Engaging with two young people who are looked after in local authority care and who have experienced exclusion from school: co-constructing narratives

The aim of this research was to explore narratives co-constructed with two young people who were looked after in local authority care and who had experienced school exclusion. Dominant narratives within the research literature surrounding looked after children were identified as those of underachievement, social exclusion and disadvantage. Statistically, school exclusion is one measure in which looked after children are over-represented and previous research has developed our understanding of the processes by which looked after young people come to be excluded from school. By co-constructing and exploring rich and detailed narratives, this study extends and contributes to previous research through developing an insight into the complexities of these two care-experienced young people’s stories. Adopting a social constructionist approach, I used narrative interviewing to facilitate the co-construction of narratives with two participants. These were reflected upon and analysed by adapting Emerson and Frosh’s (2009) development of Gee’s (1991) micro and macro and analytic tools to privilege participants’ meanings within a thematic analysis. This enabled me to explore our co-constructed narratives and how the young people were positioned within these. I discussed how I interpreted their stories to both construct narratives which dominate the research literature, and to resist these and construct contradictions and counter-narratives. I acknowledge that I had a powerful influence within the research process, both through the design and implementation of the research and through my interpretations of the narratives. I concluded the thesis by discussing the implications of this study for my practice and the educational psychology profession, specifically that a narrative approach has much to offer the practising psychologist.