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NARRATIVE RESEARCH: POLITICAL ISSUES AND IMPLICATIONS

FREEMA ELBAZ-LUWISCH
University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

Abstract--The conduct of narrative research gives rise to a range of political issues which include
the validation of narrative knowledge, the relationships of power and authority among research
participants, and the distinction between the public and private domains. In this article three
issues will be examined: The politics of research in a "narrative" mode which challenges traditional
research; issues of power that arise in collaborative research relationships; and the political impli-
cations of studying the private domain of life story and autobiography. Copyright © 1997 Elsevier
Science Ltd

Introduction research. Finally, I thought about what makes

:In considering the different ways in which the
adjective "political" comes to qualify the
strand of inquiry into teaching and the knowl-
edge of teachers often referred to as "narrative
research," I found myself caught up in a web
of diverse, interrelated questions and issues.
Looking at the "political" as concerning ques-
tions of power, authority and legitimacy, I
identified a series of methodological and episte-
mological issues about what narrative research
is, how it is conducted, what its purposes are,
how narrative knowledge is validated and what
the roles and responsibilities of the various
participants are. Each of these issues gave rise
to questions that have political implications.
For example, I wondered about who has the
authority to legitimate new varieties or concep-
tualizations of knowledge; about how power is
used and shared in interviews and other
research activities; about the nature and exis-
tence of such entities as subjects and objects,
and who makes the distinction between them,
granting equality or supremacy to one or the
other; about how new ways of understanding
human nature gain legitimacy; about how the
distinction between public and private is
currently changing, and what the implications
are for society, and for social and educational
a good story, and whose tastes and standards
are authorized to make this judgment. In
short, the political appeared to impinge on
narrative research from m a n y different angles.
Narrative research makes use of personal
materials such as life story, conversation and
personal writing; of necessity these invite reflec-
tion and reflexivity (Connelly & Clandinin,
1990). Reflection brings the narrative
researcher up against the edges of the work,
and requires him or her to examine the context
within which the research is carried out and its
broader implications. Both the researcher and
the teachers begin to look at things they might
not have noticed before: Some of their own
values and commitments, the constraints of the
school system, collegial relationships, the ways
that evaluation and other teaching practices
favour some students over others, and so on.
These matters are not necessarily political in
themselves, but all of them have political
aspects; in addition, the conduct of narrative
research in itself highlights the political because
it is research "against the grain" within the
academic world, challenging the dominance of
more established modes of inquiry.
In attempting to sort out the political issues
arising from narrative study of teaching, I will
pay special attention to some of the epistemolo-

75
76 FREEMA ELBAZ-LUWISCH
gical assumptions of narrative research, which
seem to have political implications. Throughout
this analysis, I will try to learn from personal
examples, in particular from the small and
detailed practical arrangements which are
involved in doing narrative research, in
working with teachers, and in teaching others
to conduct narrative research. Looking at the
details of our everyday work on narrative
(itself a politically-motivated strategy deriving
in part from feminist research), we find that
expression is given to political values and
commitments in many and often unexpected
ways. I will look at three main issues: First, I
will consider the fact that narrative research
rests heavily upon a new conceptualization of
knowledge and research, a "new paradigm":
what Bruner (1986) has referred to as "narra-
tive knowing" as distinct from "paradigmatic
knowing." Second, the fact that much narrative
inquiry is conducted collaboratively will be
considered. Finally, narrative knowing rests on
a new understanding of subjectivity, and an
attempt to redraw the distinction between
public and private, and the political implica-
tions of these changes for the study of teaching
will be explored.
Narrative Inquiry as Research "Against the
Grain"
In a recent analysis, Polkinghorne (1995)
distinguishes between two types of narrative
research. One is "analysis of narratives," which
is research in the paradigmatic (Bruner, 1986)
mode, usually qualitative, which collects and
analyzes some form of narratives, for example
life stories of a particular ethnic or occupa-
tional group, in order to arrive at generaliza-
tions about the group being studied. The
second type is "narrative analysis," which is
research in the narrative mode, in which the
researcher studies particular cases, either of
individuals or of "bounded systems," by
collecting material, usually descriptions of
events, and from them producing storied
accounts which render the data meaningful.
