a
methodology. It is not even simply about the
kinds of realities that we want to recognise or
the kinds of worlds we might hope to make. It
is also, and most fundamentally about a way
of being. It is about what kinds of social
sciences we want to practice. And then, and as
a part of this, it is about the kinds of people
that we want to be, and about how we should
live. (Addleson, 1994; Law, 2004, p.10)
Thus, in the first vignette the immense task
of conveying a topic is broken down into bits
that, in reality, are only representative of the
numerous controversies, contradictions,
debates and inconsistencies that make up
such a topic. The claims of time, conven-
ience and practicality are given precedence
over these. The child is divided into these
classifications and categories and the
lecturer teaches it as though it is clean,
simple and systematic. The building blocks
that constitute the theories showing linear
stages of development further contribute to
such impressions. The lecturer in the
vignette succumbs to this compartmentalisa-
tion because it helps her teach and also
helps the students study. She uses it to make
sense of the human person, as it would
otherwise be too complex and she would not
know where to start. Through working with
segments, it is believed that identification of
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

what is going wrong and what needs to be
fixed is easier.
The shorthand becomes a reality in itself
and thus takes on a life of its own, so that it
is no longer seen as a product of discussion
and debate but as what causes, and also
settles, such discussion and debate
(Mercieca, 2011). The students in our
lecture theatre are given the impression that
the points are factual and laid on the most
solid of foundations. The ifs and buts and
the niceties that surround any so-called facts
about people are missed out and the
presented content is seen as the starting
point of debate, rather than one of the
emerging points within such debate. Such
lectures convey the impression to students
that children can be divided into component
parts and that a clean start and finish can be
worked with. This is strengthened by the
kind of assignments given to students at the
end of the course and by the setting of
summative assessments. The suggestion that
different aspects of children may be fitted
into compartments is reinforced.
The importance of timing is stressed in
Latour and Woolgar (1986, cited in Law,
2004). As an example, the psychiatric
manuals that provide the criteria on which
diagnoses are based, although appearing:
more scientific, …were bedevilled by circular
arguments (for example, with categories being
asserted and evidence being found post hoc to
back them up). Moreover, diagnosis serves a
wide variety of interests – research, legal and
administrative – and are supposed to reflect a
consensual view, thus some decisions are voted
on. (Parker et al., 1995, p.38)
We forget that we, too, are political. This is
what is happening in the second vignette
where, ultimately, the argument that wins
the day is a political one; a performative one.
The threat of creating precedents seems to
clinch the argument, as the ensuing ques-
tion would be ‘Where would it all end?’
(quoting the television series ‘You Rang
M’Lord’).
Using shorthand implies engaging in
what Paul Standish (2005) termed a form of
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Petit narratives in educational psychology practice
‘closed economy’ that gives us a particular
understanding of children. Standish writes
that there ‘is something curiously self-rein-
forcing, self-perpetuating and, for some,
seductive about this entire way of thinking’
(p.57). It is possible that we become lulled
into a sweet sense of security. When writing
about scientific practices, Law (2004) argues
that statements are turned into taken-for-
granted assumptions and become part of the
routine, thus constituting reality. When we
do not acknowledge what the shorthand
represents – how the political process
resulted in such terminology and practice –
the traces of how the shorthand came about
are kept hidden and subsequently forgotten.
The processes in which the shorthand is
produced are also deleted, so that the reality
that supports the shorthand is standardised.
In the second vignette, practitioners are
obliged to resort to standardised assessment
procedures to evaluate students’ level of
ability and achievement of skills required to
sit for examinations. Such assessment is
made compulsory through the regulations of
the examining board. This means that
report after report is sifted through in an
attempt to decide to whom to allocate
concessions in the examinations and what
form these concessions are to take. The fact
that psychometric assessments are just one
way of estimating a student’s ability and skill
is forgotten – as, indeed, are also the never-
ending debates surrounding such product-
oriented assessments.
The shorthand on which this second
vignette sheds light not only refers to the
passing over of theoretical controversies and
objections underlying the very existence of
psychometric tests, but that it should be
representative of the abilities and achieve-
ments of the individual students undergoing
assessment. Books have been written about
the development of the idea of intelligence
yet, even so, in a recent conference the
conclusion to a debate on the nature of intel-
ligence was that ‘intelligence is what intelli-
gence tests measure’. However, in most
reports outlining the results of assessments,
69
Daniela Mercieca & Duncan P. Mercieca
intelligence is simply represented by a
number. At best, the final intelligence score
is shown as made up not of a myriad of
concepts and theories that sometimes also
contradict each other, but of two or three
other numbers, namely verbal ability, non-
verbal reasoning ability and spatial ability.
In turn, these too are representations. Since
such awareness of politics and subjectivity
would undermine the importance of the
shorthand, this awareness is put aside:
This deletion of subjectivity is crucial. In
natural and social science research statements
about objects in the world are supposed to issue
from the world itself, examined in the proper
way by means of proper methods, and not from
the person who happens to be conducting the
experiment. If this is not achieved, then
independence and anteriority are not achieved
either. If the scientist appears in her text, if she
appears as a person, then this undermines any
statement about reality. (Law, 2004, p.36)
Reality is attributed more to the shorthand
and less to the subject that it represents.
‘Consequently an inversion takes place: the
object becomes the reason why the state-
ment was made in the first place’ (Latour &
Woolgar, 1986, p.177, cited in Law, 2004,
p.37). The result is a creation of a world that
is assumed to be independent of and prior to
our sense of children. In the second vignette
the numbers have an inherent meaning, are
objective, above board and uncontaminated
by the subjective judgements that profes-
sionals may form following further interac-
tion with a child. The child’s ‘mental age’ is
asked for and taken as fact, oblivious of the
issues involved in such representations,
issues that cause discomfort for practitioners
employing assessment tools that provide, as a
result, a measurement of a child’s mental
age. Law’s (2004) argument indicates how
the traces that produce reality are covered
up – it is as though the symbols that consti-
tute our shorthand have always existed, and
will always continue to exist (Foucault’s
genealogy). We tend to forget that the
reason for which the holistic person is cate-
gorised and compartmentalised into bits is
70
for the sake of convenience, practicality and
simplicity. These bits of courses take a life of
their own, and become objects that we
attempt to manage, forgetting that, through
their very existence, it is they who are
managing our thoughts.
The lifelessness that is shed on the
children through our use of shorthand also
overshadows us. We start to lose a sense of
what it was in the first place that spurred us
to follow such a line of work. As Clark (1953)
writes:
And it is we, the specialists in the commodity,
who have so refined our studies that we are
starting to lose interest in ourselves.
Furthermore we are more and more speaking a
language that no one but ourselves can
understand, and so we are losing out on our
influence and contact with disciplines outside
of the social sciences as well as losing touch
with our culture. The latter is a tragic thing.
…Back in the 17th century certain satirists
declared what they called a War on Dullness.
Psychologists had better begin a similar war,
for if dullness is not killed first we are going to
have several dead journals on our hands, not
to speak of a sterile science. (p.748)
On an interesting note, when delving into
old issues of psychologist journals we came
across articles that put forward the benefits
of ‘condensed writing’ and ‘notehand’:
Condensed writing is the most difficult for the
writer and the most considerate for the reader.
It should be required. Particularly in recent
years, practically every article in the
American Psychologist could have been
improved in a simple fashion: Cut it in half.
(Tyson, 1977, p.381)
By abbreviating most of the hundred common
words and all of the four hundred other
words… psychological writing is reduced, by
actual measurement, about 30 per cent.
(Taylor, 1947, p.106)
In between grand and small narratives
Lyotard writes that, not withstanding its
claims to objectivity, transparency and truth,
scientific knowledge is caught up in the
complexity of language. This may be, as
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

