Newton, Jennifer Anne; (2014) Exploring the usefulness of narrative approaches in educational psychology practice when working with young people who have offended. Doctoral thesis , UCL Institute of Education.

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Abstract

This small-scale, narrative study explores two concepts that aid understanding of the school experiences of young people who have offended. The first focuses on the concept of borders between the multiple worlds that the six young people in this study live within and between (Phelan, Locke-Davidson & Cao-Yu, 1993). This is combined with the concept of complementarity between Illeris’ (2007) learning dimensions (content, incentive and interaction) in order to explore the narrative co-constructions of the school experiences of these young people who have offended, and the strength of their self-identities in relation to learning across time and context. The study draws on Hiles and Čermák’s (2007a) Narrative Oriented Inquiry methodology and employs a three-step analysis of the six interview transcripts in order to carry out a categorical content and form analysis of the interview data. The concepts of borders and learning dimensions were common across the unique stories of the young people interviewed, and enabled the development of a typology of narrative resources, including an Instability Narrative, an Incompatibility Narrative and a Reformation Narrative. A typology renders orderly what initially seems chaotic (Frank, 2013) and can demonstrate how people are enabled to create, strengthen and weaken their learning identities by utilising available narrative resources. This typology provides an alternative method of understanding how young people actively choose, or not, to adopt canonical, institutional narratives within the education and youth justice systems they are part of and in the process of doing so strengthen or weaken their self-identities in relation to learning. The implications of this are discussed in terms of how Educational Psychologists might support professionals working with young people who have offended in developing an active approach to listening to the complex, eco-systemic narrative threads running through the stories they tell of their experiences, in order to facilitate strengthened learning identity and engagement in learning.

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