The former type of narrative research has a
fairly long tradition in social science, whereas
the latter is both more recent and poses a more
radical challenge to acceped forms of inquiry.
In my experience the distinction drawn by
Polkinghorne does not always hold; for
example in working with an individual teacher
I am particularly interested in the "career
story" which can be constructed from the
teacher' account of her work, but I am equally
interested in particular stories the teacher
herself may tell, because the analysis (often
literary or structural) of these smaller stories
provides clues to the creation of the "career
story." Also, in recent work with teachers who
are immigrants I have been interested in the
particular stories of individuals but have also
given thought to whether or not general
"types" of story can be told about the experi-
ence of teachers immigrating to a new culture.
Nevertheless, Polkinghorne's analysis is very
useful insofar as he shows two of the para-
meters clearly operating in the elaboration of
narrative research. One parameter is research
methodology: Polkinghorne suggests that both
types of narrative work are qualitative (though
different), but this leaves open the question
whether quantitative methods might sometimes
be appropriate and productive. The second
parameter is that of outcome: In analysis of
narratives, the desired outcome is generaliza-
tions about a particular phenomenon based on
the narratives generated by or about that
phenomenon; in narrative analysis the desired
outcome is not a generalization but a narrative
which renders clear the meanings inherent in
or generated by a particular subject. Narrative
analysis as Polkinghorne describes it will be of
primary interest here, because this mode of
work gives rise to more concerns of a political
nature: Narrative researchers often work on a
small-scale, do not aspire to generalization in
the usual sense, nor do they promise immediate
practical benefits; yet they make strong claims
for the authenticity and power of narrative
research. They aspire to true collaboration and
to the giving of voice to participants, yet still
work from within traditional academic struc-
tures which value individuality, originality and
ownership of intellectual products. These para-
doxical circumstances give rise to confrontation
with traditional modes of research.
In addition to the quantitative/qualitative
parameter (which, at least in North America,
appears no longer to incite the drawing of
swords), and the narrative/paradigmatic para-
 Narrative Research
meter (which has yet to be fully understood), I
wish to introduce one additional dimension on
which narrative research should be viewed:
The relationship between theory and practice.
The way this relationship is conceived is one of
the central commitments of any educational
researcher (Clandinin & Connelly, 1987); hence
looking at the way this issue is treated can help
to further unpack some of the differences
among various understandings of narrative
and their political implications.
Since Dewey (1904), the relationship between
theory and practice has been much discussed by
educators. I find most helpful the treatment by
McKeon (1952) who spelled out different ways
of conceptualizing the connection between, in
his terms, philosophy and action. In what he
terms the "logistic" method, theory is seen to
direct practice; in the "problematic" method,
practice drives the development of theory to
the solution of practical problems; and in the
"dialectic" method, theory and practice are
seen as interrelated and mutually influencing
one another. Each of these different conceptua-
lisations of the theory/practice relationship has
implications for the kinds of theories one
values, the perceived roles of practitioners vis-
a-vis academics, and for the way that narrative
research will be understood. Connelly and
Clandinin (1987) drew on McKeon's analysis
in a discussion of the "personal" aspects of
studies of teaching. I will examine some of the
implications of McKeon's analysis for an
understanding of the political aspects of narra-
tive research; how we understand the personal
is, of course, one of those aspects.
