This doctoral study explores the museum as site and resource for language learning by adult migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) provision has emerged over the past decade in museums across the UK and elsewhere within an increasing emphasis on informal adult learning programs. While there has been extensive research on second language acquisition, museum learning and social inclusion separately, there have been few studies that have investigated language learning in the context of museums, and even fewer studies that have sought to understand the benefits of language learning in museums for this target group of learners and how it might relate to the concept of inclusion. The study is centred around an ethnography that addresses these gaps in the literature and which examined three primary questions: (a) what are the target learners’ experiences of social inclusion and exclusion post-migration, and its interface with their English language abilities? (b) what are learners’ perceptions of the impact of participating in ESOL in museums in terms of exclusion and inclusion?, and (c) what occurs in interaction during ESOL in museums? In collaboration with City of Edinburgh Council Museums and Galleries Service, a cohort of 14 adult ESOL learners were studied over a 5-month ESOL course held in the City’s Museums and Galleries. In-depth time-series interviews were conducted with participants over the 5-month period. Narrative analysis (Labov & Waletzky, 1967; Riessman, 1993) of interviews examined narrative trajectories within case and across cases, mapping experiences post migration, in and beyond museums. In order to investigate the affordances of dialogue in museums, conversational interaction was observed and recorded during the 11 weekly museum visits. Conversation analysis (Leinhardt & Knutson, 2004; Markee, 2000) examined what occurred in talk, focusing on interaction between interlocutors, its function and content. Drawing on a social theory that conceptualizes language as symbolic power (Bourdieu, 1977, 1989, 1991) and identities as constructed and reflexive (Block, 2007b; Giddens, 1991; Norton, 2000), analysis indicates that the experience of migration provoked deficit conceptions of self as participants negotiated their new social milieu through English language. Access to opportunities to engage in English are mediated both by institutional forces, e.g. social space afforded in institutional contexts, and perceptions of self. Analysis of dialogue in museums shows participants positioning themselves and being positioned as ‘knowers’, where primacy was given to collaborative meaning making about museum displays, objects and artefacts in conversational interaction. Analyses of interviews indicate shifts in identity trajectories from deficit to competent views of self through participation in ESOL in museums. These findings suggest a cumulative effect of micro-interactions on identities constructed in dialogue and point to the critical role which learning in museums and other informal environments can have in terms of providing social space within which to engage in positive dialogue that both challenges isolation and exclusion and helps foster increasing confidence and competence in the target language alongside feelings of inclusion for the majority of participants in the research.

In post-traditional societies, identity has been pervasively understood as a ‘thing’ one needs to and can endeavour to achieve or create. Many studies about identity in the humanities and social sciences have increasingly been approached in both reified and impersonal ways. These trends in understanding identity have made a significant impact on research into education and identity. This thesis aims to demonstrate the complexity of personal identity on a theoretical level and endeavours to rethink the theoretical understanding of personal identity in relation to the notion of learning. Based on Paul Ricoeur and Charles Taylor’s theories of personal identity, this thesis argues that personal identity needs to be understood both as sameness and as selfhood at a conceptual level. Ontologically, the former belongs to the category of ‘thing’, ‘substance’ in terms of permanence in time. The latter belongs the category of ‘being’ in terms of permanence in time. This thesis will argue that this conceptual understanding of personal identity suggests that identity is largely ‘shaped’ by social, cultural, traditional, moral and ethical dimensions in the human world over time, rather than merely being a result of personal endeavour as an individual creation or/and an adaptation to constant social changes. The moral and ethical dimensions of personal identity also suggest that the need for and ‘meaning’ of personal identity to a person in his/her life cannot be simply approached in an objective manner through impersonal terms. Rather, personal identity constitutively depends on self-interpretation, which highlights the role of narrative in understanding personal identity. This thesis further argues that a new understanding about reflexive learning relevant to personal identity can be drawn from this theoretical understanding of personal identity and narrative. This new understanding is based on a person’s reflexivity not only in the dialectical frameworks between sameness, self and others, but also in different moral frameworks. What this presents us with is a different view of lifelong learning as an alternative to lifelong learning implied in the notion of a ‘reflexive project of the self’.