Usher and Edwards (1994) write, ‘obscured
or veiled [as] science assumes a tranparency
of language’ (p.156). However, Lyotard’s
language games expose this as highly ques-
tionable: ‘its denotative utternaces thereby
have to be examined as moves within those
games rather than establishing the truth they
espouse’ (p.159, italics in original). The
‘postmodern condition’ consists of the dele-
gitimisation of the grand narrative of scien-
tific knowledge, following the development
of technology after the Second World War,
capitalism and the focus on the individual,
even if the focus shifted on the performa-
tivity of systems. Efficiency and effectiveness
(the input–output relationship) have also
became a grand narrative, leaving ‘no room
for caring’, as Stephen Ball argues (2003,
p.224). It is not a question that the grand
narrative of science has been replaced with
that of performativity, but rather that the
grand narratives of science and efficiency are
able to co-exist.
Within the Lyotard framework of
thought that makes him different from other
critics of postmodernity, the postmodern
event is not a follow-up from the modern
event. So, instead of thinking of the post-
moderity as a linear progression from
modernity, the two are interwined:
Postmodernity is not a new age, it is the
rewriting of some features modernity has tried
or pretended to gain, particularly in founding
its legitimation upon the purpose of the general
emacipation of mankind. But such a
rewriting, as has already been said, was for a
long time active in modernity itself. (Lyotard,
cited in Readings, 1991, p.53)
The postmodern event is the creation of a
‘space’ in the modern. The event is that
force that disrupts the linear thinking of the
modern. As Readings (1991) argues, the
event:
…is the occurance after which nothing will
ever be the same again. The event happens in
excess of the referential frame within which it
might be understood, disrupting or displacing
that frame… The event is the radically
singular happening which cannot be
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Petit narratives in educational psychology practice
represented within a general history without
the loss of its singularity, its reduction to a
moment. (p.57)
Lyotard, in The Postmodern Condition, argues
that ‘small narratives’, as opposed to the
grand narrative, are the event. The small
narratives are sites of transformation and
dispute in the grand narrative and they
‘resist… incorporation into such totalising
histories of cultural representation or
projects for culture’ (Readings, 1991, p.63).
The term ‘narrative’ is used both in the
terms ‘grand narrative’ and ‘little narratives’.
However there is a difference in how the
term ‘narrative’ is understood. In the
former, narrative is only the instrument of a
subject and knowledge is not narrative, while
in the small narratives, the narrative is knowl-
edge. The small narratives are able to
displace the assurance of the dominant
language in the grand narrative. The grand
narratives are able to break down in the face
of event, that is, the small narratives. The
small narratives tell stories from a different
assumed position, and they also have some
level of power, value and knowledge (see
ibid., p.65) that is different from that of the
grandnarrative. The power, value and knowl-
edge that they have is not only to displace
the grand narrative but also themselves.
Each small story does not aim to tell ‘the’
story, but ‘rather... evokes new stories by the
manner in which in its turn it has displaced
preceding narratives in telling a story’
(emphasis in original, ibid., p.69).
The first vignette concerning the psycho-
logist as lecturer continues as follows:
The lecturer resolves to start her lectures by
challenging her own presentation and the
students’ perceptions of children, starting out
by pointing out that, although the course will be
taught in a compartmentalised way to ensure
that all material is covered and also to aid
systematic studying, they should not lose sight
that this method of presenting children is one
which is motivated primarily by convenience
and practicality. The students and the lecturer
rotate their discussions around narratives of
real children, so as not to be lulled into a false
71
Daniela Mercieca & Duncan P. Mercieca
idea that children can be dealt with in terms of
solely their emotional aspect, for example, or
their cognitive needs, or social difficulties.
These aspects are all intertwined so that focus
on one aspect necessitates taking all the others
into account. There needs to be a focus on the
individuality of children and the complexity of
their situations, rather than on the sameness of
their development.
The second situation is different because it
concerns writing, another level of represen-
tation and one which is more permanent
and more political. The psychologist adheres
to the requirements of the examining board
and ‘gives them the numbers’. However, the
psychologist qualifies this use by inserting
pockets of petit narratives when writing that
aim to convey a sense of the individuality of
the child in question. The following are
some examples of such writing:
I am purposefully not including the overall
score showing John’s General Conceptual
Ability as he needs to be thought of as
functioning in two very distinct levels. Indeed,
although his specific language impairment
influences his understanding of many tasks,
still one must always keep in mind that John’s
abilities, aside from those which are verbal, are
very high. Thus one cannot expect less from
him, nor can one allow him to give up too
easily and expect less from himself. Of course,
John does experience considerable difficulty in
school as he finds it hard to understand
instructions sometimes – his difficulties are
semantic as well as possibly phonological.
(Excerpt from report, August 2004)
Laborious strategies were implemented to carry
out some of the arithmetic tasks, with Harry
counting on his fingers, and also counting
backwards in subtraction. When asked certain
multiplication tables, Harry was mentally
adding up and then recognising the answers
as he came to them. He used numerous
strategies, but not very efficiently, as he was
literally just coping. The most difficult task set
to him in this test was asking him to say the
months of the year in order. He did not start
from January and consistently skipped certain
months. It did not occur to him, when he forgot
72
March, to think of the month in which the
assessment was being carried out – he
panicked a little and said that he went blank.
Saying the months backwards was, as expected,
considerably harder. However, recalling digits
said to him backwards was not as difficult for
Harry as I thought it would be – I realised then
that he was accustomed to reversing the order
of numbers when subtracting. Thus, a strategy
which was very time-consuming and laborious
in a mathematical operation stood him in good
stead in this task. (Excerpt from report,
March 2004)
In both scenarios, the psychologists writing
these reports refer to assessments that are
standardised and that yield results that are
viewed as objective. However, both psycholo-
gists do not stop at the presenting number
but relate it to the stories of the children in
question, both examples of petit narratives
that leave an effect, a dent if you will, in the
grand narrative of scientific standardised
assessment reporting.
Being aporetic
It is not our aim to advocate that psycho-
logists should stand aloof from using short-
hand – the grand narrative gives us structure
and we cannot be in a state of non-structure
all the time. The systematic society is here to
stay and we would not be doing any favours
to the children with whom we work if we do
not speak the language that others under-
stand. Psychologists themselves are part of
this system that seeks to be efficient and
effective. Knowing the shorthand
contributes to making us psychologists and
to making us practitioners who achieve
results. Yet we are sometimes aware of
discomfort, as though we are colluding with
this structure that is bigger than us. Not only
do children have to fit into this structure; we,
too, find ourselves abiding by it as otherwise
we find we are not easily understood. We
have to work with this shorthand; we
contribute to it and we improve it. We use it
while at the same time standing away from it.
We find this reminiscent of Derrida’s (1998)
writing on being monolingual:
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

It inhabits me… It is impassible, indisputable:
I cannot challenge it except by testifying to its
omnipresence in me. It would have always
preceded me. It is me… I would not be myself
outside it… Yet it will never be mine, this
language, the only one I am thus destined to
speak, as long as speech is possible for me in life
and in death; you see, never will this language
be mine. And, truth to tell, it never was…
When I said that the only language I speak is
not mine, I did not say it was foreign to me.
(p.2)
These are logical contradictory statements
with which we need to live. Although unset-
tling, their paradoxical nature and the
accompanying uncertainty causes us to keep
on our toes, to be aware that ethics imbues
our every movement. Jacques Derrida refers
to these logical contradictions as ‘aporia’ that
constitute undecidability in experience
(Derrida, 1993). The experience of aporia
for Derrida gives us the possibility to ‘analyse
all the hidden assumptions which are
implied in the philosophical, or the ethical,
or the juridical, or the political’ (Derrida,
2001, p.178). Derrida in his book, Aporias
(1993), writes about the not/possibility of
crossing borders. To cross a border one must
take a step in that direction. However, at the
same time, the border marks the impossi-
bility of taking that step. This step/not is of
great interest for Derrida – this is what
becomes a ‘problem’, that is, ‘the step that
crossses borders and renders compromised
the invisable edge that is intended to hold
the identity of a border in place’ (Calarco,
2002, p.18). Derrida reminds us that the
etymology of the word ‘problem’, from
Greek, signifies both pro-tection and pro-
jection: either a task to be accomplished or
as a shield to guard. Therefore borders
‘serve as protection and project’ (ibid.).
Aporia means being in a state where there is
no longer any problem – therefore, no accom-
plishment or guard. The ‘place of aporia is a
point of nonpassage and absolute exposure’
(ibid.).
When finding ourselves faced with this
undecidability, as psychologists we feel
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Petit narratives in educational psychology practice
vulnerable and may resort to tried and
trusted shorthand to help us cope. The
shorthand tries to do away with aporia and
create structures in which all is made to fit.
Aporia opposes the shorthand that assumes
that it is the origin, the moment of begin-
ning, from which ideas originate and refer
to. However, through petit narratives,
psychologists can create pockets in which
complexity is given a space. For Derrida,
working with contradiction implies that we
are just and, in fact, according to Critchley
(1999), injustice is when we try to do away
with contradiction. Instead of the opposition
and contradiction, ‘one simply applies or
implements a programme’ (Derrida, 1992,
p.41).
Conclusion
Although we are to a certain extent bound
by this shorthand, it is crucial, even ethically
speaking, that acknowledgement of such
restriction is made. In fact, Richard Smith
(2007) writes that at times the acknowledge-
ment of aporetic moments is all that can be
done. Following a similar line of thought,
Gert Biesta (2009) suggests ‘witnessing’, that
is, ‘trying to point at those moments where
conditions of possibility and impossibility
“cross” each other’ (p.400). In their crossing
they can provide us with an opening that
serves as ‘an entrance for the incoming of
something new, something unforeseen – or,
in more “personal” terms, someone new,
someone unforeseen’ (ibid.).
This is what we are suggesting, that we
ourselves become more aware of our use of
such language and practices and that we
make this awareness more explicit through
petit narratives. It is possible to show
ourselves as uncertain because of the individ-
uality of particular scenarios that just do not
fit, while still retaining our professionalism.
In fact, our claim is that this makes us more
professional through the prudent use of
ethics and judgement.
Narrative colours the way we use the
shorthand and present it to others – with a
healthy critical attitude, one can admit the
73
Daniela Mercieca & Duncan P. Mercieca
shortcomings of the language that one is
using and resist as much as possible its
acceptance as a measure of one’s profession-
alism. The discomfort that accompanies
living with uncertainty leaves also space for
children to surprise and astonish us, whereas
the certainty that accompanies shorthand
for the sake of convenience, speed and prac-
ticality, sees children as stale, stagnant and
predictable. The representation of children
when using the shorthand as outlined above
is very weak – it makes us stop at the level of
the representation rather than allowing us to
reach children. Such a state of being is quite
dampening and we have, in such situations,
References
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215–228.
Biesta, G. (2009). Witnessing deconstruction in
education: Why quasi-transcendentalism matters.
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Sage.
Calarco, M. (2002). On the borders of language and
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74
become conscious that we miss children.
Petit narratives allow us to adopt a style of
thinking about children, of talking or writing
about children and of being with children
that allows space for their complexity.
Address for correspondence
Duncan Mercieca
Department of Education,
Old Humanities Building,
University of Malta,
Msida MSD 2080,
Malta.
Email: duncan.mercieca@um.edu.mt
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research. London: Routledge.
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Stowell-Smith, M. (1995). Deconstructing psycho-
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Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Engaging with young people through
narrative co-construction:
Beyond categorisation
Kate Warham

This article provides a brief introduction to narrative and narrative research and reflects upon how a
narrative methodology was used within research which sought to explore stories co-constructed between the
researcher and two young people who were both looked after in local authority care and who had experienced
exclusion from school. The rich and complex stories were interpreted to construct narratives which both
resonated with and resisted narratives which dominate the research literature surrounding looked after
children and young people. A narrative approach has much to offer the researching and practising
educational psychologist by creating a space which enables children and young people’s voices to be heard
and multiple, alternative realities to be created. This article has been contributed to by one of the young
people who took part in the research, in order that we might both articulate our experiences of the process of
this co-research.
Keywords: ?????????????????????????????????????????????????

