Finding God in Wellworth high school: more legitimations of story-making as research

Abstract

A curious piece of ironic, partially-dramatised auto/ethnography, this paper reflects an ongoing attempt to explore the vapid certainties of my own faith, some of the brittle discomforts of contemporary schooling, and the possibilities of a social science research methodology which can artfully assemble on the same stage belief, empirics and critique. Though actually too didactic to be art – and at the same time too casual to be social science – the paper supposes a set of incidents, based remotely on ‘actual’ events, which bring into collision some crises of faith, of schooling and of research methodology. I imagine that there is also some rather terrible humour to the piece.

Keywords:

• auto/ethnography
• crises of schooling
• crises of methodology
• faith

Notes

1. All names in the article are pseudonyms.

2. Psalm 121:1.

3. Song of Solomon 1:13.

4. Song of Solomon 1:14.

5. Perhaps, in a peculiar inverse relationship to these events is the notice that has been given of intimate relationships between staff and students that are more ‘legitimate’, ‘co-consenting’ and (even) ‘healthy’ (and these scare quotes are intended to express my own, as well as the popular media's scepticism about the claims). There are undoubtedly important connections between these phenomena and those of the current paper, though they are not explored here.

6. http://www.factuk.org/.

7. ‘Falconer backs teachers' rights ‘Katherine Sellgren,.BBC News education reporter, Sunday, May 6, 2007