| dc.description.abstract | The allusion in the title of this thesis to the Anglo Saxon epic poem ‘Beowulf’ speaks to the power of personal narration. Drawing on the Biographical Narrative Interpretive Methodology has enabled participants to make their voices heard, in contrast to alternative forms of rhetoric, which might lead to dysfunctional behaviour. It has been my privilege as a researcher to translate their oral narratives into a written account of their versions of their lives. These narratives have the potential to link self understanding with social structures, including access to training and employment, and to lead to reintegration as fuller members of society. The assumptions underlying my research are that those included in my study – ex offenders, people with disabilities and those discharged from the Armed Forces - can be isolated and excluded from full membership of society by social and political forces which are beyond their control; and that they have linked vulnerabilities to crises including unemployment, homelessness and suicide. However, they have individual agency to overcome the effects of social exclusion; and literacy and other forms of learning have a potentially transformational role in their social reintegration. Those who have offended are especially at risk of experiencing the most oppressive aspects of social exclusion, including lack of access to literacy learning and vocational training. Their efforts to be reintegrated by these means do not follow a linear progression and can be subject to delay, interruption and disappointment, which can reinforce their social exclusion. I have explored the double edged nature of literacy. Language and imagery can be tools of individual agency for my participants’ personal development and social integration but moral assumptions and narratives are employed as rhetorical tools for marginalisation and the privileging of particular ideological preferences, which can be experienced as further subtle means of exclusion. However, participants’ narratives have challenged and broadened my original assumptions on the nature and impact of exclusion on those included in my study; the transition experiences which can be formative for individuals, including the points between development of a disability, release from prison or discharge from the Armed Forces, and access to learning; the nature of learning, which can play a part in restoring and resolving identity; and the ways in which reflexivity and instrumentality can be developed in support of individual agency. Listening to participants’ narratives, characterised by use of metaphor as an alternative form of language and self-expression, has highlighted the ways in which participants in my research have defied the application to themselves of a binary approach to the concepts of social exclusion and social inclusion. In their engagement in Foucault’s (1980: 102) ‘contested interactions’ with power structures, they have echoed the values and tenets of critical literacy theory and critical pedagogy in a wider context of learning than I had envisaged. This has led to reintegration as fuller members of society, on their own terms, for themselves and for fellow people with disabilities, ex offenders and ex Armed Forces colleagues. | en_GB |