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The purpose of this research was to inquire into the phenomenon of beginning teacher attrition, and more specifically, beginning physical education teacher attrition and retention. Utilizing the methodology of narrative inquiry, I first studied my own autobiographical stories that brought me to teaching. I then wove these stories into the current research around beginning teacher attrition and from this weaving, I began to look at beginning teacher attrition as a problem of identity shifting and shaping. This framing allowed me to narratively inquire into two beginning physical education teachers experiences. Looking at their experiences through this lens enabled me to become attentive to the experiences that sustained them as beginning teachers. Their sustaining experiences resonated closely with the stories that had brought them to teaching and the stories that had created their imagined stories of who they would be as teachers.

Over the past thirty years attention has turned to how people leave a criminal lifestyle and develop an adaptive identity. Within the Criminal Justice System in England and Wales there exist physical activity interventions designed to give people an opportunity to improve their health and facilitate rehabilitation. A review of the literature indicated benefits to developing further understanding of the role of identity (re)construction, embodiment and physical activity in supporting adult desistance from crime. A narrative approach was adopted to explore the embodied, lived experience of people with criminal convictions and life transformation. Approval was gained to access prisons and probation units in England and Wales. Through purposeful sampling, life history interviews were conducted with 16 adults, 13 males and 3 females, with criminal convictions to explore their experience of change. Six people were successfully desisting from a criminal lifestyle, eight were trying to desist, and two were still involved in crime. 14 semi-structured interviews were also conducted with Criminal Justice staff. A narrative analysis was undertaken to explore the personal and public stories. Firstly, exploring the whats (what does the story tell us? Lieblich et al., 1998; Riessman, 2008) and, secondly, the hows (what do the stories do? Frank, 2010). From this analysis and interpretation six aspects of transforming criminal lives were identified and explored: embodied transformation, physical activity, spirituality, age and wisdom, claiming an adaptive identity, and maintaining change. These are represented in the thesis through modified realist tales, creative non-fictions and confessional tales to illustrate their role in the process of desistance from crime. Through the analysis, a six-domain ‘web’ model is proposed as one possible way to conceptualise the active, interdependent and ongoing nature of participants’ journeys in transforming their lives. Finally, implications of the study are reflected upon in relation to theory, practice and future research.

In her novel Tracks, Louise Erdrich tells the story of a band of Anishinaabe early in the twentieth century. Through the two narrators, one a tribal elder and the other a mixedblood who eventually abandons the traditions of the tribe, the novel offers two divergent perspectives of the events that take place as the government divests the tribe of its land. The conflicting perceptions of these occurrences, which are magical realist in nature, underscore the conflict within the tribe to maintain tradition in the face of the ever-increasing influence of European settlers. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the perceptions at odds with one another in order to shed new light on the significance of Erdrich’s use of magical realism in the text. Highlighting Erdrich’s engagement with magical realism, a largely postcolonial literary device, will hopefully expand notions of identity and authenticity within the Native American literary tradition.

Yes / This article explores the implications for identity through presenting a detailed analysis of how three British Pakistani women narrated their involvement in higher education. The increased participation of British South Asian women in higher education has been hailed a major success story and is said to have enabled them to forge alternative, more empowering gender identities in comparison to previous generations. Drawing on generative narrative interviews conducted with three young women, we explore the under-researched area of Pakistani Muslim women in higher education. The central plotlines for their stories are respectively higher education as an escape from conforming to the ‘good Muslim woman’; becoming an educated mother; and Muslim women can ‘have it all’. Although the women narrated freedom to choose, their stories were complex. Through analysis of personal ‘I’ and social ‘We’ self-narration, we discuss the different ways in which they drew on agency and fashioned it within social and structural constraints of gender, class and religion. Thus higher education is a context that both enables and constrains negotiations of identity.