I
N ORDER TO situate the current study
within a methodological context, this
article attempts to provide an overview of
narrative and narrative research. This
provides a rationale for my choice of
approach to research with two care-experi-
enced young people. As with all narrative
research, it is essential to acknowledge the
context of our work and, therefore, I have
reviewed the narratives that I perceive to
dominate research literature concerned with
looked after children and young people.
The article then briefly outlines the method-
ical approach, discusses narratives
constructed within the research and both
myself and one of the participants reflect
upon the process of jointly constructing
narratives.
Narrative and narrative research
Riessman (2008) argues that the narrative
impulse is universal, present in every place,
society and age. Hiles and Cermak (2009)
suggest that narrative is essential to the
meaning-making process through which
events and actions may be understood. The
experience of an event becomes a story as it
is shaped, ordered and given meaning.
Stories are social, involving speakers as well
as listeners and in this way narratives are
shaped by the social world of the listener as
they are constructed through the interaction
(Elliott, 2005). Individuals are part of many
social worlds and in turn may re-author their
stories depending on the context. It is, there-
fore, essential to consider narratives within
their specific social, historical and cultural
context. Elliott (2005) argues that narratives
are also shaped by available cultural reper-
toires of stories that frame and structure
them. These cultural repertoires may
provide guidelines that influence stories, but
they cannot determine the content of each
individual’s actively constructed narrative.
Public narratives may be maintained and
remain stable over time, but they also have
the capacity to change. The interplay
between these existing public cultural narra-
tives and new individual narratives can
create alternative possibilities.
Although the narrative turn in
psychology is relatively recent, there is a long
history to psychology’s interest in story. The
analytic study of narrative has social

Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2 75

© The British Psychological Society, 2012
Kate Warham
constructionist foundations and offers a
model of contextualism, recognising that
stories do not occur in isolation (Gergen,
2001). Through narrative analysis, one is
able to remain open to social processes that
are present in the construction of personal
narratives and embrace contradictions and
multiple possibilities within narratives rather
than seeking coherence (White & Epston,
1990).
Elliott (2005) suggests that, by embracing
narrative research, researchers are able to
develop a deeper understanding of their
research subjects’ perspectives. Through
telling their experiences in a story form,
individuals reflect on their experiences to
select aspects they perceive to be important
and order them into a coherent whole,
giving meaning to experience. Researchers
are able to accumulate rich detail about an
individual rather than fragmenting accounts
into categories, such as in grounded theory.
By honouring each individual’s narrative
within its own context and not splitting it
and pooling with others to make a general
statement, particularities and individual
agency and intention are retained
(Riessman, 2008). This offers an approach
that recognises the complexity of life without
trying to reduce it.
Although this methodology can give
voice to some of the most marginalised
people in society, Elliott (2005) cautions us
that it can also be oppressive by telling
stories that draw on culturally available
narratives that express broad social struc-
tures of power and inequality. However,
narratives may also open up other possibili-
ties, such as counter-hegemonic narratives
that challenge rather than maintain power
differentials in society.
Dominant narratives surrounding
looked after children and young people
Research relating to the educational
outcomes of looked after children and
young people has been increasing since the
late 1980s. Government publications, poli-
cies and legislation relating to the educa-
76
tional achievement of children in care have
developed rapidly over the last decade and
recently have become more integrated
within policies relating to children and fami-
lies (Brodie, 2010).
Poor attainment and life chances. Research and
published statistics consistently position
looked after children and young people as
having limited life chances in comparison to
their non-looked after peers. In comparison
with children in the general population,
statistical research suggests that those in the
looked after population are four times more
likely to suffer from a mental health
problem, are 13 times more likely to receive
a statement of special educational need, and
are more likely to be without a school place
for extended periods of time (Martin &
Jackson, 2002). They are 10 times more
likely to be excluded from school and up to
30 per cent are out of mainstream school
because of truancy or exclusion (DCSF 2009;
Dearden, 2004). Published statistics continu-
ally indicate that looked after young people
obtain fewer GCSEs than the non-looked
after population (DCSF, 2009). Such statis-
tics provide snapshot measures and do not
tell us anything about the complexities of
experience. Taking a statistical approach
could be seen to be a reductionist way of
considering the situation, one that paints a
problem-saturated picture of failure for
looked after children and young people and
provides us with a thin description of their
lives that ‘…allows little space for people to
articulate their own particular meanings of
their actions and the context within which
they occurred’ (Morgan, 2000, p.12).
Explanations constructed for the current
situation. Explanations proposed within the
research literature consider a range of inter-
related factors as contributing to the current
reported low achievement of looked after
children and young people. These include
pre-care experiences, societal, structural and
professional factors.
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

Some authors have highlighted adverse
pre-care experiences such as social depriva-
tion, poverty, neglect and abuse and the
value that birth parents have placed on
education (Francis, 2000; Harker et al.,
2003). However, others argue that it is the
care system itself which is at fault, disadvan-
taging young people after ‘having inter-
vened in order to try and stem the flow of
perceived disadvantage’ (Fletcher-Campbell,
1998, p.4).
Resilience. Studies adopting a resilience-
based approach have sought to identify
protective factors which support looked after
children and young people to overcome
negative experiences and to make a success
of their lives (Dent & Cameron, 2003).
Such identified protective factors include:
a parent or carer who values education;
a supportive teacher; regular school atten-
dance; stability and continuity; developing
interests beyond school and the care system;
and a mentoring relationship with a signifi-
cant adult offering support and encourage-
ment (Dent & Cameron, 2003; Gilligan,
1999; Jackson & Martin, 1998). Although
resiliency-led research may be conceived to
offer a reductionist view of young people’s
situations, it starts to move away from
presenting a problem-saturated story of
looked after children and young peoples’
lives.
Children’s voices. A number of researchers
have consulted looked after young people
about their experiences of education, what
has been helpful or unhelpful and what has
helped them to succeed (Dearden, 2004;
Harker et al., 2003; Martin & Jackson, 2002).
Within these studies children have reported
high levels of exclusions and care placement
changes, resulting in unwelcome school
changes. They wanted to be treated as indi-
viduals and to be consulted about their views
and wishes (Harker et al., 2003). Dearden
(2004) reported that the young people she
interviewed wanted the following protective
aspects in their lives: strong supportive
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Young people through narrative co-construction
friendships; professionals to listen and
respond quickly to bullying or abuse at home
and school; to be encouraged and supported
to become involved in the social life of their
school; stable placements; educational facili-
ties at home and good communication
between home and school. Emerging
themes that Martin and Jackson (2002) iden-
tified in their interviews with high-achieving,
care-experienced young people included the
importance of having a ‘normal’ experience
at school without being singled out as
different from their peers. The importance
of foster carers, residential workers, social
workers and teachers holding high expecta-
tions, providing support and encourage-
ment for academic achievement and
overcoming negative stereotypes was also
raised. These young people valued opportu-
nities to develop interests and hobbies away
from the care system, relationships with
valued mentors and supportive social
networks.
These studies exploring care-experi-
enced children and young peoples’ views
and opinions help to provide thick descrip-
tions (Geertz, 1973) of young peoples’ expe-
riences, thoughts and feelings. These, in
turn, both deepen our understanding
beyond reported statistics and acknowledge
that people’s lives cannot be reduced to
simplistic interpretations.
The current study
The aim of my study was to provide insight
and understanding into the narratives told
within my work with Jimbo and Zacharay, two
looked after young people who had experi-
enced school exclusion. By focusing upon
our jointly-constructed narratives I was able
to acknowledge the social aspect of the
construction of knowledge, meaning and
power (Emerson & Frosh, 2009).
Co-constructing narrative data
I took a narrative approach to interviewing
in which the interviewee is conceived as a
storyteller and it is the interviewer’s respon-
sibility to be a good listener (Mishler, 1986;
77
Kate Warham
Hollway & Jefferson, 2000). The use of life
history grids (Elliott, 2005; Holstein &
Gubruim, 1995; Riessman, 2008) was
adapted to produce school history grids
within initial interviews with the participants,
asking each young person to structure their
time in school into chapters. Each partici-
pant was then asked to talk about the chap-
ters that they had identified. Two interviews
were held with each young person so that I
was able to take a preliminary reading of the
first research conversation before meeting to
follow up and further explore themes, to
check meanings and to give individual young
people a chance to talk about anything that
they had been thinking about or reflecting
on in between our meetings (Hollway &
Jefferson, 2000).
The transcripts from our first interviews
were returned to each young person and we
met to discuss these and to offer each partic-
ipant the opportunity to remove, change or
add to the material before further analysis.
Similarly, I offered to share my analyses and
drafts with each participant so that I was able
to ask for their views and amend my work in
the light of their comments, facilitating a
process of on-going informed consent.
To analyse our interviews I drew upon
Emerson and Frosh’s (2009) version of
Critical Narrative Analysis, developed from
Gee’s (1991) linguistic approach to narra-
tive. This attempts to retain the critical gains
of Discourse Analysis through social under-
standing and construction and combines
this with a focus upon individuals’ processes
of active construction within their narratives.
The narratives
The narratives were written up as two self-
contained stories that were individual and
very different, but I felt that I interpreted
themes within each story that both resonated
with those occurring within the other young
person’s story and also with dominant narra-
tives within published research literature.
I was also able to trace resistance to these
dominant narratives, highlighting contradic-
tions and counter-narratives and felt that the
78
methodological approach of narrative
enabled the complexities of these stories to
emerge. To give readers a feel for these
stories, I have attempted below to describe
and comment on our co-constructed narra-
tives, but it must be borne in mind that
through this process of reducing and
summarising the stories many rich details
and complexities are lost. Readers may wish
to refer to Warham (2011) for the more
detailed stories and transcripts which are
referred to below:
I was only in there for a few weeks ‘cos I moved
from… oh God, I forgot the name of that as
well… (Zacharay, transcript 1, lines
141–142).
Both stories contained narratives of move-
ment and created for me a sense of fragmen-
tation and confusion. Perhaps my feelings of
confusion also reflected the inherent diffi-
culty of trying to understand how another
person has made sense of and talks about
their experiences and would be part of any
co-construction process where we try to
negotiate a coherent story together.
When you are in care they they will move you
to a school. Just chuck you in, ‘oh we’ll chuck
him in here, we’ll put him in here, he’ll be all
right’. And when that care home gets up they’ll
move you on and chuck you in another school.
That’s how they work now. (Jimbo,
transcript 3, lines 195–200)
Both stories constructed moving between
schools as an inevitable result of living within
the care system, although exceptions were
illustrated. Care placements were
constructed as transient, often breaking
down and leading to both boys moving
around the country and having to change
schools. At times, these placement moves
were sudden, with instant notice and were
constructed almost brutally. Published
research literature also contains dominant
narratives of frequent movement between
placements and schools that disadvantage
looked after children and young people
through structural factors of the social care
system (Fletcher-Campbell, 1998). Within
the co-constructed stories we heard this
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