Narrative analysis constitutes a challenge to
the prevailing logistic view which underlies the
technical rationality of most educational
research and development: In the background
of narrative work is a critique of top-down
curriculum development and of process-
product research on teaching. Like any new
methodology competing for attention and
acceptance, narrative research encounters diffi-
culties; the nature of the difficulties will be
heavily influenced by social and cultural
context. In North America, the number of
researchers doing narrative work seems to
have reached a "critical mass," and narrative
researchers no longer need to argue for the
legitimacy of their methods with every new
77
study. In smaller countries the academic
community is likely to be more cautious and
conservative. In Israel, for example, narrative
work is viewed with great interest, particularly
among researchers who are close to the schools;
nevertheless the question, "Yes, but is it
research?" is still raised frequently.
One of the first, and seemingly least proble-
matic, assumptions of narrative research, has
been the idea that it was important to have an
understanding of teaching from an "emic"
perspective, knowledge of teaching from the
inside rather than knowledge about teaching
from the vantage point of an observer. On this
ethnographic understanding of narrative,
teachers become the informants of the
researcher who interviews, observes, probes
and puts together an interpretation of what is
going on in a given act of teaching and then
validates this interpretation with the informant.
This way of seeing the research relationship
offers valuable insights (Gudmundsdottir,
1992). However, so far what the researcher is
doing can be assimilated to a "logistic" concep-
tualization: The concern is to develop a theore-
tical understanding of teaching which can be
validated, and which will be useful in guiding
educational practice. Much of the work on
"pedagogical content knowledge" has been of
this kind, beginning from the assumption that
"insider knowledge" was needed to really
understand teaching, with the intent to later
use that knowledge to improve teaching
(Shulman, 1987). In this context it makes sense
that narratives of teaching will often be the
stories of expert teachers, told for novices to
learn from, and for researchers and teacher
educators to understand how teachers develop
their knowledge. For those expert teachers
whose stories are told by researchers in this
vein of narrative work, the process of working
with the researcher may well be empowering in
making public their usually unsung tales of
accomplishment.
Another assumption has been that, because
"top-down" prescriptions have been unsuc-
cessful in improving teaching, educational prac-
tice can only be changed from inside, by
practitioners working together, often with the
help of researchers. This assumption leads to a
"problematic" view of the theory/practice rela-
tionship according to which knowledge about
78 FREEMA ELBAZ-LUWISCH
teaching will be generated starting from the
impetus of practitioners to share and develop
their own understanding of their work; the
knowledge developed will be largely ad hoc
and pragmatic, and may not be readily general-
izable. In such a situation, teachers' narratives
may initially be "war stories," accounts of diffi-
culties in practice and of those problematic
situations which generate the motivation to
change. Sometimes just telling the stories is
itself a coping mechanism that may cut short
the impetus towards change; as Kainan's work
(Kainan, 1994), for example, demonstrates,
much of the spontaneous storytelling of
teachers in staffrooms works toward the main-
tenance of teacher power in a status-quo situa-
tion.
A third assumption, which seems to build on
the previous two (in an overly neat and idea-
lized history of the development of narrative
research) is that reflective teaching and school-
based development, by themselves, will be as
unsuccessful in bringing about sustained
change in educational practice as were other
top-down theoretically-driven efforts. This has
led some researchers to adopt a dialectic view
of the theory/practice relationship in which
there is a continuing discussion between educa-
tional practitioners and researchers: A dialogue
in which educational theories find a place in
interaction with the personal narratives of
schooling told by teachers, administrators and
pupils (Clandinin & Connelly, 1987). Within
this conceptualization the purpose of narrative
research is not to develop knowledge that can
be used to change practice (logistic), nor to
work out personal and idiosyncratic solutions
to problems in the field (problematic) though
each of these might be by-products of narrative
research, but to gain increased understanding
of the multitude of meanings that are created
by practitioners and by researchers working
together, and to thereby empower all the parti-
cipants in the process. This empowerment, in
turn, will inevitably bring about changes in
schooling, but the changes cannot be foreseen
in advance, and are not in themselves goals of
the narrative process.