The variables that contribute to the acquisition of personal identity are many, and the interactions that occur before someone realizes "I am ... " are complex, to say the least. The process of ' identification' that is, the aforementioned acquisition of the self is not a static process that is the same for each person. Although some similar patterns of existence may occur, it is ultimately a unique occurrence. I propose that in the 'construction of the self that there are three broad facets of existence that should be addressed in answering questions concerning personal identity the physiological, the psychological, and the social. Each of these factors contributes to the process of becoming that is personal identity. This is in line with modem psychological models. The present work seeks to bring to light some of these facets of personal identity in general. More than this however, an attempt will be made to examine some of the ways in which physical disability can affect one's sense of personal narrative that is woven into "Who I am and whom I wish to be." In the course of this work several topics will surface. First an emphasis will be placed on the physical expressions and ' limitations' of the body as an extension into space. The concept of the "body schema" will be explained here to illustrate the ways in which the body is integrated into the self. Next, the psychological effects of physical disability will be addressed with a focus toward the reconstruction of mental representations of the 'normal' body and the resultant effects of this reconstruction. Here, the "body image" of the disabled individual will be discussed using data from

The focus of this study is on how the identity narrative is constructed and how the narrative effects the reader’s perception of the protagonist’s identity in the autobiographical novels Kärlek i Europa and alla vilda by Birgitta Stenberg. The discourse of autobiographical writing is used to analyse the novels with the perspective that an autobiographical text communicates with it’s readers. By close-reading the pattern of the narrative becomes visible. The analys of the narrative show that the narrator changes positions throughout the novels. In effect, this means that the narrator and the protagonist sometimes occupies the same position in the text, and sometimes not. By mapping the narrator’s positions and by separating the author, narrator and protagonist the narrative structure emerges as complex. The authors position and the referentiality to something ”real” outside the text creates a picture of the protagonist as a part of the awareness of gender discrimination toward female writers. It also raises the issue of the historical discrimination toward LGBTQ persons and ethnic groups. The narrator’s changing position re-structures time and space by inserting different timelines. Through the historical, the traveling and the future timelines the development of the protagonist’s identity emerges. In contrast to the genre bildungsroman the identity narrative becomes visible as a self-reflexive project. The reflexive project allows the narrator to compare the identity of the self through time. This structure also invites the reader to co-create the protagonist identity alongside the narrator.

<p>This thesis examines how two narrators construe their experiences of the same events differently through the linguistic choices that they make, through a systemic functional analysis, as well as a genre analysis of two testimonies. The Human Rights Violations (HRV) hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) allowed testifiers to tell stories of their experiences during apartheid. The selected testimonies refer to the events that led up to the arrest and eventual torture of Faried Muhammad Ferhelst, as told by himself and his mother, Minnie Louisa Ferhelst. Theframeworks used to analyse the testimonies are drawn from the transitivity and genre theories of Systemic Functional Linguistics. A clausal analysis of the transitivity patterns is used to compare the ways in which the testifiers construct their identities and roles when recounting their stories. The transitivity analysis of both testimonies shows that both Mrs Ferhelst and Faried Ferhelst construe themselves as the Affected participant through Material, Mental and Verbal clauses, and construe the police as the Causers, mostly through Material clauses. A genre analysis revealed that both testimonies took the form of narratives, in particular the Recount, a typical genre for relating narratives of personal experience. This research project also explores how the original Afrikaans versions of the testimonies differ from the translated English versions, available online on the TRC website. The Afrikaans versions were transcribed by the researcher from&nbsp / audio-visual records. A transitivity analysis reveals that the interpretation of the Afrikaans testimonies is fairly accurate, with a minimum loss of meaning. Thus in the case of these testimonies, the&nbsp / actual online record in English is an accurate reflection of their stories.</p>