dominant societal narrative; but their stories
went beyond this and constructed the
specific meaning of this within their own
lives.
I was predicted like Bs and As and Cs mostly.
It was a C in English. A what A in science.
A in maths and B in ICT and a few other
subjects but I can’t remember what they were.
But because I couldn’t sit them I couldn’t get
them so I left. Well I got to college with like no
GCSEs. (Zacharay, transcript 1, lines
471–483)
Both stories constructed a disrupted educa-
tion. A placement move within one story
preceded a wait of several months for a
school placement. Within the other story it
prevented taking GCSE exams or
completing coursework requirements.
Dominant narratives within government
publications and research literature
construct looked after young people with
poor educational outcomes such as fewer
and lower grade GCSEs than their peers
(DCSF, 2009; Dearden, 2004; Martin &
Jackson, 2002). This positions many looked
after children and young people as unsuc-
cessful learners, and our narratives chal-
lenge this. I feel that by studying these
narratives and giving voice to individuals
behind statistics, we start to create more real,
human and complex pictures of young
people within this system, deepening our
understanding of how these lower educa-
tional outcomes develop and effect young
people.
I stormed out, ran off... I ran off to one of me,
like a respite carer’s house where I knew where
it were. I got the train and I went to their house
and I went ‘right, I want to move’ and they
rang social workers and told ‘em situation and
then I got put in a different place. (Jimbo,
transcript 3, lines 327–332)
The individual stories constructed narratives
of power imbalances between young people
and professionals from the care and educa-
tional systems. For example, Jimbo’s story
painted a picture of Jimbo having no choices
in his life and, when asked how things might
have been different, he replied that that was
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Young people through narrative co-construction
not something that he could say. The
powerful care system was constructed as too
rigid to ever be any different and had left
him no possibility of voice within it. Power
differences developed in Zacharay’s story
when he was held down by five members of
staff to control his behaviour and when he
was moved between care placements.
However, their stories contained narratives
of resistance to those of powerlessness.
These were constructed when Jimbo ran
away from a care placement, taking control
of a situation he had had no choice in and
when he worked with his peers to take over a
school, normally the professional adult’s
domain of power. Narrative methodology
enables us to construct such alternative real-
ties away from dominating narratives that
allow little room for agency.
That was just a behavioural school that.
Everyone were just running round riot and
they didn’t do no work, they didn’t do
nothing… it weren’t a school, it weren’t a
school. Well it was sposed to be a school, but
I didn’t see it as a school. I just saw it as a
place to go to to chill out. (Jimbo, transcript
3, lines 61–65)
I felt that the narratives constructed within
both stories contained several conflicts and
contradictions that would have been lost had
I tried to reduce the stories further to
summarise them. There were elements of
illusion within both stories, of things being
not as they seem such as an ‘uncaring’ care
system and schools that were not real
schools. I feel that this reminds us of the
importance of looking deeper in our profes-
sional practice, and asking young people
how life is for them, not how things appear
to be.
Both stories constructed narratives about
the functioning of rigid care and educa-
tional systems in which young people are
‘chucked’ into residential homes, how
schools have to offer looked after children
and young people a place and how funding
for university is available if young people in
care enrol up to the age of 21. It also
included a narrative around the advantages
79
Kate Warham
of being in foster care rather than residential
care, the stabilising effect that it had upon
school placements and how it served to
normalise experiences. This narrative of
normality, of the importance of not being
seen as different to non-looked after peers,
has also arisen in previous research (Martin
& Jackson, 2002).
I felt that a conflict between the powerful
education and social care systems developed
in these stories. These systems were
constructed as acting independently from
each other and not being able to fit together.
Zacharay’s story created an educational
system not able to cope with the care system
through the narratives of Zacharay having to
chase his English coursework when he
moved, and of being moved at times of
educational importance. The powerful care
system ensured that a school placed him on
roll, but the educational system did not give
him a physical place within that school.
Tensions between different facets of the local
authority were being played out in
Zacharay’s story. Perhaps considering such
tensions between these systems may help to
unpick the question raised by Firth and
Horrocks (1996) as to why looked after
children and young people experience such
high exclusion levels when they have the
support of the local authority to secure their
rights to education. This constructed narra-
tive has political implications for the way that
services work with or against each other and
comments on the reality of how the govern-
ment agenda of creating children’s services
and joined-up-practice is working.
The need for multi-agency professionals
to receive adequate training and guidance to
support their working relationships and for
school staff to develop deeper understand-
ings of the care system and children’s experi-
ences has been identified previously
(Fletcher-Campbell, 1998). Case examples
such as these illustrate why this is so neces-
sary, but also raise questions about how
professionals’ can effect change through
their individual practice. Perhaps through
increasing their knowledge of individual
80
cases such as these, individuals can bring
more understanding into their work with
young people and effect change from a
bottom-up level, alongside top-down
approaches of training and system design.
I had a gang of friends and we did like a
performance. ‘Cos we did like an ‘X Factor’
thing, yeah like a talent show and we like did
a song or whatever, dance routine sort of like
that. About five of us, in front of the whole
school. (Zacharay, transcript 1, line 183)
I set the scene for stories relating to the care
system to be developed in our interviews
through my initial request to work with
looked after young people who had experi-
enced school exclusion. However, the narra-
tives also resisted this genre and their stories
were not exclusively concerned with being in
care or being excluded. Both young people
chose to develop narratives of normality and
were positioned within their stories along
with their peers. I felt that, within these
narratives, they were not choosing to define
themselves as ‘looked after’ or ‘excluded’
and perhaps resisted my attempts to do so
through my request to work with excluded
looked after young people.
And they said that like one of their staff (from
the residential care home) had to sit in class
with me in school as well to monitor my
behaviour and stuff. It let people know that
I was different from the other people… It does
feel strange cos you’ve got some member of staff
sitting next to you and everyone is asking like
‘Who’s he? Who’s he?’ and stuff like that so
you like explain the situation or whatever and
you might not necessarily want to. (Zacharay,
transcript 1, lines 251–255)
In contrast to these choices made by Jimbo
and Zacharay to position themselves with
their peers, these stories positioned profes-
sional adults as resisting these narratives of
normality and constructing Jimbo and
Zacharay as ‘different’. Zacharay’s story
included episodes where residential care
staff had to stay with him in school to
monitor his behaviour, and this demon-
strated his difference from his peers and
forced his disclosure of being in care.
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

