Today I attended this training session in Birmingham. It was a pleasant day, I met interesting people, all eager to better their research practices and to share critical thinking around Inclusiveness. It was a shame that Lisa, one of the presenters and a co-researcher who has learning difficulties, could not attend as she was unwell.…

My research involved visual metaphors and visual fiction, so one day I was discussing my methodology with Kalina, and she recommended Persepolis, as this is a visual novel. At the time I purchased the book, had a quick browsing but could not spend much time reading it. However, I was pretty impressed with what I…

ALVES, R. (2000) Por uma Educação Romântica: Brevíssimos exercícios de imortalidade, Vila Nova de Famalicão: Centro de Formação Camilo Castelo Branco. BALL, S. (1990) Politics and Policy Making in Education, London: Toutledge. BRUNER, J. (1983) Child’s Talk: Learning to Use Language, New York: Norton. CLANDININ, D. J. & CONNELLY, F. M. (2000) Narrative Inquiry: Experience and Story in Qualitative Research, The…

        Personal account: autobiography as an emancipatory learning experience   Once upon a time I learned that “it is only possible to think and learn what it is also possible to talk about” (Alves, 2000, p. 100). Based on a then recent belief that “lives are lived through time but made intelligible through narrative” (Erben, 2000, p.…

  Education and narrative share some commonalities in principles and means, which I regarded as intersections. In order to clarify my interpretation of these intersections, they are discussed individually, contrasting their relation to educative process and to narrative. Table 1 is an attempt to present these intersections at a glance. Figure 1: Synthesis of the…

Narrative inquiry is recognised as a feasible approach to qualitative research, while narrative and storytelling have been considered pedagogical tools (Coulter et al., 2007), therefore, the existence of intersections or similarities are not dubious or new, and what I present in the following sections is my perception of the encounter of narrative with education.        …

  The above subtitle is regarded to be authored by a female correspondent commenting on the classical book Émile (Rousseau, 1961, p. vii). The comment may be seen as a sort of critique or as evidence that Émile was not a thesis on education, echoing what Rousseau states in the Preface: “this is not so…

ABSTRACT: This paper contrasts concepts of education and narrative, taking into account a personal perspective, stressing the similarities between both, through the analysis of principles that can be argued as fundamentals of both education and narrative, which are labelled here as ‘intersections’, then the intersections are analysed in contrast with educational research. This essay intends to…

  (2008) Obituary – Benazir Bhutto – Once Pakistan’s great hope. The economist, 386, 74.   APPIGNANESI, L. (2005) Simone De Beauvoir (Life & Times), London, Haus Publishing.   BEAUVOIR, S. D. (1959) Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, Cleveland, World Pub. Co.   BEAUVOIR, S. D. (1962) The Prime of Life, Cleveland, World Pub. Co.  …

Looking at obituaries and other sources   Obituary is a popular form of life writing which encompasses the temporality of a life by its end. It is “undoubtedly the most widely disseminated life-writing genre and thus the one most widely consumed by the general public” (Couser, 2004, p.3) The obituary is a retrospective life story…

Both Simone and Benazir call themselves “daughter” in the title of their autobiographies (REF, REF), which can be inferred as an effect of the power of the parental impact in their life and in their self-image. Simone lived enough to write other versions of her own life in new autobiographies (Beauvoir, 1962, Beauvoir, 1965, Beauvoir,…

  In the name of the father Apart from the fact that Evelyn, Simone and Benazir had their pioneering contribution to women’s history, a positive relationship with the original family is another commonality in their lives, especially the support of the father. Evelyn’s father was not an enthusiast about art but was very supportive, providing her…