This search for a different kind of knowl-
edge, knowledge which empowers rather than
making possible prediction and control, is a
significant reconceptualization of the purpose
of educational research. From a political
perspective, it amounts to a relinquishing of
the power traditionally claimed by educational
researchers to give advice and influence deci-
sion-making on the basis of warranted knowl-
edge which only they possess. It is not easy to
give up power; but narrative researchers have
not given it up so much as pointed to the illu-
sory nature of the power of traditional
research. This places the narrative researcher
at odds with many of his or her colleagues.
The criticism that research on teachers' knowl-
edge amounts to a celebration of the status
quo, a glorification of whatever teachers
happen to be doing rather than a search for
best practice, may be, at least in part, a
response to this situation.
Furthermore, narrative research implies not
only an alternative way of acquiring knowledge
but also constitutes an alternative way of
conceptualizing human nature. The idea that
we live our lives as we tell our stories puts into
question many psychological formulations of
human nature because it implies that person-
ality is much more dynamic and open than
many theories allow, is always in interaction
with the social and cultural stories available to
us, and academics don't know more than
ordinary people do about their own stories. All
of this rests on a rethinking of the role of
psychology (Sarbin, 1986; Bruner, 1986) and,
perhaps more importantly, requires us to rede-
fine our understanding of the terms objectivity
and subjectivity (Barone, 1992; Eisner, 1992).
Narrative Inquiry as Collaboration
If we pursue this understanding of narrative
research as dialectical, we see that it also refi-
gures the working connection between teachers
and researchers, clearly calling for collaborative
work: Since "practice, theory and ideal are inse-
parable in dialectic" (McKeon, 1952, p. 90), the
division of labour in which researchers provide
the theoretical basis and analytic framework,
while practitioners bring the empirical data
about teaching, can no longer be maintained.
Practitioners are seen as having knowledge
that may be in many forms: Embodied in their
actions in the classroom, expressed by their
metaphors about teaching and their stories of
 Narrative Research
events; this knowledge is no less valuable than
the theoretic formulations of the researchers.
Likewise, the researcher contributes to educa-
tional practice by virtue of his or her presence
in the setting as an observer, by virtue of ques-
tions asked, of active listening in interviews,
and through participation in the mutual process
of elaborating the stories of all the participants
to the process. This, admittedly, is an idealized
account of dialectic method: True collaboration
is extremely difficult, and the status differential
between teachers and university researchers
(each of whom has quite different purposes
and rewards for participating in research)
always plays a role. Much has been written
about the problems and pitfalls of collaborative
research (e.g. Clandinin & Connelly, 1988). The
development of a collaborative relationship
takes time, and coming to a mutually illumi-
nating rendition of a teacher's story can be a
long process whose outcome is uncertain.
In the past year, I have watched the frustra-
tions of students taking part in undergraduate
and graduate courses in teachers' knowledge
and narrative research, when the teachers they
were interviewing suddenly became unable or
unwilling to continue, or insisted on making
major deletions in the interview transcript; this
doesn't happen very often, just often enough
to bring home the risks of doing such work,
and the personal cost of collaboration for the
researcher. Another difficulty with collabora-
tion is highlighted by the experience of Anat
and Yael, two students who had become
friendly while studying in the same department.
Anat, an experienced teacher completing her
BA, interviewed Yael who was in the teacher
training program. The two women had very
different views on religion and consequently
quite different lifestyles. These differences had
not interfered with their friendship, but when
Anat interviewed Yael she discovered that the
differences went deeper than previously
realized, and was troubled by some of Yael's
views on education. Unwilling to discuss these
differences openly with Yael for fear it would
affect their relationship, Anat was unable to
transform the work into a fully collaborative
product. This is another twist on the personal
cost of narrative research.
The context in which collaborative work is
undertaken influences the way that the work
79
will be understood. While collaborative
learning in classrooms has earned recognition
as a teaching approach (Sharan, Hare, Webb,
& Hertz-Lazarowitz, 1980), in the academic
context the norms of individualism, competi-
tion and independent thought still hold sway.