Zacharay was positioned in his story as
wanting to start new school placements as a
full-time member of the school. However,
when he was in residential care staff would
put him into school on a part-time timetable,
contradicting his wishes. Connelly and
Chakrabarti (2008) argue that we should be
challenging the commonly made assump-
tion that looked after children and young
people will cope better by being given a
narrow curriculum and Zacharay’s story adds
weight to this argument, with reference to
his experience. Jimbo’s story suggested that
professionals ‘chuck’ looked after children
and young people into new placements,
presuming that they will cope and that this
would not happen to young people who live
with their family. These stories constructed
professionals as lacking specific understand-
ings of what Zacharay and Jimbo wanted and
needed. I feel that this demonstrates that
professionals working with looked after
children and young people need to find ways
to ask and to listen to them so that decisions
and services can be personalised to them.
Both Jimbo’s and Zacharay’s narratives
concluded with unfinished futures that
offered positive potential for alternative
narratives in which they could take control
and construct desirable future lives.
Zacharay constructed a rich and detailed
projected future, full of optimism and possi-
bility. I felt that Jimbo was more resistant to
the possibility that things may be different
for him, countering our construction of how
he might like his future to be, with the possi-
bility that he might get sent to prison and
would, therefore, not have this choice.
Axford (2008) has postulated that if looked
after young people have continuously felt
that they have a lack of choice and control
over their lives, then they may also develop a
sense of having very little hope for their
future. This resonates with me when I
consider the very dominant theme of a lack
of choice and control within Jimbo’s story
and his constructed future narrative.
Through Jimbo’s and Zacharay’s stories
we developed narratives previously heard in
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Young people through narrative co-construction
prior research, but also created narratives
that resisted these and offered alternative
possibilities for these young people away
from these dominant, limiting narratives.
Foucault (1980) writes about disqualified
knowledges that are denied the space in
which to be performed, such as those that
conflict with knowledges held by those with
authority (i.e. researchers or professionals).
These may include Jimbo’s and Zacharay’s
narratives of being a successful learner, or of
exerting control which contradict dominant
published research narratives. Foucault
suggests that, through searching for and
highlighting details of these knowledges, we
can offer and provide a place for their
performance and can develop a criticism of
dominant knowledges.
Reflections upon the process of this
research
I strived to equalise the relationships
between myself and Zacharay and Jimbo by
conceptualising us as co-researchers
throughout the research process. Therefore,
when it came to reflecting upon process of
constructing narratives together I felt that
such a reflection would be incomplete if it
came only from my perspective. Zacharay
has contributed to this article and in the
section below his words are quoted. I was
attracted to following a narrative method-
ology because I felt that it respected the
contribution of participants and enabled a
more equal research relationship to develop.
I hoped that the narratives would still feel
like they belonged to each participant,
although I acknowledged that as the
researcher and author I had the ultimate
decision about how the narratives would be
edited and what I chose to include. Zacharay
wrote the following about our research rela-
tionship and whether he was retained some
ownership and influence over the written
narratives:
I had choices within the research like when I
was free to meet and I felt that our relationship
was pretty equal, 50:50. It was good to read
everything that we’d said and how we had said
81
Kate Warham
it, but it was also interesting to see and find
out about how it had been written down and
analysed. After the analysis, the narrative still
felt like the same kind of stuff that we had
talked about. It still sounded like the same
experience that I had gone through. It still felt
like the story belonged to me, even though the
towns and cities had been changed to weird
names. I was able to say if I wanted something
to be changed or taken out from the transcripts,
analysis and interpretations. I had an
influence over the process and was happy with
the way my story had been represented.
By following this process, I encountered the
possibility that my analysis would be rejected
or that I would need to reconsider how
I represented the narratives for readers of
the research. This created some uncertainty
for me as the control of the publication was
negotiated between us. Ultimately, I felt that
this process was ethically sound and enabled
Zacharay and Jimbo to provide their
informed consent at each stage of the
research process. I had initially planned to
use pseudonyms for both participants, but
this was challenged by Zacharay, who felt
that this would take away from his story. He
writes:
It was important to me that I kept my first
name and did not use a pseudo name. It was
my story and I wanted my name on it. I
wanted it to be published as my story and I am
happy that I made this choice. I would have
liked to the place names to have remained the
same so that people could see where I have
moved to, it might have helped people to
understand how far I have moved and the
distances between places. I understand that
they had to be changed and it might have been
saying that some places are better than others
and you are not allowed to do that.
For me, the process of trying to create more
equal relationships as co-researchers chal-
lenged the decisions and assumptions that
I made as researcher. By working with young
people as co-researchers, we assume their
competence and move away from a model of
researcher as expert. Reactions such as
Zacharay’s request not to use a pseudonym
82
made me reconsider the decisions and
choices I had planned to make. I felt that it
was important that I was ethically answerable
to the young people rather than just to the
research ethics committee. We were able to
negotiate aspects of the research, such as
Zacharay keeping his first name within the
research. However, there were aspects such
as disguising local authorities and school
names that I was unable to change and ulti-
mately my power as researcher meant that in
these negotiations I made the final decisions.
This emphasised to me that, although we
may aim to work in partnership with our
participants, the research relationship can
never be truly equal.
Although I did not set out to create
change for either Zacharay or Jimbo,
I remained aware that narrative studies can
have components of both research and
therapy. Through the process of narrative
interviews, participants are able to reflect
upon their lives. This is not a neutral activity
and may facilitate positive change (White &
Epston, 1990). As part of my ethical consid-
erations I tried to plan for the occurrence of
any negative reactions after taking part in
this research and I hoped that the research
experience would be a positive one.
Zacharay writes about this below:
Working with Kate in this way was more in
depth than other work I have done with
professionals; this meant I spoke in more detail
which was good. Social workers just tell you
what to do and at school they try and steer you
in the right direction. Working with Kate has
been more relaxed which has been helpful
because I was able to give more of my opinions.
The process didn’t make me think about my life
in a different way, but it did show me how
many schools I’ve been to and got excluded
from. I don’t feel that there were any negative
aspects of taking part, I was happy with all of
it. I think other young people would benefit
from taking part in something like this, it
would make them think as they go through all
of their story and see how it looks. It was also
interesting to get Kate’s perspective on it.
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

Zacharay wrote about having my perspective
of his story and this was something that I
tried to emphasise throughout the research
process; that ultimately my interpretations
did not represent an ultimate truth and that
other readers, or indeed Zacharay and I, may
interpret the narratives differently in the
future.
As part of my analysis of the narratives
I identified some themes that I felt resonated
with those that had been raised in previous
research literature. However, through the
process of detailing the stories, these themes
became unique in the ways that they devel-
oped and played out within the individual
narratives. The process of searching for and
highlighting complexities and contradic-
tions to these themes helped to develop
richer narratives and prevent me from devel-
oping and presenting a reductionist view of
Zacharay and Jimbo.
Through this attempt to co-construct and
present rich pictures of two young people
the narratives were able to develop stories
that focused not only upon aspects of their
narratives which related directly to being
looked after or excluded, but presented
unique identities away from these labels.
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Young people through narrative co-construction
This research made me consider my
approach to my educational psychology case
work, whether I enable such rich, complex
and multiple realities to develop for the
young people and families whom I work
with, away from the problem-saturated narra-
tive of referral forms. I feel that a narrative
approach to research and case work offers
me a way of listening and of enabling
children and young people to bring their
pertinent issues to our discussions rather
than constraining their voices to my topics.
Narrative offers the exciting possibility to
facilitate, hear and share rich alternative
stories with young people, and the family
and professionals in their lives that is espe-
cially important when negative dominant
narratives abound around them.
Address for correspondence
Kate Warham
Sheffield Educational Psychology Service,
Bannerdale Centre,
Carterknowle Road,
Sheffield S7 2EX.
Email: kate.warham@sheffield.gov.uk
83
Kate Warham
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Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Narrative analysis of former child soldiers’
traumatic experiences
Paul O’Callaghan, Lesley Storey & Harry Rafferty

Narratives are an integrative part of every culture and narrative exposure serves not only therapeutic
purposes but also a social and political agenda (Schauer et al., 2005). This paper will focus on the second
aim – using Narrative Analysis to inform and raise awareness of the experiences of child soldiers in
northern Uganda. The children involved in this study range in age from 13 to 17 years (M=15.25) and
spent from 12 to 108 months (M=48) with the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army. The paper begins by providing
a context for the narratives by exploring the extant psychological literature in the field, the conflict in
Uganda and the psychological impact of soldiering on children. Next, the paper outlines the steps taken to
analyse the children’s narratives before the study’s findings are discussed in relation to how the children use
distancing during narration to protect themselves from overwhelming negative emotions and how
traumatic bonding appears more strongly in child soldiers who fought with the rebels than those who did
not. The way abductees make sense of their ‘new’ reality as child soldiers through juxtaposition and
internalisation is also outlined, as is the finding that a mother’s death can result in greater psychological
distress than exposure to extreme violence. Lastly, policy implications and future research directions based
on these findings are proposed.
Keywords: child soldiers; narratives; traumatic bonding; internalisation; traumatic grief.

