Long story … Beyond ‘technologies’ of knowing in case study work with permanently excluded young people

Abstract

This paper draws on case study research with Lee who had been permanently excluded from an urban secondary school in England. It begins with two extended extracts from the case study in order to illustrate the challenges the principal researcher, Deon, faced in the day‐to‐day conduct of the work. The section that follows engages in a reflexive consideration of these ‘discomforts’ in research. The discussion interlaces post‐structural analysis of identities, and how these relate to being excluded from school, with indications about methodology. The paper ends with a call for ethnographic study in educational/social research and in the study of exclusion.

Keywords:

• school exclusions
• case study
• silences
• ethnography

Acknowledgements

With thanks to Lee, everyone at St. John’s and Ian Stronach.

Notes

1. The term ‘social exclusion’ is used here to indicate both the income inequality of most families in this study and other forms of exclusion that are usually linked to poverty (Hirsch 2006) such as poor housing conditions, high crime environments, a lack of employment, and physical and mental health problems (Milbourne 2002). Like Macrae et al. (2003), we wish any definition of social exclusion to ‘incorporate a challenge to those who exclude’ such that the ‘problem’ is not individualised and takes into account ‘causes located at policy and institutional level’ (96). We are also aware that the language of social exclusion masks ‘local experiences of inequality and also obscures disparate experiences’ (Milbourne 2002, 288).

2. All names are pseudonyms.