Too much collaborative work is regarded as
problematic on an academic curriculum vitae,
for example. In university teaching there is (at
least in the Israeli context) still a tendency to
see collaborative assignments as a way to make
it easier for students, and for instructors:
When numbers of students rose in my univer-
sity in recent years, encouraging students to do
research seminar papers in pairs was suggested
as a way of easing the load. I have always
encouraged students to work collaboratively,
explaining that having different perspectives
and the possibility of checking interpretations
are assets to the work. But I have learned that
it isn't enough to just tell students this: I have
to make provision for them to interpret inter-
view transcripts separately and then make
comparisons, and to manipulate them a bit so
they experience working with colleagues they
didn't know before the course. The desire for
efficiency (and teachers are seriously pressed
for time, especially those who are also studying)
leads them to value working with a familiar
colleague so the work will go smoothly with
few disagreements; the value of different
perspectives may be appreciated in theory, but
in practice it often becomes an obstacle. Some
of the best work I have seen, however, has
been done by pairs of students who have
forged a special, creative intellectual partner-
ship: They work together, study together, do
papers together and support one another in the
exciting if not always easy processes of personal
and professional development. Most of these
pairs, not surprisingly, are women. It seems
that to be truly involved in one's personal and
professional development within a school
setting also goes against the grain, and the
support of a trusted friend and colleague
makes a big difference. I suggest that the ways
we understand the different relationships
encountered in our research is a facet of the
political dimension of narrative work, as these
relationships are shaped not merely by the
needs of the individuals doing the work but by
intellectual norms of the academic community
80 FREEMA ELBAZ-LUWISCH
and the nature of the power structure which
underpins these norms.
Hargreaves (1996) has recently expressed a
number of concerns about the representation
of teachers' voices in the research literature.
One concern (earlier pointed to by Clark,
1986) is that much of the research has tended
to Joe with those well-meaning, successful and
articulate middle-class teachers who are most
like the researchers who work with them;
teachers from minority groups, teachers whose
opinions are far from the mainstream, even
objectionable, and just plain unsuccessful
teachers, are all underrepresented, tending to
produce an idealized or romanticized portrait
of teaching according to Hargreaves. It is
important to recall in this connection that to
the extent that narrative research aims to be
collaborative, it is understandable that we
choose to work with those teachers with whom
we feel there is a likelihood of developing good
working relationships. Being interviewed,
narrating one's life story and opening up one's
classroom by telling stories about one's practice
are challenging activities to take part in, and
will be successful for both parties only if under-
taken in an atmosphere of cooperation and
trust. Furthermore, choosing whom to work
with and how to present the teachers' narratives
raises the conflict between producing knowl-
edge "about" teaching, and producing knowl-
edge "with" teachers: We know that if you
want to work with people and for change, you
have to begin from their strengths, from a posi-
tive point of view. The researcher has to
balance the desire for inclusiveness against
complex pragmatic and interpersonal consid-
erations. This may create a view of the teacher
that appears idealized; it does not necessarily
follow that the teachers' voices have been
"selectively appropriated." In large-scale
research projects which collect many teacher
accounts and present them anonymously, it is
relatively easy to include diverse voices,
including negative ones which are no less
important to hear and learn from than the
more exemplary voices. However, in narrative
work which focuses on individuals, the concern
for trust and fairness to the teachers with
whom one works must be the first priority.
Collaboration here is the source of the problem,
but is also its solution: If we work together in a
setting where the practices of all participants,
including those of the academic researchers,
are open to scrutiny and criticism, we are more
likely to be able to express a diversity of
voices. Another solution might be to plan
research projects which are themselves colla-
borations among researchers with diverse
perspectives, balancing the close narrative
analysis of a small number of instances with
the "analysis of narratives" over a larger range
of cases.