Child soldiers

I
T IS ESTIMATED that as many as 300,000
children under the age of 18 currently
serve in government forces or armed mili-
tias around the world (Coalition to Stop the
Use of Child Soldiers [CSUCS], 2008).
Between April 2004 and October 2007
children were actively involved in armed
conflict in government forces or non-state
armed groups in 19 countries or territories –
half of which were in Africa (CSUCS, 2008).
However, the term ‘child soldier’ has
caused confusion and has been criticised for
promoting a misleading image of boys with
weapons (Betancourt et al., 2008). UNICEF
(2007) define a ‘child soldier’ as any boy or
girl under 18 years of age who is associated
with an armed force or armed group in any
capacity, such as combatant, porter, cook,
servant, nanny, messenger, spy or concubine.
While some children are abducted by
rebel militias and forced to become child
soldiers, others voluntarily join armed
groups. However, poverty, hunger, a need for
protection or a desire to avenge the death(s)
of loved ones may influence this decision
(Betancourt et al., 2008). A child’s limited
ability to assess risks, their feelings of invinci-
bility and the fact that military commanders
view them as more malleable, obedient and
easier to indoctrinate (Schauer & Elbert,
2010) also makes them more vulnerable to
recruitment.
The conflict in northern Uganda
Since 1986 northern Uganda has been
engulfed in an atrocious war characterised
by extreme brutality, abductions, encamp-
ment and general loss of human dignity
(Amone-P’Olak et al., 2007). This conflict is
unusual in that it does not have the structure
of a traditional civil war or ethnic conflict.
The LRA is more aptly described as a
warlord’s militia and the local Acholi
community are treated as a resource base for
food and abducted fighters (Veale &
Stavrou, 2007). Abducted children are ritu-
ally terrorised, sexually exploited, forced to
watch beatings, maiming, rape and killings

Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2 85

© The British Psychological Society, 2012
Paul O’Callaghan, Lesley Storey & Harry Rafferty
and sometimes even forced to kill friends
and relatives (Okello et al., 2007). Derluyn et
al. (2004) claim that up to 90 per cent of the
Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) recruits are
abducted children and adolescents. While
this figure has been disputed (Eichstaedt,
2009), we do know that since the late 1980s
between 25,000 (CSUCS, 2008) and 60,000
(Annan et al., 2009) children and adoles-
cents have been forcibly recruited into the
ranks of the LRA. Of these abducted
children, 75 per cent are boys (UNICEF,
1998, cited in K. Amone-P’Olak et al., 2007).
Of great concern too is the plight of girls
(Wessells, 2006). The rebels believe young
girls are free of sexually transmitted diseases
(STDs) and cannot infect them (Amone-
P’Olak, 2005). Instead, it is the girls who
become infected with rates of 67 per cent
(vaginal candidasis), 60 per cent (gonor-
rhoea), 54 per cent (genital warts), 52 per
cent (syphilis) and 28 per cent (genital
herpes) found in a sample of 123 former
LRA female abductees from northern
Uganda (Amone-P’Olak, 2005).
Effect of war on child soldiers
In addition to physical injuries and sexual
health problems, survivors of war and
conflict may also develop specific mental
disorders. These include post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety,
substance abuse, suicidal behaviour, social
withdrawal, low self-esteem, loss of trust,
excessive guilt, hostility and aggression. Of
these disorders, PTSD is the most prevalent
(Neuner et al., 2008) and the most
researched (Jordans et al., 2009).
Three recent studies found that 34.9 per
cent (Bayer et al., 2007), 26.8 per cent
(Okello et al., 2007) and 33 per cent (Klasen
et al., 2010) of Ugandan child soldiers met
DSM–IV criteria for PTSD. Post-traumatic
stress symptom rates of 97 per cent (Derluyn
et al., 2004), 98 per cent (Amone-P’Olak et
al., 2007) and 99 per cent (Amone-P’Olak,
2005) were found in the same population.
However, caution must be observed in inter-
preting the studies above. Some of these
86
studies used different measures and, even
when the same measure was used, different
cut-off points for clinical significance were
used (e.g. Amone-P’Olak, 2005; Derluyn et
al., 2004) making it difficult to meaningfully
compare trauma levels in different popula-
tions.
Reasons for high PTSD rates among
child soldiers
While exposure to extreme violence causes
high PTSD rates, it appears that exposure
alone is not sufficient to account for the high
rates of psychological distress in former child
soldiers. Okello et al. (2007) found that LRA
abductees had significantly higher rates of
PTSD, depression and anxiety than other
non-abducted yet war-affected children.
Kohrt et al. (2008) found that even when war
experiences were controlled for, child
soldiers in Nepal were still at greater risk of
developing PTSD and depression than non-
conscripted youth. This suggests that there
may be something intrinsic to the experi-
ence of being a child soldier that results in
higher levels of psychological distress.
Betancourt, Borisova et al. (2010) found
that the age at which children were involved
in military action played a role in how
depressed they were; the younger the age the
more severe the depression. While all 150
child soldiers in the study witnessed severe
violence, children who had killed or injured
another person or who had been raped
exhibited markedly more aggressive behav-
iour in the years after the war. One reason
for this is children who participated in atroc-
ities or were raped were more likely to be
stigmatised by their communities (Betan-
court, Agnew-Blais et al., 2010). In additional
to stigma, other daily stressors found to
hamper psychological recovery are insuffi-
cient money, food, clothing and illness (Mels
et al., 2010). Also of concern is the finding
that child soldiers with PTSD are less open to
reconciliation and have more feelings of
revenge (Bayer et al., 2007). This desire for
revenge can hamper recovery and fuel trans-
generational conflict (Schauer & Schauer,
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

2010), thus making the solution to existing
conflicts even more intractable.
Yet, despite the significant physical and
psychological challenges they face, child
soldiers are not helpless victims at the mercy
of inevitable mental illnesses they can do
little to prevent or mitigate. Indeed, such an
emphasis on deficit that overlooks children’s
remarkable resilience (Klasen et al., 2010) is
now giving way to an understanding that
most former child soldiers are functional
and, with proper support, can transition to
positive lives as civilians (Wessells, 2006).
One such support is helping child soldiers
process their experiences through co-
constructing narratives – a therapeutic
approach this study sought to use.
Method
Aims of the study
Remembering and telling the truth about
terrible events are pre-requisites for the
healing of individual victims (Herman,
1992). This study’s primary aim is thera-
peutic: To help former child soldiers work
through their traumatic memories through
narration of past events (Schauer et al.,
2005). This practice enables the processing
of painful emotions, causing habituation
(Ertl et al., 2011) and significant emotional
recovery. A secondary aim is to use the testi-
monies (with the children’s permission) to
raise awareness about human rights abuses
of children in northern Uganda – something
this paper is seeking to do. Thirdly, by
providing children with documentation of
their experiences in a chronological and
coherent format, former child soldiers can
(if they choose) use their testimonies in civil
or criminal proceedings. Thus, narratives
can serve in the pursuit of justice and
compensation for the gross human rights
violations these children have endured.
Participants
The children’s names have been changed to
maintain anonymity. At the time of the study
Gladys was 16, Mercy, 17, Nancy, 15, and
Noah, 13. None had birth certificates and
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Former child soldiers’ traumatic experiences
some had spent considerable time in the
bush without access to calendars, diaries or
watches, so all ages are estimates. At the time
of the study all were attending a school for
war-affected children in northern Uganda.
Gladys and Mercy attend a vocational
tailoring class. Nancy and Noah are in Year 6
in primary school. Mercy spent a year with
the rebels in the bush, Nancy and Noah
spent three years, while Gladys was born in
the bush and lived with the rebels for nine
years.
Data collection
Pupils in P5, P6, P7 and the vocational class
were screened for post-traumatic stress symp-
toms (Impact of Events Scale Revised; Weiss
& Marmar, 1997). Four pupils with the
highest score on the IES-R were offered the
option of receiving four weeks of KIDNET
(Schauer et al., 2005). KIDNET is a child-
friendly version of Narrative Exposure
Therapy (Mueller, 2009) in which the trau-
matised child constructs a detailed lifeline
using a rope, flowers (for happy moments)
and stones (for sad moments). Over six to
eight sessions of one hour, the child
describes in detail the events symbolised by
the flowers and stones. This occurs in the
form of a semi-structured interview in which
the therapist and the child co-construct a
narrative based on the questions the thera-
pist asks (e.g. who was present, when did the
event occur, describe an event that occurred
in vivid detail) and the responses a child
gives. An interpreter translates the thera-
pist’s questions and the children’s responses
and it was these accounts that were used for
the current study.
Ethical concerns
This proposal was approved by the research
university’s Psychology Department’s Ethics
Panel and complied fully with the Helsinki
Declaration (WMA, 2008) and the British
Psychological Society’s Code of Ethics and
Conduct (BPS, 2009). Consent for the study to
take place was obtained from the principal
and head of the counselling department at
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Paul O’Callaghan, Lesley Storey & Harry Rafferty
the school. The aims of the study were
explained at a school assembly to all the
children involved. The children were
informed of their right to withdraw at any
time and were given an opportunity of reflec-
tion and to ask any questions they may have.
Once the screening was completed and the
most severely affected students had been
selected, individual oral consent from each
participant was sought to proceed with the
therapeutic phase of the study. The freedom
to withdraw from the intervention at any stage
during the therapy sessions was also
explained, as was the potential negative short-
term impact of re-visiting past traumas. As an
additional safeguard, the school counsellor
was asked to monitor the four students closely
during the intervention. The researcher and
interpreter visited the children during the
weekends to make sure that they were not
overwhelmed by feelings or thoughts about
their trauma that the therapy had raised
during the week. It was hoped that the school
counsellor could also be trained in the use of
KIDNET and deliver this therapy to addi-
tional students identified as needing support
but, sadly, school commitments meant this
was not possible. The researcher had been
trained in the use of KIDNET by the authors
of the therapy and had lived and worked in
East Africa for two years prior to this study.
The researcher lived in Gulu for the duration
of the research where he met with local health
workers, humanitarian staff, teachers and
international researchers from a range of
disciplines to gain a greater insight into the
impact of child soldiering on the children
affected. The interpreter was an Acholi
woman and had worked as a counsellor on
similar NGO projects in northern Uganda for
more than five years.
Methodology
The data was analysed using Narrative
Analysis (NA). NA is a qualitative research
approach in which the researcher listens to
participants’ stories and seeks to understand
the relationships between the experiences of
individuals and their social framework.
88
In contrast to the snapshots of experi-
ence afforded by single interviews, NA
accommodates a temporal dimension and is
sensitive to a narrator’s shift in identity
(Murray, 2002) over time. Since transitions
are a key component of child soldiering (e.g.
abduction, adjusting to life as a captive,
release from captivity, etc.) it was felt that
NA’s temporal dimension would be the most
appropriate approach to record this. In addi-
tion, NA uses semi-structured interviews to
elicit narratives. This is a culturally sensitive
method since stories are at the heart of all
human and social meaning making. Narra-
tives also provide in-depth information on
experiences that sensitise a researcher to
cultural practices and methods of meaning
making very different to their own.
Lastly, as this research project was also a
therapeutic intervention, narratives were
selected because of their ability to facilitate
habituation of traumatic memories leading
to a remission of PTSD symptoms (Schauer
et al., 2005). Chaotic experiences are the
hallmarks of the life of a child soldier and so
narratives provided the channel through
which a former child soldier can reflect on
these experiences in a therapeutic setting
and begin to order and make sense of them
and thus ‘render them safe’ (Bruner, 1990).
Analytic process
The transcripts were read a number of times
in order to allow the authors to familiarise
themselves with the texts. The first stage of
the analytic process involved looking for
generic elements of the narrative and noting
them (content). These are features such as
who is included or excluded from the narra-
tive and the role that they appear to play
(e.g. parent as hero, rebels as villains,
abductees as victims), and whether the story
features elements of tragedy, romance,
suspense, and so on. This phase also looks at
temporal features of the narrative, such as
what time point the narrator chooses to start
the narrative.
The second phase looked at the details of
each individual transcript, such as the role
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

