In this article, I explore laughter as a form of multimodal play in which adolescents' engage across contexts and in various configurations. With a few recent exceptions, a focus on unscripted play is largely missing from ongoing research and discussion about the education of adolescents. Whereas the space to play has been vitally important to the…

In this paper I analyze the role of hindsight in narrative configuration. Configuration means the grasping together of disparate elements into a coherent whole. I argue that hindsight, importantly, brings the temporal constraints on what we can know to the fore, but is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, hindsight is an indispensable tool both…

This article explores how it might be possible to engage in world music ethically. I examine ways that traditional engagements can be problematic in order to push towards new possibilities for encounters and engagement. I begin by considering my own experience with world music. Moving to the theoretical, I consider "world music" study…

Carolyn Ellis states, "autoethnography shows struggle, passion, embodied life, and the collaborative creation of sense-making... [it] wants the reader to care, to feel, to empathize, and to do something, to act" (Ellis & Bochner, 2006, p. 433). This autoethnography describes one new mother's struggles to complete her doctoral program of study…

In this study, we told the story of a Kenyan couple, B. and F., who has left Kenya and moved to Southern California. We followed a narrative inquiry framework, using Clandinin and Connelly's (2000) guidelines. We delineated core components of narrative inquiry research, as well as related the journey of B. and F., who have created dual lives in…

Over the last few decades there has been a strong narrative "turn" within the humanities and social sciences in general and educational studies in particular. Especially Jerome Bruner's theory of narrative as a specific "mode of knowing" was very important for this growing body of work. To understand how the narrative mode works Bruner proposes to…

In this article, we review, on three grounds, the nature of the life story. First, we evaluate the appropriateness of the proposal that the life story emerges in adolescence (the time of the traditional identity crisis). Second, we examine the relation between big stories (of which the life story is one) and small stories. Finally, we consider…

The generation of brand new data seems to be an unwritten rule of much social research and the career field is no exception. However, in these austere economic times, we need to urgently reconsider our research norms and to think of creative ways of doing more for less. We would argue that given the "ordinariness" of the career concept…

This article describes and enacts a process of autobiographical inquiry, auto/archeology, which seeks to address problematic confluences of memory and identity in reconstructing one's historical narrative. Drawing on curriculum theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis, the author describes a process of excavation in which understandings of a prior…

Whereas research on children's well-being in education has largely focused on adult perspectives rather than on children's understandings, recent scholarship argues for a stronger focus on children's experience and perceptions of their own well-being. Adopting a narrative approach, this article puts children's stories centre stage as we explore a…

This article highlights the discourses of children and leisure-time pedagogues regarding ways the activity at two different Swedish school-age educare centres are mutually constructed. Two different topics are stressed: children's perspectives and school-age educare centres as a social and educational practice. Data was constructed through…

In this article, we discuss three cross-cultural memoirs used in three different university courses that introduced students to the complex identities that form both inside and outside of language classrooms. In arguing for the value of using such memoirs as content in university courses, we provide a detailed thematic analysis of Peter Hessler's…

We write from a public university in Mexico's interior, as 2 language professors from countries with fraught, yet intertwined, sets of histories--Mexico and the United States. Having lived in 2 countries with dramatic increases in nationalist policies, we reflect on having lived abroad through the increases in nationalism in our lived experiences.…

In this paper, we examine the role of educational leadership in promoting and/or challenging racism as an intentional outcome of schooling. We focus on Egypt and South Africa, two countries uniquely framed as both deeply divided by race, religion, and/or class and as models of resistance and conscious activism. We draw upon experiences working as,…

In Greek mythology, the Chimera is a fire-breathing monster with three heads: one of a lion, one of a horned goat, and one of a powerful dragon. Of similar construction is the presence of three structures in US society, whiteness, patriarchy, and capitalism, which are overwhelmingly represented, valued, and espoused when examining areas of…