Remembering our lives or learning to tell the truth? The researcher role in recall

This paper discusses the relationship between biographical interviews and life history approaches explaining how establishing a ‘stable viewpoint’ is an interdisciplinary process. It then offers examples of typologies created through an holistic analysis of interview data that derives from a study of women training to work in childcare. It briefly describes the attitudinal categories – asserters, accepters, accumulaters and agonisers –¬ before looking in more depth at two students who are both agonisers. The paper reveals how the connectedness of biographical interview data enables the researcher to draw sense from the narratives despite the contradictions, hesitations, and juxtapositions that confuse and conceal the students’ viewpoints. It also considers examples of emplotment within the interviews, showing how unravelling these can enable additional layers of meaning to be unveiled.