taken by the narrator, the allocation of
ingroup/outgroup membership to other
individuals and the way in which the indi-
vidual describes specific events (form).
The final phase involved generating
themes from features of the narrative and
considering the degree to which they
applied to all the transcripts and what
aspects were unique to particular individuals
(traditional cross-sectional analysis).
Findings and discussion
Distance of the narrator
When people are asked to talk biographi-
cally, they usually put themselves at the
centre of their narrative, emphasising their
own role in any description. The first person
singular pronoun ‘I’ is commonly used in
personal accounts, implying personal
agency. This is particularly noticeable in indi-
vidualistic cultures.
However, the use of ‘I’ does not neces-
sarily imply a positive perspective. Individuals
tend to portray themselves as either heroes,
villains (less often) or victims (of circum-
stances or the actions of others). In the child
soldier narratives the children do not portray
themselves as victims. But interestingly,
neither do they portray themselves as heroes
or villains. Instead, there is a distance between
them and the atrocities they describe as well
as an absence of personal agency. They speak
of themselves as unwitting bystanders, power-
less to intervene and powerless to influence
their own destiny or the destiny of others.
Gladys describes the day her mother, father,
brother and neighbour were killed by the
rebels in a detached, matter-of-fact manner.
She uses no emotive language nor describes
any feelings for the rebels who killed her
family. Her subsequent factual, disinterested
account of the most horrific day of her life
suggests child soldiers can become so desensi-
tised to violence that they appear emotionally
numb when recounting traumatic experi-
ences at a later date.
It is important that the distance apparent
between the child soldiers and their narra-
tives is not mistaken for ambivalence or
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Former child soldiers’ traumatic experiences
indifference to the sufferings of others. The
children’s somatic responses during these
horrific events belie this. It is only after the
event, when recounting traumatic incidents,
that the distancing appears. This suggests
that emotional numbing has occurred to
serve as a protective psychological barrier to
prevent the children being repeatedly over-
whelmed by the horrors that happened in
the past.
Traumatic bonding and the identity of combat-
ants versus non-combatants
There is considerable difference in the way
the four children talk about the rebels.
Margaret describes her abductor as a man
with ‘a cruel, aggressive voice’. Later, she
describes the commander as ‘a fat, dark-
skinned, always aggressive man’. Nancy and
Noah’s narratives are somewhat different.
Nancy talks of how ‘The UPDF (Uganda
People’s Defence Forces) soldiers disap-
pointed us and never turned up so no one
was killed that day’ while Noah describes his
commander as a ‘nice man’ and uses the
pronoun ‘we’ to talk about himself and the
rebels: ‘we hadn’t moved far from the IDP
camp when the UPDF attacked us with a heli-
copter… we shot the tail of the helicopter
with an RPG.’ This dysfunctional identifica-
tion with their abductors occurs only in the
children who received military training and
fought with the rebels. This suggests that
military combat, exposure to similar dangers
and having a common enemy can accelerate
a shift in identity over time (Murray, 2002).
This shift was also facilitated by the change
in status of child abductees upon completion
of military training – a status that offered
them access to an omnipotent in-group who
ordered killings and ‘danced, drank beer
and ate goat meat, beef, fowl and pork’ after
battles.
Another example of traumatic bonding
appears in the justifications the child
combatants give for rebel atrocities. Noah
describes how a rape victim ‘was selected
because she was good-looking’ and ‘The
unlucky rebels who didn’t get a woman were
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Paul O’Callaghan, Lesley Storey & Harry Rafferty
the ones who raped the girl’. The use of the
work ‘unlucky’ offers a victim position to the
rapists rather than the girl who was raped as
well as a plausible explanation for their
involvement. Nancy also uses justificatory
language when she speaks of a multiple rape
incident that ended in murder: ‘After the
rape, the rebel wanted the woman all for
himself, but another rebel came and raped
her too. So the first rebel killed the woman
by stabbing her with his bayonet in the back
so that the other rebel could not have sex
with her.’
The fact that combatant child soldiers
were more likely to show evidence of trau-
matic bonding than non-combatants
suggests that a qualitative difference exists
between children who bear arms and
children who do not. The research of Betan-
court, Borisova et al. (2010) confirms this
finding and offers an explanation for this
distinction. They found that child soldiers
who had killed or injured others during the
war showed long-lasting psychological effects
(e.g. hostility) that were not present in other
children who had witnessed similar atrocities
but did not participate in them. Thus, perpe-
trating violence is a significant variable in the
future psychological recovery of former
child soldiers and so psychosocial and
mental health interventions for former child
soldiers must address this issue in their treat-
ment modules.
Evidence of traumatic bonding is also of
concern, for it suggests that a child who has
been brutalised can internalise the behav-
iour and attitudes of the aggressor and
perpetrate the same acts on others. Worse
still, a desire to curry favour and identify
more fully with their captors led to some
abductees egging on the rebels and taking
pleasure in watching the torture they meted
out. Parallels can be drawn with children
who are originally coerced into criminal
gangs (Garbarino et al., 2004) but then start
to perpetuate the same violence that they
themselves were subjected to, resulting in a
spiral escalation of increasingly brutal
attacks.
90
Making sense of the senseless
Time and again in the children’s narratives
they give examples of common conventions
being inverted, social norms being perverted
and the abnormal existing side-by-side with
the normal. This juxtaposition has the effect
of normalising gratuitous violence and
offering a rationale for inexplicable acts of
cruelty.
In Acholi culture the elderly are the
custodians of knowledge and experience
and afforded great respect. Yet, for the
rebels, the elderly are an inconvenience,
slowing their progress through the bush.
Mercy recounts this perversion of cultural
norms in her account of a ‘young boy’ who
was forced to chop an old man’s head off.
Similarly, mothers are honoured in
Acholi culture and older woman are referred
to as ‘Auntie’ – a term of respect. But for the
rebels, women are little more than sex slaves.
There is something deeply disturbing in
Noah’s account of the gang rape of a woman.
During the incident, he runs away and hides,
fearful that he might be forced by the rebel
commanders to rape a woman old enough to
be his mother.
Nancy recounts an incident where the
rebels firstly give a group of distressed
children some sweets – a normal compas-
sionate and nurturing act of an adult towards
a child – before smashing the children’s
heads against a log. Gladys describes in
haunting detail how an unnamed rebel girl
soothes an ill child, gently wraps her in a
white shawl and then shoots her in the head.
This juxtaposition of kindness and unspeak-
able cruelty shows the contradictory and
incomprehensible nature of the events
observed; events the children simply cannot
make sense of and so report as if they are
normal.
The children also attempt to make sense
of the senseless by internalising the irra-
tional and arbitrary code of their kidnap-
pers. Nancy describes how ‘the rebels arrived
at the gate of the hospital and ordered the
watchman to open the gates. He refused and
they shot him once in the chest and he died’.
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

