Developing Narrative Theory: life histories and personal representation
Narrativity, Learning and Flexibility: towards the narrative future
Figure 3 Armchair elaborators
Narrativity
- High narrativity and reflexivity.
- Ongoing personalized elaboration and personal narrative activity.
- This group aspires to independence and ‘becoming’, but are held back in their stories at least by original scripting or by generalized but poorly formulated visions such as: ‘the independent rebel’, ‘the battling woman’.
- Inability to delineate courses of action.
- Low self-confidence and self-belief.
- Social position anomalous – sense of rebelliousness and reinterpretation. Some movement between groups.
- Flexibility of response and repositioning. Considerable narrative movement, but a sense of unelaborated drift or generalized discontent because of lack of agency.
Learning styles
- Learning is uncoupled from any personalized elaboration.
- Learning not related to new courses of action or the development of new identity projects.
- Learning is instrumental, but is used for delivering other people’s plans – often, paradoxically, other people from whom autonomy is sought.
- In general, schooling was an unsatisfactory, although considerable commitment to personal projects or specialisms was evidenced. Little enjoyment of school learning and in some senses positive dislike.
- Personal development. In most cases still locked at an early stage of the process of ‘becoming somebody’