One example of this is the work of Gitlin et
al. (1992), who developed a conception of
"educative research" in which teachers collabo-
rated with an academic in research which gives
an important place to the narratives of
teachers. Still, even here the researcher's voice
is somewhat louder and clearer than those of
the teachers; the latter often speak collectively,
and the collaborative work they undertake is
within the context of an institution of higher
education where they are studying for a
degree. Collaborative work as part of the
everyday practice of teaching is much more
difficult to carry out. Goodson (1995) points
to the limitation of collaborative work on
narrative which stops short: His concern is
that the presentation of a life story (even if it
succeeds in giving expression to the previously
silenced voices of minority or non-mainstream
teachers) remains in the domain of the parti-
cular and the specific, and provides no
purchase on our understanding of the struc-
tures of power and domination in schooling.
He argues convincingly that stories should
provide the starting point for an ongoing
process of collaboration in which we jointly
interrogate those structures and elaborate a
"theory of context."
Narrative Inquiry as Trespassing in the Private
Domain
It seems that dialectically conceived research
invites personal narrative; why should this be
so? In a logistic view, the teacher's accomplish-
ments and expertise are being focussed upon,
and it is understandable that the teacher feels
called upon to speak as an exemplar, as a repre-
sentative of and to other teachers, and thus to
deemhasize the more personal aspects of the
 Narrative Research
story. In a problematic view the focus is on the
problem to be solved, and giving account of
personal matters may be seen as self-indulgent.
In narrative research understood as a dialectical
process in which teachers and researchers learn
together about the life of the classroom, it is
both an outcome and a condition of the matters
discussed above that narrative method redraws
the distinction between public and private,
holding that the materials of one's personal life
are essential to an understanding of one's
work, and particularly so when one's life and
work are concerned with education (Pinar,
1994). All who were trained never to use the
first person singular in academic writing can
appreciate the difficulties involved in this
change; we have invested a lot of energy in
making a clear distinction between our personal
and professional knowledge, and in keeping our
personal stories out of the picture. Further,
since all of us have private lives and are equal
in this respect, the focus on the personal is yet
another respect in which academics must relin-
quish their power over practitioners. Finally,
as researchers in a field which is unsure of its
status in the academy, we risk ridicule and deli-
gitimation in bringing personal materials into
the scientific endeavour. Recently I have been
working on the stories of immigrant teachers;
this project was a long time in the formulation,
because I somehow "forgot" that I too was an
immigrant and it took me time to realize that
my own story needed to be heard in this work.
Another concern about immersing ourselves in
the personal is explored by Goodson (1995) (p.
90) who looks at the recent spate of stories, anec-
dotes and personal material flooding the media;
he argues that "in the cultural logic of late capit-
alism, the life story represents a form of cultural
apparatus that accompanies an aggrandising
state and market system," and his fear is that we
are approaching "the closure of cultural contesta-
tion as evidenced in theoretical and critical
discourse," with a decontextualized and ulti-
mately disempowering discourse of stories about
local practice taking the place of theory. This
warning is important, but in our search for
models of personal writing we are not confined
to the evening news and popular magazines.
Barone (1995) offers several examples of "eman-
cipatory-minded stories" which are of different
genres from the novelistic to the journalistic; all
81
of them, for him, worked to "demystify and
transform facets of the selves of the disenfran-
chised" (p. 69). Personally I take inspiration
from a number of writers: Barone (1989) tells of
his personal encounter with a "student-at-risk."
Steedman (1986) tells the story of her mother's
life, focussing on the secrets which as a child she
knew about from hints and awkward silences,
and using these secrets to explore the meaning of
working-class life and aspirations. Doll (1995)
and hooks (1994) each tell of the development of
their careers in academia and of their intellectual
and personal development inside, outside and
against the academy. In each case the author's
personal story is integral to the matters at hand,
but what is being recounted is no longer the pat,
insulated account of an isolated self.' Each of
these authors has searched for ways to present
the self-in-relation and the self-in-opposition.
But they offer no formulas; how exactly to give
voice to personal stories is a matter that has to
be figured out "from scratch" each time.