The implication here is that if he had obeyed
the rebels he might have survived. Mercy
tells of a woman who lied to the rebels about
the location of a trading post and is killed as
a result. There are many incidents where
abductees are killed for being too tired to
walk or dropping loot that they were
supposed to carry. In all these descriptions,
the children show little surprise or revulsion
at the rebels’ actions, suggesting their
actions are not ‘senseless’ but logical and
understandable in the context. Rather than
questioning or criticising the rebels, the
children seem to have internalised this new
ethic – an ethic their very lives are
dependent on being able to follow.
Traumatic grief and the impact of a mother’s
death on a child soldier
One of the most disturbing things for the
children was the experience of returning
home to discover that others had died.
Nancy states that: ‘Of all the things I’ve seen
in the bush, the death of my mother upsets
me the most. If I’d come back from the bush
and found my mother alive it would be
better, but as she is dead, life has no meaning
and at the time I also felt I’d like to die.’
Nancy witnessed more massacres than any of
the others and yet traumatic grief caused her
more distress than anything else. A clue as to
why lies in her description of her mother at
the beginning of her narrative. She says,
‘I remember my Mum buying clothes, shoes
and books for me and carrying me when
I was little. One day my Mum bought me
running shoes and a special ready-made
dress for athletics.’ Without her mother to
provide for her, Nancy’s future is bleak and
very uncertain with the risk of hunger,
poverty and school drop-out as daily
concerns.
Contrary to previous research (Mels et
al., 2010), this study found that the death of
a mother was one of the most difficult war
events the children had to cope with. While
it was always thought that the death of a
mother would be a catastrophic loss for any
child, it was unexpected to find that the non-
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Former child soldiers’ traumatic experiences
violent death of one’s mother was more
distressing than massacres, mutilations or
being ordered to kill other people.
The devastating consequences of losing a
mother in conflict situations was observed by
Schaal and Elbert (2006) and Derluyn et al.
(2004). After balancing for the confounding
variables of gender and traumatic exposure,
Schaal and Elbert (2006) found Rwandese
genocide survivors living in child-headed
households were more likely to suffer from
PTSD due to the daily reminders of their
parents’ deaths. Derluyn et al. (2004) noted
that the death of a mother led to higher
avoidance of traumatic reminders among
adolescent child soldiers in northern
Uganda.
Relating the past to the present
Mercy is one of the few who explicitly relates
her experiences with the rebels to her
current life. She refers to the benefits of
therapy, but also talks about having specific
nightmares related to incidents such as
being chased. There is deep poignancy in
her attempts to find life lessons from those
experiences. Having seen a young person
killed by having his neck broken she is
anxious when she sees boys in school grab-
bing each other by the neck, for she knows
how vulnerable the neck is and how easy it is
for someone to be killed.
Implications and future research
directions
The findings of the studies will now be
discussed in the light of their implications
for research and practice in the field, with
suggestions for possible future research.
PTSD measures
When describing the day her family was
killed, Gladys employs somatic descriptors
rather than cognitions or feelings to
describe her reactions. She talks of starting
to ‘shiver’ and ‘headaches and heart-burn’.
She loses control of her bodily functions and
collapses. Her ‘heart was pierced’ and ‘it was
very painful’. She refers to ‘feeling dizzy in
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Paul O’Callaghan, Lesley Storey & Harry Rafferty
my eyes’ and having ‘fearfulness in me’. This
psychosomatic discourse is a recurring
feature of all four children’s trauma narra-
tives.
Thus, current measures of PTSD in war-
affected children need to take account of
these somatic responses in their checklists
and clinical interviews. The Impact of Events
Scale Revised (Weiss & Marmar, 1997) is
widely used to measure post-traumatic stress
symptoms. Yet, it groups all somatic symp-
toms into one single item (hyper-arousal)
and does not ask about shivering, feeling
cold or feeling pain. Instead it focuses on
cognitive responses such as trying not to
think about events, removing images from
one’s memory and dealing with feelings
about the traumatic event. This requires a
meta-cognitive ability (i.e. an ability to be
consciously aware of your mental states) not
described by any of the child soldiers in the
study. This absence questions the validity of
using meta-cognitive items in PTSD
screening tools and suggests that new
research needs to be carried out to design
PTSD measures that reflect more closely the
language children use to describe their
responses to traumatic events.
Use of qualitative research to inform
quantitative studies
This study found that the war experiences of
these four child soldiers were multiple and
varied. However, the breadth of experiences
the children narrate is not always accounted
for in quantitative studies that use war expe-
rience checklists with former child soldiers
from northern Uganda (e.g. Amone P’Olak,
2005; Bayer et al., 2007; Derluyn et al., 2004).
For instance, none of the checklists above
looked at Ugandan children’s experiences of
massacres. Both Derluyn et al. (2004) and
Bayer et al. (2007) omitted to ask about the
witnessing or participating in mutilations, a
key traumatic experience in three of the four
children’s narratives. Thus, any future
research or interventions with child soldiers
needs to have extensive qualitative research
carried out beforehand to know exactly what
92
experiences the children have gone through
and tailor their interventions to address
these specific experiences.
Bereavement modules
This study suggests that ‘childhood trau-
matic grief’, involving both unresolved grief
and PTSD symptoms (Cohen et al., 2006),
must be considered when working with child
soldiers since symptoms can be both long-
lasting and highly distressing. Psychosocial
or mental health interventions for war-
affected children should include a bereave-
ment module to help children come to
terms with the loss of a primary caregiver.
While some trauma treatment protocols
include this module (e.g. Cohen et al., 2006
[Trauma Focused Cognitive Behaviour
Therapy]; Smith et al., 2002 [Teaching
Recovery Techniques]), not all do (e.g.
Schauer et al., 2005 [Narrative Exposure
Therapy]; Shapiro, 2005) [EMDR]). In addi-
tion, humanitarian aid agencies working
with former child soldiers need to be aware
of orphaned children’s increased vulnera-
bility in post-conflict situations and prioritise
these children when providing food, shelter,
health and educational services.
Preparing communities for child soldier
returnees
NGOs responsible for repatriating former
child soldiers must never assume that home-
coming is always a happy experience for the
children. This is because in the children’s
post-release narratives there is little sense
that the present is necessarily a happier
place than the past. This may in part be due
to the length of time spent with the rebels.
For example, Gladys was born in the bush
and spent her first nine years with the rebels.
She says that in 2005 ‘the rebels brought me
back home and left me on the way’. There
was no happy family reunion for her since
her family had all been killed in the bush.
Instead, she was taken to live with ‘some old
lady’ and put to work digging a field in the
cold without any shoes.
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2

Veale and Stavrou (2007) describe the
ambivalence that child soldiers face on their
return back to their local communities while
Annan et al. (2009) noted that 34 per cent of
their sample or 23 LRA abductees reported
having difficulties with their communities on
their return. What is often forgotten is the
plight of ‘returnees’ who have no family or
community to return to. As this study shows,
children who were born in the bush and are
then freed or escape from the rebels may be
sent to foster families and continue a life of
domestic servitude that may be more oppres-
sive than their chores in the bush. This
group of vulnerable children have neither a
family nor a community to return home to
and are at great risk of recruitment back into
the rebels again. This may in turn make it
more difficult for them to view their past in
negative terms when compared with the
present or a perceived similar future. More
longitudinal research is required to follow
returnee children and examine the difficul-
ties and mental health problems they face
upon returning home.
Use of narration to evaluate therapeutic
interventions
This study has shown that therapeutic inter-
ventions may be evaluated by analysing narra-
tives. This analysis reveals that young people’s
process of sense-making can be problematic
or even unhelpful. By comparing pre- and
post-therapeutic narratives, a therapist can
measure the effectiveness of cognitive
restructuring to see if a young person
construes events differently after therapy.
Narratives leave open the possibility of
guiding child soldiers in reconstruing past
traumatic events in alternative and more
constructive ways (Wainryb & Pasupathi,
2009), such as turning ‘survivor guilt’ into
‘survivor purpose and meaning in life’.
Limitations and challenges of the study
The current study has a number of limita-
tions. Findings are based on a small conven-
ience sample of former Ugandan child
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 29 No. 2
Former child soldiers’ traumatic experiences
soldiers and so it is important to find out if
these findings may be generalised to other
child soldiers in Africa or children affected
by war and conflict outside of Africa.
Secondly, all the narratives were translated
into English and some words, phrases or
signs may have been lost in translation. It is
also possible that the interpreter may have
subconsciously nuanced the children’s feed-
back to conform to her understanding of the
situation. This study also lacked multiple
perspectives on war experiences. No parent
or teacher narratives were included for
analysis and the children’s lack of schooling
and cognitive ability may have led to some
inaccurate descriptions, faulty biases and
incorrect memories of events. Lastly, having
the same person carry out both the research
and the therapy may have affected how freely
the children talked about events they had
perpetrated while with the LRA. This role
confusion arose from the fact that the thera-
pist (in his role as researcher) provided a
report to the school on the progress of the
study and may have led to the children not
being as candid as they might have been if
the researcher and therapist were different
people. While recognising these limitations,
we nonetheless feel that this study
contributes to a largely under-studied field
and offers important directions for further
research and humanitarian interventions.
Acknowledgments
This project is indebted to the young people
and teachers of Laroo boarding school in
northern Uganda who were involved in the
study, as well as the support and help of John
McMullen and the advice of John Eakin of
Queen’s University Belfast.
Address for correspondence
Paul O’Callaghan
David Kerr Building,
Queen’s University Belfast,
Belfast BT9 5BP,
Northern Ireland.
Email: pocallaghan02@qub.ac.uk
93
Paul O’Callaghan, Lesley Storey & Harry Rafferty
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