Part of this process of learning to reconceive
the self as socially constructed involves a
collapse of the distinction between the ordinary
and the extraordinary in autobiography. Classi-
cally, autobiography used to be the story of
exceptional lives, lives of accomplishment (and
often still is: e.g. Bateson, 1989); but now
ordinary life stories are also being written.
Underlying this move is the idea, which Bruner
has so clearly expressed, that every life is an
attempt to put together a convincing and mean-
ingful story within given constraints. The lives
of "ordinary" people are, in this sense, just as
potentially illuminating as the lives of those
who have attained some form of externally-
defined greatness (Denzin, 1989)--a radical
notion which challenges liberal views of
progress and accomplishment. Also useful in
this context is the idea that women's life stories
are typically cyclical rather than linear, finding
meaning in the repetition of familiar family
patterns and milestones rather than in attaining
external achievement (Straw & Elliot, 1989).
Clearly it is essential that the narrative be true
to the sense of meaning which the teller puts
into the story, not imposing on it external
criteria of meaningfulness.
Over the last several years I have worked at
teaching students how to conduct narrative
research. Many of them have been excited by
82 FREEMA ELBAZ-LUWISCH
the idea o f really coming to know a teacher's
life-world, and they have taken seriously my
suggestion that they interview only teachers in
w h o m they are truly interested. They have
collected wonderful material, which gives us a
continually growing appreciation for the
intrinsic interest o f the lives and w o r k o f
teachers. In the interviews, often a privileged
relationship develops; the teacher uses the inter-
view as a place to discuss experiences which he
or she m a y not be prepared to make public.
Nevertheless, m a n y o f the teachers have given
permission to make use o f their material anon-
ymously. It is a considerable challenge to turn
a unique and colourful life story into publish-
able material (Zeller, 1995), but the challenge
is even greater when one must constantly
attend to the protection o f anonymity. One
case that comes to mind involves a teacher
who belongs to a particular small minority
group; the story o f her early experience learning
several languages would immediately identify
her. But the way that multiple and contested
languages shaped the development o f a strong
and independent educator is precisely what
makes this case both fascinating and valuable.
In another instance, a teacher t o o k over from
a predecessor who was fired; this story, and
how it was told (reluctantly but deliberately)
was important to learning about the indivi-
dual's educational values. W h a t we might learn
from these cases is that the stories are most
instructive and revealing when they are most
personal, and often when the owners o f the
stories are most vulnerable. As researchers, we
cannot easily protect them: In fact, it is
precisely in wishing to treat them as equals
that we expose them to risk. These are instances
in which fictionalizing could be helpful as one
way o f enabling these stories to be told, but
this solution is both technically and m e t h o d o l o -
gically difficult.
B y W a y o f Conclusion...
I invite the reader to imagine the political
dimension o f narrative as a set o f clothing:
Different researchers wear their politics in
different ways. F o r some, the political commit-
ments are stitched into the research; these
researchers, one might say, wear their politics
as work clothes, a taken-for granted part o f
what they need to get the job done. F o r others,
the political commitments o f the research are
like " S u n d a y best": We trot out our intentions
to work collaboratively and empower teachers,
to show them o f f - - w e are p r o u d of our
commitments but they d o n ' t always function
well in the everyday world. A n o t h e r way o f
wearing the politics o f one's research, with
which I personally am familiar, is as travelling
clothes: Those reasonably attractive, comfor-
table, multipurpose clothes that are g o o d for
long trips across time zones and climates.
These are clothes I like to wear, I feel g o o d in
them when I am abroad, but they look odd,
maybe even attract stares when w o r n at home.
Political commitments can make up other
kinds o f clothes too: The a p r o n to keep one
from getting dirty, the uniform to signal one's
belonging to a group. I like the m e t a p h o r o f
clothing for talking about our political commit-
ments in research for several reasons: We all
have them, they are quite varied and subject to
changing fashions, they say a lot about who
we are, we'd feel cold and subject to drafts
without them, and underneath them we are
more alike than different.
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